The Vinyl Comeback Is Stalling?

[superheavyfunk]

When I was in SanDiego a decade ago I went to the Casbah to catch a couple of interesting bands and I ended up buying the T-shirt because the guitarist told me they actually make quite a bit more profit on the shirts than the CDs.

I guess that makes sense. T-shirts basically cost pennies when made in bulk, while records cost whole dollars… in both cases, the buyers will only pay so much for the product so the margins on shirts will be much better. Even still, I’d still rather pay $40 for a record than $20 for a shirt. It would take a really, really nice design to persuade me otherwise

 

[Moe Hickey]

My streaming service has led me to discover artists and bands old and new where the ultimate acceptance by me is to purchase their vinyl. My tastes have expanded to an eclectic mix. For me, vinyl is my favorite way to listen to music. The return to it has made me very happy. I hope I can pass on in my room and will ask for a certain album side to be playing if possible.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

This is loosely related and popped up in my YouTube feed today. Slightly interesting:

 

[otp57]

Mastering for vinyl and mastering for CD are pretty different. CDs don't have a frequency response baked in, while vinyl as a medium has muffled high frequencies.

A lot of people in the 80s said CDs sounded thin, but it wasn't the CDs - it was that record companies either didn't remaster appropriately for the format or the engineers were still settling into a new paradigm.

That's why CDs don't sound thin anymore.

This is an interesting discussion overall. It looks like sales are down across the board and vinyl is holding up relatively well.

One thing to remember sound engineers from the 50s and 60s where MASTERS of sound recording.
With the loadness wars,over EQing ,pitch bending and etc today's music is not recorded as good. Some of the best recording are from the 50s and 60s. Try this recording on for size
Frank Sinatra – In The Wee Small Hours.

 

[jmattbassplaya]

When records are still going for $30 after all this time of the “renaissance,” no wonder it’s stalled out. Record companies are run by morons.

This.

I’m in my early 30’s and actually really enjoyed the resurgence of vinyl when it first started because I found it somehow therapeutic with how tactile the whole experience was. It was almost religious in a weird way. However, whatever enjoyment I was getting out of it was quickly squashed due to how expensive it started getting. Oh well.

 

[Michael Stanley 2112]

I guess that makes sense. T-shirts basically cost pennies when made in bulk, while records cost whole dollars… in both cases, the buyers will only pay so much for the product so the margins on shirts will be much better. Even still, I’d still rather pay $40 for a record than $20 for a shirt. It would take a really, really nice design to persuade me otherwise

I have a slightly different take on this. Let me illustrate by telling a short story:

I'm in a popular, nation-wide (in the U.S.) music store and I see a piece of clothing accessory (a hat) which I'd been wanting, but it was branded.

I looked at the price tag and it was literally 3X the cost of the same piece of clothing without the branding.

I said: "I'll give you 1/3X" The clerk looked at me like I was nuts and said: "Why would we sell that to you for that price?"

I said: "Fair enough. Why should I advertise for you for the next 10 years or so for free?"

If my choice is any music medium and advertising someone else's product, I'll take the music.

 

[brianrost]

We have a small-run vinyl plant that is doing quite well these days here in Asheville.l

All pressing plants are doing well, the demand is keeping all of them busy.

Who would want to use a cassette deck these days?!

I still have a few hundred tapes, lots of recordings of concerts taken off the radio and some pre-recorded tapes of stuff that never made it to CD.

There's no way you can make sound come at you from behind with only two front or side speakers, you need physical sound sources behind to make you hear them behind you.

But it does work on headphones...Atmos is a way to get binaural sound form a multitrack mix. It's also going to be important as more people get into VR.

It is kind of difficult to make people excited about music, and therefore pay more for it and in return give musicians more income, when general consensus is gear for music = crappy tiny ear buds, but gear for movies= massive sound and video system.

Not everybody listens to music but everybody watches TV. Remember VHS tapes? Did you ever wonder why a VHS blank cost less than an audio cassette blank, even though there was obviously more material used and more complexity in the cartridge itself? Because more people had a VCR but not a cassette recorder than vice versa.

The clerk looked at me like I was nuts and said: "Why would we sell that to you for that price?"
I said: "Fair enough. Why should I advertise for you for the next 10 years or so for free?"

With all the talk about inflated prices these days, who remembers when you got your brand T-shirts for free rather than paying $20 for one?

 

[wiscoaster]

Today's new vinly is so grossly overpriced that it deserves to stall.

 

[Tom Bomb]

An LP that you'd have paid $8.00 for, in 1975, would cost about $45.00, in today's money. And, today, it's possible for the artist to get the lion's share of the profits. Things are looking up
​

 

[kumimajava]

I just got two CD's a day ago.
Vinyl is for wall displays only.
As I am NOT going to be buying a record player!

Edit:I like CD's over downloaded music because I get all the band info and pics in the printed liner.
Downloads get nothing but music.

not quite sure, but last time i checked - it IS possible to download band info and pics (and many other things, such as transcriptions etc.) as well Sometimes those come with 'digital editions' beyond what is included in the CD case.

 

[brianrost]

An LP that you'd have paid $8.00 for, in 1975, would cost about $45.00, in today's money.

And a CD you bought in 1988 for $15 in would still cost $15 in today's money. Things are looking up

 

[MonetBass]

It never started for me, I grew up with those noisy, warped aggravations and I'd never go back. CD's all day for me.

This. Big time.

Maybe for the young people who started buying vinyl, their shortcomings are hitting home.

A similarly this. Even when vinyl was all I had, I despised the format. CDs (ripped to digital) is the only way I'll go anymore.

 

[hrodbert696]

When I was in SanDiego a decade ago I went to the Casbah to catch a couple of interesting bands and I ended up buying the T-shirt because the guitarist told me they actually make quite a bit more profit on the shirts than the CDs. The Chicano Batman shirt design was actually really good back then, I like it much better than their [This invalid link has been removed]...

Business model for today's bands: make music that is cool enough for people at shows to want to buy your t-shirts.

 

[JazznFunk]

Business model for today's bands: make music that is cool enough for people at shows to want to buy your t-shirts.

Cool enough to buy your shirts, but not to actually buy your music. That in a nutshell is why the *music* business has gotten so backward. Music doesn't make you money - being a clothing seller (kind of) is. Merch has always been a fantastic supplement, but it shouldn't be the only way an artist makes money off of the music these days.

Whether it's vinyl, a CD, cassette, or a legit digital download, we should ALL be celebrating music fans who actually want to commit to buying and owning music in whatever format it may be, versus streaming it and thinking they're contributing financially in a significant way.... because they aren't if they're just streaming tunes.

 

[Bass-ball]

i wish digital streaming media sounded as good as cd/LP. For, it just doesnt.

I tried both AmazonHD and Tidal 'lossless', and I wasn't impressed. Amazon especially was NOT happy when I tried pointing it to an external DAC. It just kept wanting to use the Windows audio protocols. Tidal sounded great, but ultimately I don't stream on equipment or in environments where lossless makes a difference (in the car, at work, on crappy earbuds, etc.), and so I only go lossless when I'm in front of my system at home where I can tell a difference, and usually, it's for media I already own, so who cares about "high def" streaming.

And that last part bugs me. Streaming has changed what "HD audio" is. To me, redbook CD quality is SD. To Amazon and Tidal, it's HD. But whatever. Like I said, I'm an old man yelling at the sky...

 

[Bass-ball]

The issue about the sound is always about how well it's recorded, mixed and mastered. I have plenty of music on both LP and CD where I like the vinyl much better but it's all about the mixing and mastering. The engineers in the 1960s had different ideas of what sounded good than the enginners of the 21st century.

THIS. I was sort of on the fence of what a CD could do vis-a-vis an analogue source, and then years ago I picked up a Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs CD and holy cow - it was so deep and lush and to me sounded better than the vinyl counterpart. It just seems like a lot of digital music could be mastered so much better, but for whatever reason, isn't.

 

[JazznFunk]

I tried both AmazonHD and Tidal 'lossless', and I wasn't impressed. Amazon especially was NOT happy when I tried pointing it to an external DAC. It just kept wanting to use the Windows audio protocols. Tidal sounded great, but ultimately I don't stream on equipment or in environments where lossless makes a difference (in the car, at work, on crappy earbuds, etc.), and so I only go lossless when I'm in front of my system at home where I can tell a difference, and usually, it's for media I already own, so who cares about "high def" streaming.

And that last part bugs me. Streaming has changed what "HD audio" is. To me, redbook CD quality is SD. To Amazon and Tidal, it's HD. But whatever. Like I said, I'm an old man yelling at the sky...

I reference this quote too much probably, but I always go back to what jazz recording/mixing/mastering engineer James Farber said in an interview years ago in Tape Op:

"I never listen to earbuds or MP3s. I don't really know what that's like at all. My feeling is: make the best sounding record for the people who can listen in the best environments; and if you do that, it should sound pretty good everywhere."

 

[Black_In_Mind]

An LP that you'd have paid $8.00 for, in 1975, would cost about $45.00, in today's money.

Yeah...I don't get this argument and it's been popping up more with everything going on with the price of goods.

Sure records could be more expensive but record labels would be shooting themselves in the foot using that line of reasoning. They are priced where they need to be to get the widest pool of buyers.

 

[Admiral Akbar]

I tried both AmazonHD and Tidal 'lossless', and I wasn't impressed. Amazon especially was NOT happy when I tried pointing it to an external DAC. It just kept wanting to use the Windows audio protocols. Tidal sounded great, but ultimately I don't stream on equipment or in environments where lossless makes a difference (in the car, at work, on crappy earbuds, etc.), and so I only go lossless when I'm in front of my system at home where I can tell a difference, and usually, it's for media I already own, so who cares about "high def" streaming.

And that last part bugs me. Streaming has changed what "HD audio" is. To me, redbook CD quality is SD. To Amazon and Tidal, it's HD. But whatever. Like I said, I'm an old man yelling at the sky...

I’m tired of older people needing to make excuses for their age — as if their opinion doesn’t count because they’re “old.”!

Hey what people today now call “old man yelling at clouds” or “get off my lawn!” or “boomer!” is what other cultures in the world call life-experience and wisdom.

Anyway — I love the convenience and ease of streaming music, but I’m sorry, the experience never gets to the quality of a Cd or even LP

 

[jerry]

I get the whole convenience of streaming, but doesn't anybody miss liner notes? Credits?