Vinyl records make a return

brown is the new white

They've been running stories like this for a couple of years now. I don't doubt the numbers but at a time when I'm trying to get *rid* of things in bulk seeing the rush for this is a bit head-shaking.

What about the seldom mentioned cassette revival?

what's the vegas over/under on how many more years we'll keep reading this same story over and over: 4? 5?

ORG Records?

Olson's doorbell is chiming more frequently these days. Since starting vinyl-only label ORG in December 2006 in Olson's kitchen, the label is bursting at the seams. "By the end of the year, we will have gone from making zero money to projecting that we will gross over $1 million," said Olson, who nevertheless has kept his day job as senior vice president of A&R at Universal Music Publishing Group.

The label, which primarily licenses material from Universal Music Group, ....

yeah, funny that!

(A traditional LP is pressed on 120-gram weight vinyl, whereas many labels produce special packages using 180-gram vinyl, which gives a fuller, richer sound.)

I was talking to some guys the other day and posed the question: which would you rather have, heavier vinyl or deeper grooves? Everyone seemed to agree that weight of vinyl by itself doesn't guarantee better sound, quite a bit can be dependent on mastering etc. Let's blah blah blah blahlhhh

This summer, ORG will release a four-vinyl-LP, 10th-anniversary edition of Beck's "Odelay." The original CD booklet will be re-created for the 180-gram special package, which will carry a suggested retail list price of $60.

Any takers?

I wouldn't even steal it

I was talking to some guys the other day and posed the question: which would you rather have, heavier vinyl or deeper grooves? Everyone seemed to agree that weight of vinyl by itself doesn't guarantee better sound, quite a bit can be dependent on mastering etc

it depends how much music is on there. the shorter the tracks, the deeper the grooves, the higher the fidelity. heavier vinyl allows for deeper grooves, but everything depends on how much actual music you're trying to cram on a given side of vinyl.

Didn't Odelay come out 12 years ago?

i <3 deep grooves hav u guys ever heard jamiroquai

re: Odelay, forget the date, why on earth is it four LPs?

in order to accomodate the grooves

The resurgence is having a snowball effect. At Record Technology Inc., a once-beleaguered pressing plant in Camarillo, owner Don MacInnis said that "business is the best it's been in 20 years."

When vinyl started its rebirth, RTI operated on banker's hours -- five days a week, eight hours a day. Now, "we're running 16 hours a day, six days a week," MacInnis said. And he's turning away clients. RTI's average pressing per title over the last few years has doubled to 3,000 units, with orders frequently topping 10,000 copies.

this is good news no matter how many crappy major label records get the vinyl reissue treatment.

^this

RTI does that matador HQ vinyl stuff right? they press GREAT vinyl.

Don't worry, Vinyl Surplus, us ugglos still come in too.

Amoeba Music in Hollywood sells about 2,000 vinyl LPs a day

I wonder how many of those are used. 50% or more, I'd bet.

probably more like 75 i bet

also yeah ugly ppl have kept vinyl in business. don't diss your core audience.

amoeba records makes way more $$$ on used than new vinyl so they're probably very ok with that.

<S>amoeba records</S>most record stores makes way more $$$ on used than new vinyl so they're probably very ok with that.

-- Steve Shasta, Monday, 18 August 2008 18:30 (4 hours ago) Link

^^^ fixed. it's a simple matter of mark-up; newbury comics makes way more money on used CDs than they do on new CDs, by the same token.

The very real possibility that vinyl will outlive CD - T or F?

Yeah, the author here seems a bit clueless re: the real economics behind record stores ... but so do the Major Labels:

Next month, Capitol/EMI will launch "From the Capitol Vaults," with the release of 13 titles on vinyl, including Radiohead's "OK Computer" and Steve Miller Band's "Greatest Hits 1974-1978."

Yeah, I wonder how long it will take major labels to realize that the way to exploit the vinyl market is NOT with high priced "collectors items" but with desirable catalog titles that command high prices in the aftermarket.

They would respond but they are two busy with the burnt orange colored vinyl for the Gavin Rossdale solo album.

Daily Swarm today:

Best Buy 'considering devoting eight square feet of merchandising space in all of its 1,020 stores solely to vinyl'...
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04272009/business/best_buy_turning_the_tables_with_vinyl_166384.htm

Three New Vinyl Shops Open in Los Angeles...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-et-vinyl26-2009apr26,0,1957135,full.story

As a CD-buyer for 18 years, I'm having a collector nerd crisis whether I should jump on this trend or not

ditto what Whiney said

i don't buy too many records and haven't bought a new record in a long while. it's mainly old jazz/blues comps that I end up purchasing. But if every new record came with a download coupon and I invested in a decent turntable (mine is kinda crappy) I can see buying the record instead of the CD.

eventually, i want to sell some new vinyl at my soon-to-open store. i'm scared of the money involved though. i'll start small. i was thinking of being genre specific. JUST selling psych reissues or something...

i'll have to see what people are into around here. lotsa freekfolkers in western mass though. and not a lot of competition for new vinyl. so the psych thing might work.

every record does have a download coupon, it's called "(artist name) + (album name) + mediafire or megaupload or sharebee etc"

Especially since record companies are sending less physical copies of records in the mail every year. I've been going to the record store and picking up CDs I really like (I didn't get physical promos for Springsteen, Bat For Lashes or Doom)...

--But should I be getting vinyl copies of these albums instead?
--Is the ease of 320k or 192k rips ANY TIME I NEED THEM for all eternity better or worse than having something that looks better and (hypothetically) sounds better?
--Should I take into consideration how easy it it to scratch/warp/fuck up a piece of vinyl, ruining it forever, as opposed to a CD that pretty much will play as long as you don't put them in your backpack without a case like a see kids do on the subway?
--What about my CD shelves when I have four spines of a group, but then have to go to my record collection for the fifth record?

omar, living on downloads alone is essentially saying "I don't care about data backup"

from that l.a. link, origami records is "okay". they just have run of the mill mainstream indie vinyl right now, i hope they expand into used lps and other genres. vacation is pretty dope, lots of metal, experimental, and psych.

more interested in this astonishing-sounding place, tbh:

http://www.foodgps.com/more-info-on-territory-bbq-and-records/

oh i never live on downloads, i usually DL just to see if i want to get something in a physical copy. or if it's something that is long out of print.

CDs are the new vinyl. Scored 10 amazing CDs for $5.
This sealed Chris Gaines CD will pay for the whole lot in five years I reckon, so it's like I got them for free.
Haven't seen vinyl go for such firesale prices since a few years back getting the Rush back catalog for 10cents an album.

Yeah, I've been getting crazy CDs off Amazon. You can pretty much have any Madonna record released after 1988 for a penny.

CDs are the new vinyl. Scored 10 amazing CDs for $5

So been having fun with this at Amoeba's clearance section as well.

dollar dvds at thrift stores too. i love that. you can't give the stuff away.

i think my favorite thing about the whole vinyl market right now is that it makes my goal of someday releasing an album and actually pressing it on vinyl seem like way less of an unfeasible pipedream

any Madonna record released after 1988 for a penny.

Well, a penny plus postage, right? Which always seems to nullify the deal for me, but maybe I'll come around. Do need to start hunting around for used CDs in stores more, though.

yeah, so like $3. Which is still cheaper than the $7.99 at a used CD store.

scott ur in western MA right? where is your store?

"Haven't seen vinyl go for such firesale prices since a few years back getting the Rush back catalog for 10cents an album.

― Philip Nunez"

you got ripped off.

my store will be located on main street in greenfield. right next to tofu a go go.

we had problems with the original space we rented (um, pee pee water dripping down onto our space from the aprtmenent above.) otherwise, we would have been open by now. but i've been having fun making money on ebay and drinking and hanging out with my kids.

x-post

im still interested in hearing about which records you guys got from john storm roberts's collection!

yeah i def buy a lot of vinyl but always have, but i echo other sentiments about CDs! great deals now all over the place...

seriously you can get like every great jazz record ever made on some fancy pants new great sounding remastered CD issue for like peanuts!

buying dollars cd's is the new buying dollar records

Tuomas will disagree vehemently but the dark side of the moog stuff is... not good imo

it's from the 90s so you can probably imagine what it sounds like. i definitely prefer his 80s stuff

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/may/20/vinyl-sales-bigger-than-youtube-for-british-artists

It said YouTube and similar operators contributed a “meagre” £24.4m to music industry coffers, despite an 88% increase in music video streams to nearly 27bn last year. That was narrowly eclipsed by the £25.1m earned by labels from the sale of 2.1m vinyl LPs in 2015.

interesting!

perhaps download revenues top both Youtube and vinyl, wonder what the Spotify/Tidal numbers are

The BPI called on the government to fix the so-called “value grab” by websites such as YouTube who, it said, paid lower royalties than subscription audio streaming services such as Spotify and Deezer, which contributed a combined £146.1m.

That YouTube number is shocking. Why do the labels keep going along with it?

the weird thing is many of the anti spotify people will use youtube.

many? all!

i use youtube. i love youtube. i'm not anti-spotify though. i do get spotify fatigue very quickly. the canned claustrophobic sound of spotify makes me itchy after awhile and i can only take about 45 minutes of it.

in my defense, i have never downloaded a CD off of the internet or burned a CD or saved a CD to my computer in my life.

i do believe in home taping though.

did seem really fishy to me when youtube started just grabbing stuff off of the internet when i went looking for stuff. what's the deal with that?

What do you mean by that?

does spotify have some discernible lower quality to its sound than you would otherwise expect from 320kbps streaming? I never really noticed anything canned or claustrophobic about it, but I might not be paying close enough attention.

"What do you mean by that?"

i'll type something in and a video will show up with no views and it's published that day and its just a picture of a CD with the title on it. looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbvAMy4bXPw

i mean they come directly from CDBaby and places like that but they seem auto-generated.

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbZL04aQ6XeDey4btADmmHw

basically stuff that isn't on youtube will magically be on youtube if you search for it on youtube sometimes. and i don't know how that works. money-wise.

"Provided to YouTube by The state51 Conspiracy"

state51 conspiracy is a digital distribution house, so i think these are legit.

like, does o-zone the don know he's magically on youtube? and does he get anything out of it? i doubt he ever will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urYjh4MMDRw

anyway, this is a fairly recent thing. it didn't used to work that way.

they must mention it on sites like cdbaby if you use their services: "if you put your stuff here and someone types your name on youtube it will appear there. just so you know."

if they provide the videos and the correct iswc / isrc / whatever then they will be paid for plays of those videos.

just seems weird. they probably need more views than they will ever get to make any money and the 20 people interested in their music will listen to it on youtube and never buy their cdbaby cd.

they must mention it on sites like cdbaby if you use their services: "if you put your stuff here and someone types your name on youtube it will appear there. just so you know."

― scott seward, Friday, May 20, 2016 12:18 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not in so many words, but apparently enough to cover themselves legally. I used CDBaby for a couple of things years ago, before youtube existed, and whaddyaknow, there's my shit on youtube!

went into my least favorite record store yesterday. things have actually gotten worse. two of my favorite pricings were a used copy of Trans for $35 (justified by a sticker saying it is a 1st edition with a typo) and a used copy of Katy Lied for $25. I hope every track is misspelled on that one!

another $100 record had a sticker that said "listed at $150 on amazon!"

"and a used copy of Katy Lied for $25. I hope every track is misspelled on that one!"

there is actually a copy of Gaucho inside it. very rare.

basically stuff that isn't on youtube will magically be on youtube if you search for it on youtube sometimes

http://www.statista.com/statistics/259477/hours-of-video-uploaded-to-youtube-every-minute/

it seems like youtube has upwards of 500 hours of video uploaded to it every minute. chance are if you are searching for something it is going to turn up eventually, if only temporarily.

you think 15 bucks is too much for a really clean copy of the first nitzer ebb album? u.s. copy on geffen. 1987 pressing. i could be nice and just put 10 on it...

there isn't a single person in the u.s. selling a copy of the nitzer ebb album on discogs. kinda hard to believe. okay, 15 bucks in the store and 20 on discogs. win/win!

went into my least favorite record store yesterday. things have actually gotten worse. two of my favorite pricings were a used copy of Trans for $35 (justified by a sticker saying it is a 1st edition with a typo) and a used copy of Katy Lied for $25. I hope every track is misspelled on that one!

― bonita pooleymoon (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, May 20, 2016 1:23 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

another $100 record had a sticker that said "listed at $150 on amazon!"

― bonita pooleymoon (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, May 20, 2016 1:24 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't why these situations / types of stores are so common around the country, but it's fascinating to see so many of them alive at this point. You'd think they'd be the first to die.

Eh, Scott I'd have done $10 for it.

i never see their records on vinyl anymore actually...

it's like front 242. used to see their records everywhere not that long ago. or maybe it was long ago...

i'm actually charging extra five bucks for the near mint vinyl + original inner sleeve. if it had been VG+ i would have done 10.

it's like front 242. used to see their records everywhere not that long ago. or maybe it was long ago...

― scott seward, Friday, May 20, 2016 1:38 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've never seen anyone buying them, though I'm sure someone does.

Front 242 rule.

xp 15 is fair IMO

scott should start a thread where we can price a small selection of his bargain bin. maybe he could slap a "priced by strangers!" sticker on each.

though I would love to see people look at a $100 copy of Tango in the Night with the sticker "Alfred told me to!", it is probably not the best way to run a business

front 242 wax trax reissues used to be everywhere for cheap. i can sell the hell out of geography.

xp LOL

I bought Tango on vinyl BITD, disk is so thin you could pick your teeth with it

My Tango has a bad place on track two on both sides (probably the same bad place).

slap a "has two side As!" sticker on it and sell for $650

On behalf of Chuck Eddy, I'd like to price all your moderately-credible hard rock at $5. ANGEL CITY MOTHERFUCKERS

ANGEL CITY MOTHERFUCKERS

words to live by

my friend mike came in during the noise nomads matinee today and i sold him the nitzer ebb for ten bucks. #friendsandfamilydiscount

I paid $1 for the first one and $2.99 for the second, but I definitely got more than $10 worth of entertainment from each over the years so I'd say your friend did ok.

I don't remember much Front 242 vinyl being around in Cleveland in the late '80s/early '90s. I think Back Catalogue was the first import CD I ever bought, or maybe it was the first Throwing Muses album. Seemed very exotic buying a disc without a longbox.

http://scoot.net/gallery/bbs/IMG_4482.JPG

Returning to the crazily-overpriced records point: at the Strand, everything is $25. This is already a price point where I almost certainly will not buy a record, but my favorite was that it even applied each of the two Use Your Illusions. Fifty dollars for the whole thing! Holy shit! You could get used copies of the original LPs for substantially less, and the whole thing on CD for what, a dollar fifty?

It's laughable. I mentioned on the Neil Young thread seeing a reissue of Decade for $80. I'd estimate that $80 got me every Neil Young album from the first through to Re·ac·tor (14 albums) first time around--Rust Never Sleeps or Hawks & Doves at a minimum.

hi, bye

https://pitchfork.com/news/devastating-manufacturing-plant-fire-threatens-worldwide-vinyl-record-supply/