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

i have embraced the paid download wholeheartedly. i still buy quite a bit of secondhand vinyl but the days of me purchasing physical copies of most music is looking numbered more and more each day

i find vinyl incredibly frustrating as a format really

why is vinyl frustrating. i still find opening the plastic on a new cd much more frustrating.

i DO like my CDs! here are some:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2137/2048008701_b104f05109_b.jpg

here are some more:

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blurry. i must be shaky.

so how is that Yella solo album

i've sold or traded literally THOUSANDS of CD's, so if i still own something after ten years or more than it must be one of the greatest albums EVER. some i would never part with. i have a core couple of hundred that i would never sell. most NEW stuff i buy that isn't a reissue is gone in 6 months.

i need more shelves. i've never been able to look at everything at a glance. they always get stuck in boxes.

still love my tapes too:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2405/2039292318_75988888ba_b.jpg

frustrating because it's such a crapshoot - the amount of records i buy that have problems with distortion, dodgy pressings, mastered slow/fast.. i'm not one of those chumps that finds these things endearing.

tho a well pressed record is an absolute joy, no fooling

just buy test pressings. and white label promos.

Son of Bazerk!

I had to get rid of most of my tapes recently. sound quality seriously deteriorates with those.

my 45s get along okay with my CDs. though they are kinda segregated.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2135/2048008527_881718c54a_b.jpg

i've never listened to that KISS boxed set. is it worth anything? if it is it needs a new home.

i still buy tons of cds, a lot more than vinyl. (btw have we talked about this elsewhere? maybe the "do you still buy vinyl thread"? though this is a more specific question.)

i totally see the logic of the vinyl + illegal download approach, makes a lot of sense. i just don't really download because i'm mainly on the computer at work. i imagine i might someday do that, however.

for right now, though, while vinyl is definitely making a comeback (DC now has a decent amount of mostly-or-exclusively-vinyl shops), cds are still what is more widely available in terms of selection. plus the convenience -- since i don't really download even though i use an ipod, cds make the most practical sense for me. i do really like vinyl, though.

i certainly hope that cds don't go away soon, though. i don't imagine they'll go at the rate some people would have you believe, though. do cd sales still account for the majority of music purchases? i bet they do, though i could be wrong. once mp3s really start outselling cds, then i'll expect them to become extinct at a faster rate.

i actually like cd packaging, too. sure it's not as nice as vinyl, but there are some cd packages that are great. i love digipacks especially.

what i've really been enjoying tonight is Rufus's Uku-Bot.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2176/2048797298_198d32fa9c_b.jpg

is that the Pere Ubu 7" box set, Scott?

i don't wish death on cds at all. i was more just surprised that you could even make the argument now and it makes sense, where like 10 years ago people would have been like u crazy...but i do love vinyl the best, but yeah i'd rather listen to cds on my good sounding stereo than mp3s thru a computer any day.

Now for pics of Scott's vinyl!!

yes it is, dan! there is a woman on the island here who said she had something to do with putting that out. she lives with some guy who was in cornershop? and who works with the xecutioners? my memory is bad. she used to manage bands in seattle or something and worked for a label. it takes all kinds.

i posted pics of my new record shelves on the ikea thread on ile. four years of having my stuff in semi-storage/boxes/closets and i finally get to let it all out to breathe.

and i always have my hi roller ready and filled with records in case i get a last minute call to play a house party in zurich. my partner dj poopsalot is ready at a moment's notice as well.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2176/2048797298_198d32fa9c_b.jpg

whoops wrong picture

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2319/2048081187_bde1c0ccfd_b.jpg

now playing: gary farr

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i have a question about these shelves, scott~

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how many records do they each hold?

my old ikea ones--which are not made anymore--are busted and held up by two useless old speakers.

i think the big ones hold about 2500 records? something like that. each box holds like a hundred records.

nice!

Another in the "still mostly buys CDs" camp. I started buying music in the late eighties, mainly on cassette, and considered CDs the format you graduated to and vinyl what you bought if you were looking for something used and cheap.

Because they were expensive and shiny with rainbow colors I thought CDs were awesome as a kid. My three-year-old nieces do as well; I don't know if they've ever seen a vinyl record though. Of course, I was fascinated by watching spinning vinyl when I was their age. Later, when I started buying my own CDs, it would be really novel when the label had artwork instead of just text. I liked putting the CD in the boombox and watching it spin through the window — The Cure's Mixed Up, being a bunch of paints bleeding into each other, looked especially great this way. Then like they did with cassette cases, record labels started using clear trays so you could see behind, which provided another artwork opportunity.

Since CDs are more or less omnipresent now and don't win for convenience compared to MP3s, I can see them falling by the wayside, though I hope they don't any time soon. At the end of the day I still think of CDs as being more archival, although CDs are made of different parts stuck together, which records basically aren't. But I've had very few CDs ever fail over the years, and though vinyl wins in the charm category it is pretty fragile.

I do wonder if in the future CDs will be quaint like floppy discs (remembered as a data storage device) or like, say, cassettes. Japan makes all the mini-LP CDs designed to reproduce the original vinyl package; it's hard to imagine CD jewel cases being aped in any other format unless someone wanted to do something wacky with vinyl. That would be quite a switcheroo — sort of like if someone had the idea to do the Blue Monday 12" package now instead of in 1983.

That said, I'd be a little surprised if vinyl outlives CD by that much — eventually people who bought music as a physical object are going to pass on, and all these objects will seem like player pianos or something. This makes me kind of sad for my collection, which'll end up in some landfill, recycled, or at best in someone's basement or attic.

our other big ikea shelf has books on it. we have two of the smaller ones. the other smaller one has a mix of books and records like the one above. we still need more bookshelves. all the books are two deep. and i've still got records in closets. i had old home depot type shelves that i put in my office closet. not perfect, but it'll do for now.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2156/2048909332_d1bc1f164a.jpg?v=0

Vinyl nostalgia will last forever, but there will also before or since be a wave of CD nostalgia that will last forever. So, no.

scott how often do those in the depths of some of these bookshelves get played?

can i come over and hang out, scott?

you'd be surprised! i play a lot of music. not as much as i used to cuzza time constraints, but still, a lot.

that's great!

you can all come over! once i get a day off. and my kids are in school. and i am not dog tired all the time. then we will party.

"That said, I'd be a little surprised if vinyl outlives CD by that much — eventually people who bought music as a physical object are going to pass on, and all these objects will seem like player pianos or something."

never underestimate the appeal of a "physical object". i'll give you three examples from the closet:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2364/2048947638_c578ebbee5.jpg?v=0

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2034/2048947584_4140446999.jpg?v=0

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2191/2048159015_309c444655.jpg?v=0

also: i think the niche market for vinyl will only increase, while the cd-buying public still keeps growing smaller. my music purchasing nowadays mainly consists of my emusic subscription and perusing vinyl bins, and sometimes buying vinyl at shows. i haven't bought a cd since i think march. however, i do get a lot of free cds from work, and my ipod is currently busted so i've been listening to cds in the car/while running, so there is that. overall though, i'm either in the living room curled up with a record, or i'm listening on the compy. and so it goes.

driving -- this is one area where i will continue to use cds for a long time. the ipod-radio-frequency thing doesn't work too well and doesn't sound very good. considering i just got my car last year, i will continue to use cds in the car for as long as i have this car. hopefully that'll be a while. toyotas last a long time.

our tape decks are busted in both cars for the time being, so i just listen to the radio. although i wouldn't mind having a cd player in the car.

CDs deteriorate and will become unplayable. some made in the 80's are already doing this. as they become useless, digital files will replace them. vinyl will still be just fine 100 years from now, and there will be some insane motherfuckers still collecting it and hopefully deejaying with it then. vinyl will win yet again.

the only cds i've seen deteriorate have been from the PDO plant, the ones made with bad lacquer. and i had an edwyn collins 2cd that inexplicably delaminated in a weird spiderweb pattern. but the rest seem fine.

fuck PDO.. wouldn't be so bad if not for all those vinyl japan discs that are fucked up and won't be reissued

Everyone's a vinyl fetishist and creates a huge vinyl collection that they worship.

Then they try and move it and suddenly hard drives seem really sweet.

(Scott is the great exception. Scott is beyond good and evil.)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/01/14/DD86984.DTL&type=tech_article

some say that this was corrected, some don't. i know CDRs have a really bad problem, i have ones that are less than 10 years old and they are dead. they were not cheapos either!

never underestimate the appeal of a "physical object". i'll give you three examples from the closet:

About classical on vinyl: as far as I know no one ever represses old recordings. I do know a librarian who doesn't bother with CDs and just collects pristine classical records, but he also runs a rare book collection. I wonder how many people find the classical experience better or more "authentic" on vinyl: to a large extent the music predated physical media (Scott's opera sets all exceptions, as it happens), so the authenticity doesn't seem to matter that much unless you're attracted to particular interpretations, conductors and players (as people are, of course).

CDs deteriorate and will become unplayable. some made in the 80's are already doing this. as they become useless, digital files will replace them.
Collectors might still care about things like the fancy jewel case for Pet Shop Boys' Very, though. Those CDs that have deteriorated were poorly manufactured — as far as I know there's no CD rot among my 1500 or so discs. But I don't think anyone knows how long CDs in general really will last. In principle I understand why vinyl should last longer as an object, but in terms of listening I doubt it can achieve the transparency of digital audio (for those who value it). For that, sure, you have digital files that will last forever provided they keep being moved around, since no storage device really has permanence. It's not impossible to imagine certain things being "forgotten" in the process, though.

Apologies for verbosity ("It's so bodacious to be loquacious").

Multiple x-posts (I just wanted to try typing "x-post" and see what it felt like)

No one's suggesting that CDs will be supplanted by a higher quality storage medium? This is probably as big a shock from what would've been said 10 years ago as saying LPs would return. You'll have to pry my iPod from my cold dead fingers, but I still prefer CDs for sound quality. (And I've never been without a turntable connected to my system since I started buying music 30+ years ago, but I really don't buy vinyl any more unless it's something I'm only casually interested in and cheap.)

"No one's suggesting that CDs will be supplanted by a higher quality storage medium?

-- nickn"

i think people have learned their lesson in digital hard copies. there will always be something "better" in terms of specs, so keeping digital stuff all soft is much more efficient, especially as storage gets cheaper and cheaper. the ipod like device will remain pretty good for a while, but will get larger and larger storage capacity, lower power consumption, and different decoding algorithims. at some point im sure DVD quality audio will be able to be played from a personal player like that. but the songs will all be purchased soft.

LPs never left for them to have to return! if you want good sound quality, digital is ALWAYS an approximation of the analogue waveform. vinyl IS the analogue waveform.

vinyl IS the analogue waveform.

it really isn't.

"vinyl IS the analogue waveform.

it really isn't.

-- electricsound"

youre right, it is a digital approximation of the analogue waveform. or not.

that is mathematically impossible.

they said that about hotel rooms in a taco, but by golly they made them!

in my imagination at least

<3

Young vinyl collectors said digital technology had made it easy for anyone — even parents — to acquire vast, esoteric music collections.

You'd be forgiven for thinking so (OK?).. However..

d/l sites live on the "If you like Kaiser Chiefs, we recommend" or "based on your last 10 d/l tracks/albums, how about..." which negates the esoteric.

As opposed to flicking through a bunch of old LPs and risking £2 or less on something that looks strange/different.

Geir, you're overestimating the importance of sound quality to the majority of the music buying public. People who are in high school and middle school now have grown up with mp3s, and the lower sound quality they provide. For most of them 128 kbps probably sounds about right, which is more than a little bit scary. A ringtone is an acceptable way of listening to music. In the larger scheme of things here, sound quality means less and less. This whole vinyl resurgence is getting blown a little out of proportion, if you ask me.

The Box Set (CDs) is the Archival format

The LP is the Hardback bound format

Deluxe CD is the hardback 'special' format

Normal CD is the 'paperback' format.

Downloading is the

sorry, got bored.

xpost

Re the 8-track movie. I had never even heard of it and it's never been shown on cable in the last few years, far as I can tell. 8-track was definitely inferior in sound to vinyl. And it was very susceptible to stretching which introduced a lot of wow and flutter.

I had an eight track in the car and my brother had a DELUXE console in his room. The idea with deluxe was to buy 8-track blanks and record to them. We tried this was a live broadcast of Robin Trower on FM radio around '73-'74. Believe it or not, the console came with two microphones and you were supposed to line them up with your broadcast source. If it was from the radio, your two stereo speakers.

The idea was good but the results weren't. The fidelity was poor and if anyone talked in the room during the broadcast, the compression built into the circuit made for an interesting interjection of voice over. It might have been better for live recording but we never tried it.

I'm sure 8-track sound is/was superior to MP3. The tapes, when they worked right consistantly, were very enjoyable.

One of the problems associated with its age, and Rick relates this all the time, is the sudden snapping of it in the car deck. No the problem is opposite, there elasticity is all gone. His solution is to keep scrounging for replacements. Apparently there's a bottomless pit of them left over if you know where to look.

It's definitely never going to rise beyond this level. The format's age-related problems make it way too brittle.

Downloading is the... E-book format!

Whatever, dudes. Everything dies in the end. Time destroys everything, maaaaan.

I'm sure 8-track sound is/was superior to MP3.

Really? I find that hard to believe (as someone who was first introduced to Rumours on 8-track).

My friend swears by it. I'm not at all fond of Mp3-encoded music, though. Most of the stuff I downloaded and burned to disc -- and it was a lot at one point, I never play anymore. Actually, it's just waiting to be thrown out.

But -- really -- taste and my experience also figure into it. It was simply a pain-in-the-ass to make old DD&THK recordings Internet ready. And at one point I just said, the hell with it. MP3 just messed up so many things in the stereo image and high and low ends, making things harsh where it wasn't supposed to be...

In any case, there's an 8-track site which explains everything you'd ever want to know about the format, called 8 Track Heaven, which suffered from problems associated with tech decisions made or not made during development and continued support. But 8-track simply WAS THE WAY to listen to recorded pop music in the car in the Seventies. At that point, cassettes just weren't up to snuff.

One thing you don't have with MP3 which everyone had with 8-track was crosstalk. No matter your diligence, your player would eventually succumb to misalignment and you'd either live with it or have to take it in for realignment, a hassle.

There’s more to be said for the poor distribution and un-ease of access to records/cd's back in the day than anything regarding the vinyl format in & of itself making it more “meaningful”. My music budget at that age was allowances, cruddy jobs, and x-mas/b-day money. Hopefully I’d find an occasional bootleg at a record fair a couple times a year & be ecstatic about that. National Record Mart (R.I.H.) was the only place you could buy new music growing up and they were clueless about anything outside the top 20. So whatever you DID manage to get your hands on, you had to play more by default.

Now, all you need is access to the net and now you can download overnight what it would take me 10 years to get without leaving your jammies and wake up to them the next day! I honestly don’t know if I would love music as much if I grew up now as opposed to then. Maybe the waiting is the best part?!?

the thing that people (like me!) should do well to remember is that there's research suggesting that no matter what your listening habits are when you're young, the stuff you listen to in your youth is always gonna be the stuff that hits you hardest - for neurological/brain chemistry reasons, not nature-of-the-market-during-that-time reasons

all that said, I still do think that it's hardly reactionary to say "the journey itself is as important as the destination," and to note that the age of instant-gratification shortens all journeys & strongly privileges the destination

i don't think easier access to music has made me love it any less

No,i don't think i love it any less, more like Eddie Murphy in Raw being offered a cracker in the after starving for weeks.. "MMMMM is that a Ritz, that's not regular cracker, oh yes thats a Ritz, good good good..." When there's less of it around, you tend to replay what little you have more is all.

i meant-cracker after starving, i need to proofread more damnit!

"The Box Set (CDs) is the Archival format

The LP is the Hardback bound format

Deluxe CD is the hardback 'special' format

Normal CD is the 'paperback' format.

Downloading is the" free newspaper?

right now in l.a. there must be dungeons full of acoustic mathmaticians and industrial scientest types chained to their desks being whipped raw by frenzied record execs screaming "twice as expensive and 100 times better sounding than cds, and totally unclonable! hurrry up goddamnit!!!!" while foaming at the mouth

there's research suggesting that no matter what your listening habits are when you're young, the stuff you listen to in your youth is always gonna be the stuff that hits you hardest

I'd like to see this research. Cuz Ghislain Poirier is hitting me pretty damn hard right now and I haven't been "youth" for quite some time now.

And while JD's "Value in hard work, builds character, etc." probably has some sort of truth to it, I'm not 100% certain of the character that may have been built up in me from years of paging through dusty vinyl and dealing with record store swellheads and going to record conventions and trying not to look excited by that rare ass Little Nell single and having some jerk say "you can be my fingers" and then look at every record I was looking at over my shoulder ("yeah, yeah, that's the band Rick James was in...keep going") instead of waiting for me to get done with that row of records* just like I did VERY patiently when I saw a dude skip slooooooowly past a copy of Godz 2 (which sucked anyway, Lester Bangs!) and reminding the "music sucks today" hippie for literally years to bring Hoboken Saturday Night to his store so I could fuckin buy it (even though I'm sure it would've been as hideously water-damaged as the West End 12"s he was selling for $5 a pop**), etc.

If blogspot could do away with that noise, then I'll forgo hard work (besides there is SOME work involved in finding music on the internet).

* So hell yeah, I went waaay slower forcing dude to flee.

** Never got it from him either, the fucker.

I've still never heard The Disposals (assuming there's something to hear) and Disturbed Furniture.

"yes I am an asshole and yes it sucks that any douchebag can hear Great White Wonder without having to do any groundwork"

GWW is the example here, is it not? A lot of think pieces on Napster mentioned either that or "I'm Not There" to demonstrate how P2Ps democratized record searching. And I bet if we could access search data from Napster's early days, we'd find that "I'm Not There" was indeed one of the first things people searched for (and thus it's no surprise we now have Todd Haynes' film/sdtk).

But GWW speaks to a social history of access and distribution and buzz behind vinyl vs. CD vs. mp3, e.g. who heard "I'm Not There" before Napster and how?

Geir, you're overestimating the importance of sound quality to the majority of the music buying public. People who are in high school and middle school now have grown up with mp3s, and the lower sound quality they provide. For most of them 128 kbps probably sounds about right, which is more than a little bit scary. A ringtone is an acceptable way of listening to music. In the larger scheme of things here, sound quality means less and less. This whole vinyl resurgence is getting blown a little out of proportion, if you ask me.

To be a bit Hegelian: An action will always cause a reaction, and the other way round. Things aren't going to stay like that. Mobile phone sound quality will get better, and the kids will be more interested in sound quality. Surely, we were when growing up in the 80s, why should today's kids be unable when we weren't?

Regarding people caring about sound quality: look at how many people are using apple ear buds or something similar, and then listening to them in loud subways (or another big elephant in the room that annoys me: while people are essentially driving steamrollers over piles of final scratch in the street, I've gone to clubs where half the detail of the music is lost to people talking. Sure if it's Mp3's it's unacceptable, but when you have to put your head up to the speaker, at already tinnitus inducing levels (thank God for earplugs)not to mention bass cranked to the point where you can't even hear kickdrums, just abstract blurs of low-frequency gargle. ugh!). People don't really care, not to mention that on cheap headphones/speakers, there honestly isn't much difference between 192kbs and wav, and certainly not on the subway.

*Sure if it's Mp3's it's unacceptable, but when you have to put your head up to the speaker, at already tinnitus inducing levels (thank God for earplugs, and don't get me started on bass cranked to the point where you can't even hear kickdrums, just abstract blurs of low-frequency gargle. ugh!) it's alright). People don't really care, not to mention that on cheap headphones/speakers, there honestly isn't much difference between 192kbs and wav, and certainly not on the subway.

P.S. I buy and am a fan of vinyl.

I just wish i would see someone write a piece praising the cd like they do vinyl. I came in on the cusp of the mass market push to CD, so, that's where i'm comfortably familiar. Hard to beat a properly sourced and mastered cd imho. Long live tha' silver!!!

There's probably a better thread than this to post this link on, but anyway:
http://www.thevinylfactory.com/vinyl-factory-news/catalogue-album-sales-overtake-new-releases-2015/

Back catalogue sales in US eclipsed new release sales last year. Presumably attributable, at least in part, to the vinyl revival.

Didn't back-cat CDs manage this feat also?

Maybe its just the legacy of THE format of 20C music up till the last decade, followed by a bad taste in the mouth when CDs were massively overpriced. And yes, the bass always sounds better on vinyl.