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

"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.