Continuing with CDs?

It's kind of a nice memory now driving to whatever local store and picking up an album that came out that week. Now it's been reduced to just a few trackpad clicks and waiting for it to arrive, but even before COVID, I had to appreciate the convenience since I no longer have a car and would need to take the subway to wherever.

shhhh don't tell anyone how cheap CDs are, absolutely like LPs were in the 90s, grab em now

I did actually find a used CD player recently (Sony CDP-291) for $15 in a thrift store, but I'm still importing new discs into the laptop and playing the files thru my Dragonfly, I haven't even hooked it up yet. Nice to have the option though, especially for those pesky 3" discs

On the positive side of that, sleeve - wouldn’t it be cool to be able to sell most of your used CDs to a store and get real money for them again?

for a while I was selling 100-200 of my culled ones for like $4 each/5 for $20

I am actually trying to talk a local shop (that is vinyl & tape only) into taking them

If I order my discogs collection by median sale price, probably over half the top 20-30 most expensive items are CDs

(Not a new situation, this has been the case since i started a profile approx 10 years ago - mentioned it only cos it casts interesting light on the “cds are back” vibe - for a lot of premium/rare releases the market has been pretty steady)

that's interesting, what are some examples? other than box sets and Coil CDs most of my top 250 is vinyl

having a quick look it seems like library music comps (eg this kind of thing) & some doctor who/radiophonic workshop soundtracky stuff - the broadcast CD tour EP - jan hammer's DEFINITIVE Miami Vice collection (!) - some caretaker CD-Rs - the library music album that Eno put out - plus various Aust post-punk things eg laughing clowns "official bootleg" releases - the Dogs in Space soundtrack - releases from the Apartments/Roland S Howard/David Chesworth

(with the caveat that my collection is I guess not $$$ generally, maybe some of these median sales are a bit old? and that there's some pretty good records in my collection that I haven't added!)

In London you can certainly buy new CDs in Fopp, Rough Trade East, and I think still Sister Ray. Admittedly that's a poor ratio compared the miles of HMV megastore we used to have.

Nonetheless I don't think of new CDs as hard to obtain. I just only obtain things rarely, and then listen to them a lot.

yeah, i think there's very much a us/uk divide here. that said, i don't go to many places that sell second hand CDs, maybe that's where the bargains are

I was in and shop in Chichester recently that has a great range of secondhand CDs and they're basically all £3. I always end up buying about 15 when I'm in there, and always get a discount as well. (Coltrane's Africa/Brass, Bill Evans You Must Believe in Spring, Tupelo Honey, Rhythm of the Saints, Nation of Millions to name a few.)

I'm almost scared to post/mention itas I assume someone will find out and it'll shut.

Tom Carter of Charalambides in a thread concluding CDs are indeed the way forward, though he's not thrilled about it.

Everyone in my feed decries the vinyl bottleneck, laments the unsellability of CDs and the bad quality of cassettes. Everyone loves Bandcamp, yet somehow I don't see anyone talking about BC-only releases. (A self-serving tweet perhaps but a lot of my friends are in the same boat)

— tom carter: guitar (@OmtayArtercay) January 8, 2022

Finally got the CDs yesterday that I sent to the printer hoping for a July 2021 release. Shipping outstanding orders tomorrow and opening negotiations with a distributor.

Is part of the attraction to vinyl on the part of sellers that vinyl can be sold for more? Or is the markup related to cost? (I don’t know the economics of this.)

And: congratulations, unperson!

markup is def related to cost aiui xp

so few pressing facilities iirc. niche demand is high and wait times are silly.

does anybody have any knowledge of what it was like to press vinyl 20 years ago vs. today?

(not trying to make this a "and that's why my old school generation was better" thing, genuinely curious about how it compares)

it's much harder to get analog lacquers now (as opposed to DMM/direct metal mastering)

https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/vinyl-industry-apollo-masters-fire-951903/

20 years ago I doubt there was even a waitlist for a big pressing plant like Rainbo, now the Garth Brooks box sets and pointless movie soundtrack reissues are clogging everything up

The majors may not realize it but if Byron abandons vinyl the format is over https://t.co/V2MAJHttKA

— Damon K (@dada_drummer) January 9, 2022

that's what i was mainly wondering about: vinyl being the go-to for smaller operations 20 years ago was an issue of cost-efficiency? i mean i'm sure there was always some purists wanting their music to be on vinyl regardless of how it was done, but i always understood it as "this is the cheapest way for us to get our recordings out there." again, i have no idea i was just a consumer at the time. maybe that's my romanticized interpretation?

In the 90s short-run CDs were massively cheaper than vinyl formats, at least in Australia.

I'm guessing vinyl might've easier to do 20 years ago due to low demand and the majors taking up all the time and resources at CD pressing plants. 20 years ago, you have major albums shipping well over a MILLION copies the first week in the U.S. alone vs. a vinyl release that was likely shipping nowhere close to a thousand (and a thousand copies might be the entire run). Some of the audiophile labels at the time had similar press runs of vinyl that would take forever to clear out of storage.

Easier for a small label to get out, that is.

I feel compelled to note that I can buy new/sealed grey-area Euro LP represses of e.g. Magma and Sun Ra and Brazilian stuff etc for $12 at my local store, but I realize that may be an exception

I do think the vinyl format is largely dead/problematic but exceptions still exist (the An'Archives label)

i was mainly asking because i have been theorizing for a while that vinyl runs back then were probably as "limited" as they are now, it just wasn't part of any marketing scam because the format didn't have the same prestige.

something tells me pop punk and hc bands in the early-to-mid 90s were not as concerned about the supremacy of the format as the nerds on the Hoffman forums are today. I think it was just the cheapest and / or most practical option at the time, plus it didn't have the corporate stink of the CD. Not much to it more than that, I don't think. I mean, anyone who ever bought a punk or hc 7" in the nineties can attest that they pretty much all sounded like shit

True, maybe, but my 90s CD of Spiderland has a stern note that it’s intended to be listened to on vinyl, and Autechre had the notation “incomplete without surface noise” on an early release around the same time.

Vinyl was never the easiest or cheapest option. At least not in my lifetime.

The privilege afforded the format is 99% consumer demand. The “unsellability” of CDs noted above is very real: you can hardly give them away right now. This will change.

I can't remember the point at which new LPs became more expensive than their CD equivalents, but I'm guessing it wasn't something that happened gradually while both formats were widely available in chainstores, but something that happened in one blow, after a period in which LPs had almost vanished. Mid-'80s to late-'90s, IIRC, CDs were 25-40% more expensive than vinyl. Then vinyl mostly ceases to be on the shelves in mainstream shops (and perhaps rising to CD-level price-wise in independent shops?) and, when it reappears in that context (mid-late '00s?), it's 50-100% more expensive than CD.

That's very accurate, Mike.

War Mice: "This will change". Why?

I've read in a couple of places that MDC in Japan stepped up lacquer production significantly -

We can source enough lacquers from MDC to keep our cutting operation running. And we cut more then ever. They must have expanded their production bigtime.
I don't think lacquer is the bottleneck - there is just not enough pressing plants for the demand right now.

https://www.lathetrolls.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9268&p=59037&hilit=mdc#p59037

The price of polyvinyl chloride meanwhile has gone up something like 70% -

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-technology-business-health-hurricanes-46bce9cc36dab2b330309dae0354cf53

20 years ago IIRC the lead times for vinyl from GZ were something like three weeks including delivery to the UK.

Yeah, I definitely remember times in mid-90s when I was record shopping that I'd be looking at the vinyl prices and thinking, "man, I wish I had a record player to save some money", but didn't bother since I was still in a dorm and lack of space was a serious consideration.

from a consumer standpoint, that's why i got into vinyl in the late 90s: it was significantly cheaper.

also why i'm mostly in for cds these days (that is, if i'm even compelled to purchase something)

^^ yep

I still buy vinyl now and then, especially if it's the only physical option for something I really want, but otherwise I'm 95% CDs.

I've curtailed my physical media purchases because I don't have any space left to keep them in.

rang in the new year by ordering a short vinyl pressing, looking forward to finally seeing it sometime in 2023 after the bottom has completely fallen out

I wish CD sales would pick up enough where it makes sense to bring back BMG Music Club. I was a member during its final years, but early enough to take advantage of the 12 for 1 deals they had going (which usually became 15 for 1 if you held out for a few months on buying "the one" full-price CD as an obligation). After taxes and shipping, not to mention the inflated cost of the full-priced disc, it still came out to less than $4 per disc in '00s dollars. And you could even do multiple memberships for the same address - like I went into college and came out of it with a pretty impressive library from BMG memberships alone. Pretty sure those days are long gone, but at least I got to take advantage of it.

And you could even do multiple memberships for the same address

god did we take advantage of this at my house. even our pets had memberships.

even our pets had memberships

LMAO

I roped in relatives for their addresses and built up a pretty solid Classical Music 101 collection.

I can't remember the point at which new LPs became more expensive than their CD equivalents, but I'm guessing it wasn't something that happened gradually while both formats were widely available in chainstores, but something that happened in one blow, after a period in which LPs had almost vanished. Mid-'80s to late-'90s, IIRC, CDs were 25-40% more expensive than vinyl. Then vinyl mostly ceases to be on the shelves in mainstream shops (and perhaps rising to CD-level price-wise in independent shops?) and, when it reappears in that context (mid-late '00s?), it's 50-100% more expensive than CD.

― Michael Jones, Monday, January 10, 2022 5:07 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

CDs being more expensive than vinyl was always artificial, having to nothing to do with how expensive it was. CDs have always been much cheaper and easier to produce. Even as a local band doing $1000 CD with 1 fold color booklet, we were paying $4 per unit and could sell them for $10 at shows. So I can't even imagine what the big record companies were doing on cost per unit.

yep, this Negativland piece goes into great detail re: lower costs:

https://urbigenous.net/library/negativland_shiny.html

(xpost 1000 CDs not $1000 CDs haha)

upper m@rissa sh@kedown

loooooool just need to sell 5 copies

Pinefox - evidently I was unable to finish a damn thought the other night.

I see a gradual thawing of the habitual anti-CD stance from former hardcore vinyl enthusiasts/purists. As records get ever more expensive & the production timelines ever more extended, buying new vinyl records is firmly a rich person’s hobby. On the used side, there’s hardly a bargain bin left on the planet that has anything worthwhile in it anymore; all those $1 records of yore are now $20-30, while the CD bins are where the thrill of the hunt lies now.

Vinyl is becoming increasingly “normie-fied”. (Case study 1: This Christmas two family members requested and received record players — these were people who didn’t even have a stereo in the house before, the most boring normal people in the world.) (Case study 2: I can’t keep Billy Joel records in stock at $15 ea; I should be pricing them at a premium, it seems.) I predict this will soon cause the bloom to go off the rose for the terminally hip.

I just smell the tide beginning to turn for CDs. Sure, there’ll always be bins full of Now That’s What I Call Music, same as there’s still a mountain of Melissa Manchester records nobody wants, but I bet your $1 copy of even Achtung Baby is worth $20 in 10 years.

Sure, there’ll always be bins full of Now That’s What I Call Music

https://www.discogs.com/release/4639424-Various-Now-Thats-What-I-Call-Music-4

lol/wow

hd otm