Why Vinyl Can't Survive

No kidding! I saw the headline but that’s really misleading.

pricing is particular shitty or certain labels who I assume either don't have decent european distributors / any product made in europe.... case in point being the Purple Mountains lp is £31 in fopp.

vinyl is priced according to what people will pay

it's also much more expensive to produce

Vinyl is sorta abstracted from listening now though... media used to have an overriding commodity value because buying it was your gateway to listening to the music. Now you can listen to everything online, so when you're buying a record, it's a different transaction. You're not really buying the music.

2015 CD revenue was artificially inflated by Martin Shkreli $2mm Wu-Tang purchase

i am not asking rhetorical questions here; i would genuinely like to know:

why are vinyl reissues so expensive? a decade ago, i remember buying brand new single disc jazz reissues pressed on 180gram black vinyl at amoeba for $8.98 (seriously — i still have some with the shrink wrap on them and the pricetag intact). it's literally the reason i preferred to buy music on vinyl: it was so much cheaper! i understand inflation, so i know that the same records produced the same way now would inevitably be more expensive. but, looking at most reissues these days, the price range for similar items is $25-$35. why? has the cost to produce the same materials risen that drastically?

preliminary assessment: it's a cash grab by dickheads.

Someone just shared an amazing quote from Walter Becker with me: "if you prefer a medium that can't tell the difference between signal and noise, that's your problem."

it is a cash grab by dickheads.

DIY punk labels are still able to produce small runs of 500/1000 LPs and sell them for £9-12 a pop. if they can do that there is no reason why a mass produced reissue has to be £25, the production costs will be less if anything

I don't mind the price of vinyl so much. Albums when I started buying a lot of them, 1990 or so, were about £8 for vinyl, £11 for CD. £20 for a record now seems about right. £10 for a CD in 2019 feels ridiculous. This is why I'm not rich.

when you're buying a record, it's a different transaction. You're not really buying the music.

Agree with this. Buying vinyl now seems more about fetishizing the object, whereas the music is essentially free. Audiophiles aside, but I assume they're a minority.

a decade ago, i remember buying brand new single disc jazz reissues pressed on 180gram black vinyl at amoeba for $8.98

yeah, i fondly remember this era too. back then, i'd tell non-record-buying friends that a bonus for vinyl collectors is that they were usually cheaper than CDs. that is definitely not the case now

hell, decent originals of rare/oop albums are frequently around the same price as new reissues of the same

Little Axe and the rest of the Mississippi Records diaspora are still putting out new LPs in the $12-15 range.

Vinyl only felt cheap as long as my portable listening medium was cassettes... once mp3 became my portable listening format, I abandoned vinyl almost entirely for CD. The time it takes to rip vinyl and have it sound good makes it too expensive. Right now we're in a golden age of dirt cheap CDs, although the Internet means rare stuff will always be expensive regardless of format.

I buy CD's because:

- They're far cheaper than LPs.
- I still make my own rips to MP3 as I stream my own library. But this is becoming less and less necessary when buying from Bandcamp et al.
- They represent a backup in case Spotify removes an album I love, and more often they're necessary when an album isn't on any streaming service at all.
- I like having the liner notes when they exist, more and more CDs don't come with them.
- They take up less space and weight than LPs, though I'm not planning on moving anytime soon.
- I never, ever cottoned to pops & clicks, having to clean vinyl, flipping them over or shuffling through multi-LP sets and generally worrying about the fragility of LPs. But I do acknowledge the experience of listening to an LP on a great system different (and often superior) than listening to a digital copy. But I don't own a great system.

To each their own, I salute anyone buying physical music at this late date.

I rarely buy vinyl now, mainly because of price. But buy lots of cds for the same reasons Gerald mentions above. I own many more cds than I'd ever have thought when I was a vinyl-only teen/twenty something. Because I've become less used to vinyl I now find it slightly inconvenient when I *do* play a record - changing sides etc.

I also (so far...) refuse to stream. I listen to my own, ripped library.

yeah, sidepost: i recently opted for the new appleseed cast album on cd because of the much more reasonable price in comparison to the vinyl ($12 for the cd as opposed to $34 for the vinyl fucking lol). funny part: they were pushing the cd as "LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!" which is just weird.

the irony of CDs being the cheap landfill fodder and LPs being the overpriced items for "audiophiles" and collectors, what a difference a couple of decades makes

everybody otm, CDs rule and are cheap, also new vinyl has flaws maybe 30% of the time at least, it's gotten so bad that I need to read Discogs reviews of pressings before I buy anything (another reason to just go for that maybe-slightly-more-expensive OG in many cases)

the Scorpio represses of all those Sun Ra Saturn titles sound just fine and are $12 new in my local store, I was fully addicted to impulse buys there for a while

I'm a little embarrassed at how much more I like listening to jazz on LP than on CD.

og presses ruuuuuule

My mate buys original pressings of jazz LPs (or high-quality Japanese reissues from the 70s/80s) and I will concede listening to them on his $30k system is astounding. If I had a similar system, I might think twice about picking up vinyl, but I know how obsessive-compulsive I can be and it might be a rabbit hole and money pit.

you can build a great vinyl setup that will pin your ears back for $1000

Please offer specifics.

og presses ruuuuuule

in most cases, yes. for Saturn or ESP records... not so much

xpost $1100 but...

Cambridge Audio AXA 35 Integrated Amplifier (has built-in phono amp) $350
ELAC Debut 2.0 bookshelf speakers $300
Pro-Ject Debut Carbon turntable $400
Record brush, speaker wire and RCA cables $50

The BYG/Actuel series original pressings are pretty dicey, too. Problem is, some of the reissues (CD and vinyl) are mastered from needledrops of said dicey pressings.

xp

when mucking around with vinyl I generally try and acknowledge that it is enjoyable for reasons other than sound quality - ie it is fun to do all the voodoo with cleaning and handling and crate digging and appreciating the big artwork (+nostalgia as I bought records in the late 80s) - and when a record sounds good it often feels like a personal triumph because there are so many variables that can make it sound fkn terrible -BUT a well-mastered CD on a capable player will simply sound better in 90% of cases

prime era jazz records definitely sound great but they can often sound great on CD too - so do i just like the idea, or the adherence to the original intent of the recording session?

sometimes i am truly knocked out by a record though - eg when i first put on the 12" of Memories by PiL it was uncanny how powerful and weird it felt floating out of the speakers, maybe it is simply better mastering than any CD copy i've heard but there was something special going on - the new CD & Kreme 12" on Trilogy Tapes has a similar quality

I'm a bit fed up with vinyl at the moment, partly due to shitty modern pressings but also because there's something wrong with my record player (I think the cables have gone between the cartridge and the tone arm) and I don't know how to fix it, don't really want to know how to fix it, and can't really afford to get someone else to fix it, so I haven't really been playing records at all. also I already have tons of records and could probably do with getting rid of some. too much stuff

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

how many new pressings are advertised as "HIGH QUALITY!!" and then are pressed on 100% inferior colored garbage?

it almost feels like all of the historical conspiracy theorists that were so outspoken about cds and how shite they sounded in comparison to vinyl were just propaganda all along so now everyone is okay paying $40 for literally worse quality.

makes me feel like my life as a music fan could be likened to be on the receiving end of the aggressor in an abusive relationship.

I'm always curious about the "colored vinyl is inferior" argument because...black vinyl is "colored" vinyl. Vinyl starts out clear, and they put black stuff in it. So why is the black stuff OK, but the red/green/swirly stuff not OK?

I could see how *picture discs* might not sound as good as regular vinyl, because there it's two half-slabs pressed on either side of a piece of visual art, rather than a single slab squeezed between two plates. But any other color of vinyl manufactured using the usual process should be fine, seems to me.

I have a picture disc that was pressed about 10 years ago. Sounds great.

I think maybe most people are just misinformed, re: clear vinyl

I’m not really into the look of colored vinyl

CDs are ugly travesties and i just don't want to see them is my reason for preferring vinyl.

i don't really fuck with new releases tho

DIY punk labels are still able to produce small runs of 500/1000 LPs and sell them for £9-12 a pop

Do these sell for this price in shops or from buying directly from the label? I am mystified how any label could have an album sell for £9 unless they were selling it to the shops directly.

Tbh yeah £9 is from mail order, not necessarily direct from label, but not rare to see the same going for 12-13 in shops

Just bought one for £12 from a record shop last weekend

New release as well. I don't mind the higher prices so much for new releases, it's the reissue stuff going for £20-30 that gets me

£12 should just be possible.

Euro pressing costs are around £4 for an album without any extras, ie no inside sleeve etc, maybe slightly less if doing 1000. To sell for £12 they would have to have a dealer price of around £5 so label would be making a very small profit . £9 retail price just seems impossible.

the converse of this is that some labels, especially reissue labels are definitely price gouging. Their only excuse would be if they had to pay very expensive advances to secure the release.

unperson here's a detailed breakdown on the badness of colored vinyl

https://www.gottagrooverecords.com/vinyl-colors/

I don't like vinyl or CDs. I just want the big artwork/liner notes with a download code. Am I a weirdo?

Given the buffet of bundle options that accompany a lot of releases now, I'm surprised we don't see "poster + download"

I love records. Old records. New records.

I don't necessarily think they sound better, although in some cases they do. I like the experience of them and it suits my collector tendencies. I think of them like hardcover books. The same content can be had in other, more convenient ways, but it sure feels nice.

Spotify is too much, I like limitations to a certain extent.

The medium is sometimes the message, or a big part of it. There are certain recordings where the first format I heard them on is integral to my enjoyment. Others feel especially suited to a format. Like, Master of Puppets and Badmotorfinger are two I prefer on CD, not just cause that's how I first heard them, but I want the chiseled, precise guitar sound, and no break halfway through. The weird mastering of the original Rid of Me CD, where I'd always turn it up as it started unnaturally soft compared to whatever I'd put on before, only to get blown away at the first loud bit- integral to how I think of that record.

For stuff from the same era, I don't feel disposed to hearing the Pixies or LL Cool Jay in a particular format, yet Husker Du and Public Enemy have a reduced impact when digitized. My Mingus phase was smack in the middle of the CD era, and I bet I'd get a whole new perspective on him if I heard those albums on vinyl. I do have a bunch of six eye Columbia LPs of 50s Ellington, and that may be why I hold that period in higher esteem than most.

Spotify has been life-changing for me, especially allowing for dives into international genres - where I can paddle around in a form until I latch onto a particular artist who takes me for a deep dive. Gets over the problem with Rough Guide-style comps, where I'd only connect with a small fraction of the artists.

overpriced vinyl happened because of audiophile pressings.

i've never once heard an unplayed record that sounded bad enough to make me wish i had access to a more expensive copy.

there were some really bad soul/funk reissues making the rounds like 10 years ago. Marvin Gaye’s i want you and Donald byrd’s ethiopian knights I remember sounding like high generation boombox cassette dubs.

As for me, the main reason is that it can't live for a long time. Surely, the clarity is great, but the device itself... Very sad.

Spotify is too much, I like limitations to a certain extent.

this is a thing for me as well. The main reason why I still engage with physical mediums for music is that i need the objects as tactile/visual aides to help me think about the music, remember things, and organize my thoughts & listening. A stack of records to flip through, a pile of CDs on my passenger seat, heres that record I listened to last week still sitting by the turntable, heres that CD my friend Ray told me about, which one of these 7" EPs havent i listened to yet, etc. The endless choice of digital streaming overwhelms my brain. I use Spotify/Youtube for exploring and discovering, but when I hear stuff I like and will want to hear again I almost always get a physical copy so that, frankly, I can have a reminder to help me remember that it exists.

yes