Buying Vinyl?

It seems the best option to buy online are german and british stores, they have almost every album in stock... I'm very impressed by the catalog of sites such as piccadily, boomkat, phonika and a-musik for example, problem is shipping is very expensive overseas.

Where do ya'll buy your vinyl records? Any recommendations for purchase within the states?

HAY USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION MOKA

Rolling 2008 Vinyl Thread

Peeps in there are talking about the vinyls they're buying not their choice for a record store specifically. Cant deserve another thread perhops?

there are many other vinyl threds champion.

There's no online vinyl store thread.

what genre

i buy indie vinyl in the US from tonevendor

I've actually just ordered from tonevendor and it's great... do you use any other when tonevendor is out of stock?

I can't tell any genre in particular. I buy Techno as I do Hip-hop or Indie, sometimes funk or tropicalia (for which I use dustygroove) other times just rock classics. I don't have a particular taste to be honest.

http://www.forcedexposure.com/
http://www.calsound.com/shop/vinyl-records-c-462.html

I've only bought music online once in my life, everywhere else is in stores and whenever a craigslist-user is deciding to sell off stuff, which I'd recommend. Sure the selection online is waaaay superior, but hey it's still only half as fun.

try http://www.musicfearsatan.com (used to be e-vinyl.com but now stock cds and dvds, good prices and quick postage from France)
also I use
http://www.roboticempire.com/store/
http://www.allthatisheavy.com/
http://shop.relapse.com/store/product.aspx
http://www.theomegaorder.com/
http://kreationrecords.net/
http://www.normanrecords.com/
http://www.conspiracyrecords.com/store/index.php
http://www.southernlord.com/store.php
http://www.troublemanunlimited.com/store/
http://www.temporaryresidence.com/
http://www.bluecollardistro.com/bcd/categories.php?cPath=1_481
http://www.shiftyrecords.com/mailorder/
http://www.kozmik-artifactz.com/shop/index.php?language=en
https://www.southern.net/eu-shop/

Hope that is of use to you.

there's insound too

and Amazon is selling vinyl now too. Kind of strange, maybe.

i work for a vinyl record shop that does a small bit of mail order and our catalog is here:
academymailorder.blogspot.com

also fusetronsound.com
eclipse-records.com

and of course EBAY.

Hey Ian...

Which NY store is my best bet for picking up recent reissues? I'm after stuff like Milk n Cookies and Debris' Static Disposal

I'm there on holiday with my girlfriend for the weekend and want to pick up as much as I can before the pound finally crashes out and ends a long spell of cheap-o US mail order. Probably won't make it to more than one or two stores though. I'm hoping to get a quick look at The Thing, at least...

Nevermind! I should have checked that Academy blog listing first. There's loads of stuff there I was after.

Narlus - Do not miss Other Music at 15 East 4th St off Broadway.

http://www.auralexploits.com/

http://www.dustygrooves.com/

I'm after stuff like Milk n Cookies and Debris' Static Disposal

yeah Academy is your spot for that. there's a few locations, you want the one in Williamburg on N. 6th

one of Ian's co-workers put out that Milk n Cookies record I think

How bout The Thing? Is it regularly topped up with new shit? I'm guessing there's a ton of crap, but enough good stuff scattered about to keep it interesting.

I actually haven't been there. I think Jaxon went when he was in town

I think the general consensus is that if you have a lot of time to spend you can find good stuff but if you've only got an hour don't bother

http://www.weirdorecords.com/

and the always entertaining

http://www.anti-naturals.org/swill/maincat.htm (click on 'Reviews' for the lists)

for reggae/dub cannot fuckin beat ERNIE B'S!!

Gnarly! Dude! Come say hello.
I'll put aside copies of the Debris and Milk n Cookies LPs for you.
We are located at 96 North 6th Street in WILLIAMDBURG, BROOKLYN. Off the Bedford Avenue L train stop.

except it looks like we're out of the Debris record at the moment.

Insound and Amazon are terrible choices for vinyl. They have absolutely nothing in stock. I'll give it to Amazon, though, that the vinyl section is somewhat new which could explain the poor catalogue but in the meantime. The other choices Pfunkboy are excellent for rock and metal. Thanks.

http://www.forcedexposure.com/

Has anybody ordered from here? The site appears to have a very comprehensive catalogue in stock but somehow the site just seems very sketchy to me. Do they really have everything they say they do?

http://www.auralexploits.com/
http://www.dustygrooves.com/

I like dustygroove, been ordering from there for a while now. Auralexploits is a good choice, some great reissues and special editions to be found there once in a while but they run out of stock rather quickly.

i work for a vinyl record shop that does a small bit of mail order and our catalog is here:
academymailorder.blogspot.com

Wow, Ian I've been looking for Can's future days and they have it in there as well as some that have caught my attention. Do you ship to Canada and Mexico?

I'll add turntablelab to the list. Good for downtempo, new disco, hip hop:

http://www.turntablelab.com/vinyl/

dustygroove is okay for some stuff but I've really soured on them over the years - their selection can be really spotty, particularly when it comes to stuff I used to rely on them for (like jazz and Brazilian music). They always seem to have some crappy post-peak stuff in stock, but never the canonical works (for ex. check their Coltrane catalog)

and the always entertaining

http://www.anti-naturals.org/swill/maincat.htm (click on 'Reviews' for the lists)

I swear I don't recognize any records listed on both sites you suggested but those surely are some entertaining reviews in there.

Forced Exposure isn't sketchy, they've been around since the '80s

Forced Exposure might not have everything they say they do, but they're very reliable and a quick email to check the stock is simple enough.

FE actually does distribution, don't they?
I've had a few items from orders not be in stock, but they're good about communication and letting you know if things are back.

Wicked. Thank you and sorry, it's just I found it suspicious that none of their items are marked as out of stock, I suppose they erase them from the catalogue when they dont have it. I'm mailing to doublecheck and ordering a couple from there.

Does anyone know a good place to find 'the Zombies' reissues? Are there any reissues at all? I haven't had any luck with these. My father is a crazy Zombies fan and I want to buy him anything I can find.

There are no currently available Zombies reissues on LP.

and Amazon is selling vinyl now too. Kind of strange, maybe.

― Cars That Go Boom (mehlt), Wednesday, September 17, 2008 10:36 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I highly doubt this url will work, but hell, even best buy is selling vinyl now

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcat17080&type=page&qp=ccat02001%23%23-1%23%23-1~~q70726f63657373696e6774696d653a3e313930302d30312d3031~~nf207%7C%7C56494e594c&list=y&nrp=15&sc=musicSP&ks=960&usc=cat02001&sp=&list=y&iht=n&st=processingtime%3A%3E1900-01-01

newbury comics' in-store vinyl section has gotten pretty big lately. not sure how their on-line service is, though.

http://www.newburycomics.com/rel/v2_home.php?storenr=103&deptnr=596

A Zombies "Odyssey and The Oracle" re-issue from a couple of years back is still floating around, I believe. The 2LP "Time of the Zombies" compilation is the easiest to find used Zombies record (check ebay)and it contains most everything a Zombies fan would want.

when I was looking at new vinyl in newbury comics the other day I realized I went from buying records for $6-$8 to CDs for $10-$15 and now back to records for $18-$20.

There are no currently available Zombies reissues on LP.

I was expecting this, they should definitely do some sort of special reissue this year. After all 2008 marks the 50th Anniversary of Odessey and Oracle, am I wrong?

A Zombies "Odyssey and The Oracle" re-issue from a couple of years back is still floating around, I believe. The 2LP "Time of the Zombies" compilation is the easiest to find used Zombies record (check ebay)and it contains most everything a Zombies fan would want.

I'm still to find any trustworthy place to sell the odessey reissue. The 'time of the zombies' is in fact available on ebay and at a reasonable price, but damn that is an ugly cover. Did the people selling this actually listened to the zombies before doing the artwork?

I was expecting this, they should definitely do some sort of special reissue this year. After all 2008 marks the 50th Anniversary of Odessey and Oracle, am I wrong?

It's actually the 40th anniversary, my bad.

http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/

great selection + service

I've bought a few LPs from Bullmoose and found them very fast, with cheap shipping to boot. Also when they sent an LP that turned out to be defective I emailed them about it and they just sent out another copy; I didn't have to return the bad copy.

I would just recommend Ebay ... there are a ton of small indie stores that are on there. Some folks charge a bit extra to cover ebay and paypal fees, but you can sometimes contact these places directly and get cheaper off-ebay prices. And these mom-and-pop shops probably need your money more that Insound, Turntablelab, Forced Exposure etc. Or maybe you could just see if your local shop does special orders.

Also, Discogs is great for dance music (especially out-of-print stuff).

I can't stand Gemm with their crappy layout and search function, and Musicstack is only slightly better.

But I do use a lot of the other store/distro sites mentioned above for research purposes. It's great that so many of the big online stores write up reviews and post audioclips.

I wasnt aware Discogs sold vinyls :S

discogs is the means with which independent sellers reach buyers.

gemm is awful for usability but amidst the overpriced crap you can find some deals there sometimes

;_;

like, i know the "local labels" page currently sends you to the directions, but do you all really have trouble accessing the store? cuz if it's just me that it is working for then i will be needingk to fixing it.

also dan if you ever want to come show me how to use sound sample plug-in i will trade you records or food for your time.

hey ian the Mark Fry - Dreaming with Alice record is labeled Dreaming with Acid

lololol thanks, i'll fix gthat.

;_;

― ian, Wednesday, March 11, 2009 8:38 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dude i wasn't being a dick! i swear...i meant the abner jay and obfesa (sp?) LPs looked cool!

btw ian the site works fine for me (firefox PC)

yeah looked fine here too, firefox on mac

thanks dudes.

no prob. ian, when I get a moment I can just email you the link. It's really easy, just a plug-in you install to wordpress, then when you're making a blog post, you just type a simple code and it does it all automatically.

check out the samples on this blog post:

http://acuterecords.com/blog/?p=50

it's definitely a popular plug-in because I see it used elsewhere. You can use some basic coding to adjust it's look, for instance I made mine black and red to match the site. The "control-click to download" is just additional code from me, not part of the plug-in, and probably not something you'd need.

But to be able to have a record and a simple way to play an mp3 sample, this is the best.

http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/

awesome. thanks dan.

http://wayneandwax.com/?p=4229

Buying vinyl in Morocco (and links to ethical issues re which vinyl gets reissued)

does listening to music on the net count as vinyl

Hilarious

no you

ethically-licensed high quality vinyl reissues of obscure Amazonian cumbia.

tracks on that blog are sweet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=34&v=GuCdsyCWmt8

I am imagining that narrator is Jared from Silicon Valley

About 41 million vinyl albums were sold in 2022, compared with about 33 million CDs, RIAA said in its year-end report released Thursday.

The figures contributed to another banner year for the music industry. Sales of recorded music rose 6% to a record $15.9 billion last year...

Revenue from vinyl records rose 17% to over $1.2 billion last year, the 16th straight year of growth for the format and nearly double what it was two years ago. Vinyl albums accounted for 71% of physical format revenue

Wild development

yeah but

https://public.tableau.com/static/images/U_/U_S_RecordedMusicSalesVolumesbyFormat_0/SalesVolumebyFormat/1_rss.png

I read that vinyl sales were actually down if you correct for sales of mdnights

I'd believe that

So if I'm interpreting this correctly, the # of units went down but the revenue went up, so (and sorry if I'm being obvious) the conclusion is that vinyl prices went up significantly...? I'd believe that. I rarely see new vinyl under $20 nowadays. Mostly $23 to $33 (which seems crazy to me) for a single disc.

yes it actually averages out to $30 per LP, I read elsewhere, which is just staggering to me

CDs in the nineties were regularly 15-18, which adjusted for inflation is in the $35+ zone. Do it’s not crazy but the issue is that nobody’s income has kept up with inflation. This post inspired by the bodega charging $10 for a 12 pack of lacroix.

I think Universal (?) raised their vinyl pricing across the board, so naturally everyone else followed suit. 2LP releases routinely hang around the $40 mark now, if we're talking major label stuff (indies seem to have agreed on $30 as the mark to hit there).

I'm sure the costs actually have risen in some areas of the manufacturing process, but A LOT of that is bloat.

Wow, dang. Yeah, good point about inflation. I feel like it's even hard to find used vinyl under $15 except for: classical (which has always been generally inexpensive), jazz (except for Miles, Coltrane, etc.), and avant-garde that's off people's radar (e.g. not NWW list stuff). The best luck I've had lately is finding some great but lesser known $5-$8 jazz records (someone got rid of their Altschul collection! Score!).

I don’t think I ever paid $18 for a (non-import) CD though, even if that was the theoretical upper-limit retail price.

FWIW, I was talking to a friend's parents about CD's, and he said he used to get them for about $3 or $4 per title by buying them in bulk through CD music clubs. I think this had to be the '90s?

I remember this. If you did the absolute minimum for the BMG club (buy one CD at normal price), and maximize all the "free" CDs you get (you had to pay for shipping), yes, the average cost per CD was around $4. Sign up, do the minimum, cancel, repeat. They had some amazing deals on boxed sets, like the Miles Davis ones. They were counting on lots of people not bothering to cancel their subscriptions in a timely manner or not accepting their monthly selection (which you could refuse and return to sender, for free, but many people probably didn't know that), which apparently worked out for them.

That's such a half-assed business model - we're banking on subscribers forgetting or being too lazy - but I feel like that's the business model for a lot of things (i.e. it does actually play out that way). Look at TV ratings - they always talk about "lead-in" as if viewers were too lazy to turn off the TV or to even change the channel.

How much were those Columbia Records “The Nice Price” CDs? Like 8 bucks?

I did the BMG and/or Columbia House thing a couple of times — this was 1994-95. After I got my 8 CDs for a penny (or 12 for the price of one), I sent back the postcard saying, “Please send all future deliveries to [address in Europe].” They’d write back saying, “Sorry, we don’t ship there, but enjoy your CDs!” I got the Ray Charles 3CD Atlantic set, the Count Basie Decca set, and many other things I don’t recall offhand but still have.

As for its business model, record clubs were a notorious way for major labels to hide or otherwise just flat-out lie to artists about sales. There’s a reason the barcodes on LPs, cassettes, and CDs sold by record clubs were replaced by “mfd for BMG direct marketing in ____” or whatever.

Yeah, IIRC club CD's were considered promotional CD's. Like there's a line item in the budget for every major label release specifically for promotional discs, and if you were green you figured it was only the cost of pressing and mailing discs to media/press for review. It was really that and any copies sold through record/CD clubs, which means ZERO royalties to the artist.

Should have searched first - a good article on clubs:

https://www.spin.com/2021/06/cd-clubs-columbia-house-bmg/

Clubs became famous for jiving even the artists whose music made them rich. All featured acts were paid reduced publishing and royalty rates on the claim that placement in company catalogs was billable advertising — this, while clubs paid the artists’ labels full rates. Such royalty shakedowns were a precursor to the floss-thin rates streaming services currently pay musicians.

Piotr Olov, a former content strategist for Columbia House, recalls, “The labels would get this enormous advance against all this product. And then, of course, that advance didn’t slide down the hill to the artists. The royalty rates were a percentage of what even the crappy major label royalty rates were at the time…basically, it is so Spotify, it’s a joke.”

There’s a good (IIRC) documentary made by a guy working at Columbia House in the early ‘90s – The Target Shoots First.

How much were those Columbia Records “The Nice Price” CDs? Like 8 bucks?

$9.99 or $10.99 was typical during the '90s, maybe a dollar more at a mall chain store. Sony also had a "Best Value" line, which was more mid-price ($11.99/$12.99) and WEA's Super Saver Series was about the same as that. Most back catalog titles on majors (basically anything from before the CD era) were in these tiers, but there were exceptions (The Beatles, of course).

CDs in the nineties were regularly 15-18, which adjusted for inflation is in the $35+ zone. Do it’s not crazy but the issue is that nobody’s income has kept up with inflation. This post inspired by the bodega charging $10 for a 12 pack of lacroix.

― ian, Saturday, 11 March 2023 17:22 (yesterday) link

i remember when my small town record store was selling the newly released weezer green album for 20.99 and did a hard no. those were the last few years where you could still scoop up used copies of a well regarded albums for a couple of bucks.

If you think about it, this record club was kind of a precursor to all the monthly digital subscriptions you have now, where they hope you sign up and then forget and pay the man $9.95 a month into infinity.

I looked into working at the Columbia House warehouse back in the 90s until I found out they tested and knew that was not going to work out. It paid pretty good for that kind of work and I knew a couple people that worked there going to IU.

physical media is a niche these days and press runs are much smaller so i don't bemoan the pricing. re. columbia house i tend to avoid anything with CRC on it because who knows where/how it was pressed.

I still think it's wild that the record clubs were still pressing vinyl up into the '90s, and there are actual club editions of, like, Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins albums that are heavy collectibles now.

They were still selling 8-tracks through 1988.

You haven't heard Nothing's Shocking until you've heard it on 8-track!

https://i.discogs.com/0Fv6M4WWnviAsjyOYSrSbBBlvOj_-lK8r7cWDVhFe00/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:767/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTE1NjQy/MzYyLTE1OTUwODQw/MjItMzk0OC5qcGVn.jpeg

how accurate are soundscan numbers for vinyl? just given a much higher percentage sold through indie stores that, at least years ago, didn't report

do Bandcamp sales count?

Bandcamp does report to Soundscan per their site