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

there's also this - Is there a program that will organise all the MP3s on my hardrive?

One of my first ever threads! Sorting your old LPs into Categories...

A headphone amp might have been the solution, but it's a bit too much to carry around in public transport....

You can get portable ones the size of an iPod. Failing that, look into headphones with sound isolation, which will cut out all external noise and prevent you needing to turn it as loud anyway.

RIP Canadian vinyl

dag yeah i didn't think about the old dudes retiring angle that could be the death, not lack of demand

the RIAA's 2007 stats, via Coolfer...

• CD shipments (net) dropped 17.5% while the dollar value of those shipments dropped 20.5%.
• The LP/EP category (vinyl records) saw shipments increase 36.6% with a 46.2% increase in dollar value.
• Cassette shipments (net) dropped 41.2% with, oddly, only a 18.4% drop in dollar value.
• Kiosk downloads increased 28.5% by units and 38.1% by dollar value.
• Subscriptions to music services (using a weighted annual average) increased a mere 0.7% while their dollar value dropped 2.6%.
• Mobile increased 14.6% by units and by 13.6% by dollar value. Mobile includes master ringtones, ringbacks, music videos, full track downloads and "other mobile."

How many times has this article been written in the past few months? (Gets dumber every time, I think.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/fashion/31vinyl.html

“It takes a special kind of person to appreciate pops and clicks and imperfections in their music.”

Yes, you're very special.

Young vinyl collectors said digital technology had made it easy for anyone — even parents — to acquire vast, esoteric music collections. In that context, nothing seems hipper than old-fashioned inconvenience.

Yeah, these articles keep treading over the same territory, but I never get tired of reading them ... especially if they are so chock full of LOLs at the expense of corny indie types and clueless record execs.

“It’s almost a back-to-nature approach,” Mr. Gagnon said. “It’s the difference between growing your own vegetables and purchasing them frozen in the supermarket.”

He said that people who buy vinyl nowadays are charmed by the format’s earthy authenticity.

And I love the pic of hipster dude showing off his Huey Lewis and Donnie Iris LPs. Score!

ugh, i get really tired hearing about the allure of pops and clicks. blah. buy clean vinyl, you dolts.

having bought a few records that looked fine to me but are hardly listenable recently, I think I'm gonna have to start being a special person.

Young vinyl collectors said digital technology had made it easy for anyone — even parents — to acquire vast, esoteric music collections. In that context, nothing seems hipper than old-fashioned inconvenience.

I really, really, REALLY want to hurt people like this. Violently. (A character flaw, I realize.)

This year Capitol/EMI is in the process of reissuing its first substantial vinyl catalog in decades. Some of those albums, like “Pet Sounds” by the Beach Boys, are classic rock leviathans aimed at nostalgic baby boomers.

uh

And I love the pic of hipster dude showing off his Huey Lewis and Donnie Iris LPs. Score!

yeah, there's a lot of "IT'S ON VINYL, I MUST BUY IT" going around with the kids these days. bragging about "only paying $10" for huey lewis or elton john albums that you should be paying a quarter for at a goodwill. if at all.

I only take pride in a purchase if it's = or > $1, are there really young dudes out there super amped about their $12.99 Rumors buy?

I only take pride in a purchase if it's = or > < $1

well take a look at the warner bros site:

http://becausesoundmatters.com/

40 dollar versions of dollar records for sale! yay! hey, they made people throw away their records so they could buy the cd and now they can throw away the cd and buy the "deluxe" vinyl version!

"are there really young dudes out there super amped about their $12.99 Rumors buy?"

lots of young folks just don't have a good idea of what things sell for. so, if it costs less than a cd they are probably happy most of the time. not ALL young folks obviously, but people into vinyl for kicks or whatever.

used to be people would be all lame and tell you for years that they needed to get their turntables fixed. now people are actually buying turntables. i'm all for it. there's more than enough good stuff for me. and if they get bored with all the stuff they bought i will be at the record store waiting for their overpriced new junk that i can then buy used.

but they can keep their 40 dollar deluxe version of stadium arcadium.

I really couldn't get past the first few paragraphs of that article. I swear, everyone in college nowadays collects vinyl and wears black rimmed glasses. THIS IS NOT SPECIAL. BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE IS NOT SPECIAL.

Yeah it's become a hobby of mine to try to guess the time lapse between the steps

-noisy austin hype of some style revival ("omg have you ever heard BOOTY MUSIC")
-OG stylists flooding stores ("why are there 2452834572987 used copies of 'bass rock express' in the bins this week?")

haha, I didn't even get to the part where they start talking about people at NYU. I actually saw someone sitting outside one of our dorms with a record player and the self titled BSS record last year. Everyone here is that guy. Except me obviously. All the vinyl I buy is not lame at all and in no way falling into any stereotype at all.

yeah the articles and the shit people say is silly but the vinyl resurgence of the past couple years has given me so much increased pleasure in my music listening that people can write that stupid article every day and I'll be quite happy about it. you know? thank God I can get shit on vinyl now pretty easily. from the artist end, too, there's just this feeling that people give more of a shit about the stuff that comes out on vinyl. they ask questions about it, they're interested in it, it's not something they download and immediately lose track of in a 1,000,000-song library. fuckin', long live the vinyl revival even if there's plenty of profiteering behind it!

in re: Ned's comment, we've had the "should people have to do more work to acquire vast collecitons?" argument before I think, I stand firmly on the "yes I am an asshole and yes it sucks that any douchebag can hear Great White Wonder without having to do any groundwork" side of the question. Value in hard work, builds character, etc.

My post was poorly constructed. My apologies.

Yeah, I've always agreed with John on the groundwork issue. Reason I highlighted that quote myself above is that getting ahold of (or listening to) music on vinyl never struck me as "incovenient"; it's just fun (at least if you stick to thrift stores and dollar bins; these prefabricated "collectibles" with useless bonus doodads are beyond my comprehension.)

Totally disagree with John, Chuck, and anyone else arguing that music is in any way improved by being hard to come by. Get it to as many people as possible, as conveniently as possible, I say. And as far as the vinyl's concerned, I hated it before there was any such thing as CDs.

I don't think they're arguing that the music is improved by the rarity of the object, it's the integrity of the person that's built by the work put into the acquisition.

Since I'm about to unload thousands of records this month, I'm happy as punch with articles like this, for obvious reasons of raw greed.

Otherwise, I agree with John, Xhuck, etc.

On the other hand, vinyl's now taking up half my living room. I don't want to pay more to rent a place with an extra room just for vinyl, sorry. It has to go. :/

^donut so very very otm on that last point (and the first one too!)

My friend Rick in Pennsyltucky e-mails me weekly about the new old 8-tracks he's found. He's a scrounger of southeast Pennsy's antique-and-scrap marts were they must still be plentiful. He even knows which color casings are the best between the gray and the red. One series was fabricated with superior glue and is therefore now less likely to split when put into a player after decades of sitting in a box in the garage somewhere.

Now there's an eccentric article waiting to be written.

Actually...

http://www.amazon.com/Wrong-Theyre-Right-Russ-Forster/dp/B0009ZE95I

(Though that movie doesn't deal with lots of the details George's friend Rick knows about, obviously.)

Mackro how are you selling your stuff? Let ILM know if it's on Amazon/eBay.

It won't be on Amazon nor eBay. Rev called for first crack at it.. after that, whatever Jive Time Records wants from it.

Oh man...vinyl v CDs...it's about as exciting as arguing about operating systems. I can only have this discussion with so many people in life before I'm like, 'Yeah, yeah, opinions 4 me, I get it..."

And, really, nothing will really outlive anything.

At least until you get a format that is able to give you the sound quality of a wav-file, in no more bytes than an mp3-file, then the CD is needed. Because of sound quality.

a format that is able to give you the sound quality of a wav-file, in no more bytes than an mp3-file

that is mathematically impossible. but storage and bandwidth are always getting larger/faster/cheaper.

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?!?