Why Vinyl Can't Survive

Grimly, you're pretty much OTM with me.

That said, I did keep about a dozen boxes of records, but mainly things, mostly dirt cheap, that I would never see again in any format if I were to sell it. Mostly Incredibly Strange Music fodder.

And I did NOT sell my very first record: "The Harmony Of The Worlds". That was my very first record -- an astronomical data records. It changed my life, although I didn't know it at the time. And that record will die long after I die if I can help it.

I guess my point is: I still do very much have the OMG THE ARTIFACT! attitude towards vinyl. What's changed is: I don't need to have that attachment to so many goddamn artifacts anymore all around me, especially if they're in my way.

cue Sanford and Son music

more and more i just can't stand listening to mp3s at all unless it's like work and that's my only choice.

it just doesn't seem worth even taking the time to listen to when it sounds so robbed of so much. like watching a great movie on an ipod screen or something.

i don't have a problem with MP3s per se, just a problem with my shitty laptop speakers.

also, i collect but try not to hoard vinyl. i sell things all the time. i sold 20 records or so this week, got enough for a week's worth of lunches with some $$ leftover to buy a baggie of weed.

a good culling once a year is a good thing. like do i really need this late 70s pretty things record? how the hell did i get this marshall crenshaw record?...that sort of thing

yeah I cull stuff pretty regularly. then my wife gets mad that I want to get rid of those Linda Ronstadt records from her mom that she never listens to.

I need to get on Ebay.
Saw a Daniel Johnston record in a Time-Lag update listed for 90 dollars.
I got a copy for fifty cents.

i have a VG++ heart like a wheel ORIG PRESS VERY CLEAN by linda...i accept paypal :)

more and more i just can't stand listening to mp3s at all unless it's like work and that's my only choice.
it just doesn't seem worth even taking the time to listen to when it sounds so robbed of so much.

did you have to really concentrate to notice the quality defecit or did you just notice it straight away (from say 256k/s up)?

while i think Grimly's OTM about the changing state of how we feel about collecting music, in my case my treasures have gone from being the OMG ARTEFACT to being the "backup". I do think that many folks have switched from thinking of the physical item as THE MUSIC, i also feel many of those folks switch back to their previous view once their HD crashes and they lose all their tunes.

like watching a great movie on an ipod screen or something

see, i watch more movies now on my iPhone than i do on any other type of screen. i am time-poor but gadget-rich. and -- oddly, for someone who's spent 12 years in a job that's effectively about maintaining unrealistically and often unnecessarily high standards of quality within an industry that doesn't give a shit -- i don't care at all about what i'm missing.

sorry, everyone.

Never trust anyone who likes Keane :)

hahahahahahahah :)

i'm not saying it's like, immoral or something, do what you want to do. watch shit, listen to shit...just for me...i would rather just listen to something of better sound quality...but what's important to me doesn't have to be important to everyone else.

i just get annoyed when ppl suggest that vinyl is just an object/collector fetish when my own ears tell me a very different story.

i have an ipod and watch movies on PSP on flights fwiw

the 'film on iphone' comparison is more like why would you compromise sound quality by listening to it with standard earphones

i just get annoyed when ppl suggest that vinyl is just an object/collector fetish when my own ears tell me a very different story.

yeah that's some bullshit. I have a ton of MP3s that sound horrible. I have some records that sound horrible too, to be fair. I also have some records that sound AMAAAAAAAAAZING. I do not have any MP3s that sound amazing.

but anyways who cares? i hope ppl do what they want and yes sell them records off! they are an albatross around your neck!!

my stereo isn't good enough to surface the differences btw high-bitrate music files, cd, and vinyl.

;_;

i just took the test here: http://mp3ornot.com/

picked the wrong one

altho i should've gone with my initial judgement which was the opposite

i got it, but it was a guess, or felt like one. couldn't consciously hear a difference.

the fact its louder gave it away i thought

vol sounds the same to me.

just spent an entertaining two minutes clicking rapidly between them creating my own scratch remix.

with headphones or at home I can't tell the difference between any mp3's above 192 kbps, but i can tell that they're mp3's. the biggest difference is on either a high-end hi-fi or in a nightclub (where this is the most obvious thing ever, to me)

yeah listening to two mp3 files on a computer with headphones really doesn't mean anything as compared to listening on a good stereo with good record player

The trick is to not use those shitty little earpieces that come with your iPod. Get some Grado headphones. SR-60 is fine. Grado + iPod = good times.

please, sir, ipod ear buds aren't even fit to shove up a dead racoon's ass.

grados are nice though i have a pair

i just took the test here: http://mp3ornot.com/

I picked the right one - 128 sounded flatter but it took some concentrated listening. bass response tends to be less defined at lower bitrates so the orchestra hit at the end is a good thing to focus on.

however that wasn't the best clip to demonstrate the difference - it's a simple passage (most of it is one long chord) recorded crisply & clearly so it didn't degrade much. a randomly rotating selection of 50 clips of various music styles would point up the difference between 128 + 320 pretty quickly, especially if you get into rock / punk / indie that tends to have lower engineering quality and denser mixes.

I don't have a lot of uncompressed files on my computer right now, so this isn't the best example either, but I can definitely hear a difference at certain points in this:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/6138g5

128 has a more watery, realaudio type sound.

Yeah I picked the 320 file too. My ears are really sensitive to compression and digital distortion for some reason. When I'm mixing a record, I generally catch things the engineers miss.

A few nights ago, standing about ten feet from the stage while Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds performed, I just reveled in the glory of massive sound and subwoofers in a ballroom with pro engineers at the board and pro players making the music.

You can argue all you want about vinyl vs mp3 vs headphones vs pro speakers. But the best sound will be a great band in a great room at full blast.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121483273

There they go blaming hipsters again.

This seems like as good a place as any.

http://sickmouthy.com/2013/02/06/why-the-vinyl-revival-can-sod-off-as-far-as-im-concerned/

The pop album edition last night, with Hepworth and Dent and Boy George, was SO much better. No bullshit mythology (despite better stories and myths and more magic), and zero bullshit format talk.

I dont really understand format wars, but you're the one bringing it up in an article, are you sure you're so above format fighting?

I don't know who any of those people you mention are but from where I'm sitting vinyl never went away, most 12"s dont come out on cd, vinyl only is still the norm for many good labels, and the better DJs all have to play vinyl if they don't want to be restricted in choice - not to mention all the masses of $1 hidden gems from the past that will never get reissued. It might be a revival to you because you only just noticed, but for many scenes, people, djs - it never went away.

I don't mind whatever people play, you're the one criticizing a format here...why?

I'm bringing it up in an article because there's a whole season of programs dedicated to it on the BBC at the moment; 6music has a dedicated vinyl show, fashion shops have displays of vinyl records, there have been innumerable articles about how vinyl is making a resurgence over the last few years, etcetera etcetera. Have you really not noticed this? I'm not saying vinyl ever went away, nor criticising it as a DJ tool - that's a very different thing from Beatles reissues and Tame Impala and Toro Y Moi and the D'Angelo reissue being in sale at the front of Urban Outfitters. I'm also not criticising a format; in fact I'm at great pains to say I'm criticising the mythology that surrounds it in a rock sense, which is a very specific thing.

Most 12"s will come out as a download, apart from select vinyl-only releases, and even then there will probable be more ripped files out there than the record.

But you are criticizing it as a format choice, implicitly. Why do you have a problem with a record sleeve in a window? I've never seen any of those programs but sure i'm aware of articles like yours talking about its resurgence, and the fashion of putting on display - but if you don't want bullshit format talk - then why introduce it in the first place

Most 12"s will come out as a download, apart from select vinyl-only releases, and even then there will probable be more ripped files out there than the record.

― Chewshabadoo,

I'm still finding proportion of vinyl that has a download to be pretty low. This is probably tangentially one of the bigger problems with vinyl currently, artificial scarcity with releases coming out in too small runs, selling out too quick and then vanishing or seeing the discogs price go through the roof (even worse for records from 10-15 years ago that used to be $1).

I don't bother with rips or illegal downloads but those are diminishing too as people seem less into ripping stuff that is now scarce

ie - biggest problem with vinyl is discogs speculators

but labels/artists are partly to blame for that with small print runs (and who can blame them - guaranteed cost-effective)

Nick, it seems unusually touchy of you to feel like a bunch of people (even rather a lot of people) who fetishise vinyl somehow invalidate your relationship with the music you listen to and have listened to.

It's certainly true that there's an element of rubbing-it-in here on the part of old gits (like me) who always preferred vinyl and who were pretty much given the choice of moving to a new format we didn't much like or stopping buying music altogether. We win (kinda sorta, I mean we don't at all, but you know what I mean). And it's also true that the alliance between th eold gits and the retrohipsters is a bit unholy. But you shouldn't take it so personal, dude.

I'm mostly wound up as a rhetorical device, in all honesty (as usual); it's the rockism that bothers me far more than the format.

Well, yes. As an Old Git I was more than happy to switch to CD - easier to handle, collate and shelve, much more convenient in every way - and I don't miss vinyl at all. I only ever get something on vinyl if it's completely unavailable in any other format but I don't "not" buy something because it's only on vinyl. I don't draw a line in the sand but I'm fed up with people my age and older droning on about how much better their lives were than ours because they listened to a different sound reproduction format. I also feel it's had a kickback effect on British rock music which now does little except look back, or peer back in a "we can never be as great as..." fashion. It's like saying that the next generation are, somehow, failures.

What rock music?

I just liked vinyl more and switched from CD to it in '94 or so, btw

Two points re albums over CDs, hope you agree,,

1) An album is two discrete units of performance, side 1 and side 2. This promotes two 'start' tracks, two 'endings', and a performance between.

2) CD albums can be up to 78 mins or so, tempting the artist to use all that time, often not a good thing. (At least with double albums you could boff the artist with the point that the product will cost more and earn less. plus, four discrete performances, see 1.)

In most other respects, CD albums win.

I almost never skip tracks, LP or CD.

Totally agree with both of those points, of course.

Each to their own of course but it's merely CDs that I hate. I use MP3s/WAVs and vinyl in equal amounts, most of my DJ friends are switching back from digital DJing to using vinyl just because the skill set needed keeps the process more tactile and interesting and, finally, it's not a 'revival' for those of us who never stopped buying it. I'm not saying some people don't have rose tinted glasses on when it comes to vinyl but it feels like a strawman when I look at my peers. Newer labels who do a lot of vinyl tend to have a sonically progressive agenda and not just in electronic music but in more traditional forms like Southern Lord.

I'd be the first to admit that there are a lot of bellends who collect vinyl. Ebay profiteers are scumbags but I have more (irrational) dislike for 7" collectors (especially of psych, northern soul, reggae, dub, funk etc) who always, in my experience, value price and rarity over quality. But I collect records, I am not a record collector if you take the distinction. I'm more concerned with the quality of the pressing and the condition of the vinyl than I am with whether it's original or not.

But seriously, always vinyl over CD. Always.