Vinyl records make a return

Daily Swarm today:

Best Buy 'considering devoting eight square feet of merchandising space in all of its 1,020 stores solely to vinyl'...
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04272009/business/best_buy_turning_the_tables_with_vinyl_166384.htm

Three New Vinyl Shops Open in Los Angeles...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-et-vinyl26-2009apr26,0,1957135,full.story

As a CD-buyer for 18 years, I'm having a collector nerd crisis whether I should jump on this trend or not

ditto what Whiney said

i don't buy too many records and haven't bought a new record in a long while. it's mainly old jazz/blues comps that I end up purchasing. But if every new record came with a download coupon and I invested in a decent turntable (mine is kinda crappy) I can see buying the record instead of the CD.

eventually, i want to sell some new vinyl at my soon-to-open store. i'm scared of the money involved though. i'll start small. i was thinking of being genre specific. JUST selling psych reissues or something...

i'll have to see what people are into around here. lotsa freekfolkers in western mass though. and not a lot of competition for new vinyl. so the psych thing might work.

every record does have a download coupon, it's called "(artist name) + (album name) + mediafire or megaupload or sharebee etc"

Especially since record companies are sending less physical copies of records in the mail every year. I've been going to the record store and picking up CDs I really like (I didn't get physical promos for Springsteen, Bat For Lashes or Doom)...

--But should I be getting vinyl copies of these albums instead?
--Is the ease of 320k or 192k rips ANY TIME I NEED THEM for all eternity better or worse than having something that looks better and (hypothetically) sounds better?
--Should I take into consideration how easy it it to scratch/warp/fuck up a piece of vinyl, ruining it forever, as opposed to a CD that pretty much will play as long as you don't put them in your backpack without a case like a see kids do on the subway?
--What about my CD shelves when I have four spines of a group, but then have to go to my record collection for the fifth record?

omar, living on downloads alone is essentially saying "I don't care about data backup"

from that l.a. link, origami records is "okay". they just have run of the mill mainstream indie vinyl right now, i hope they expand into used lps and other genres. vacation is pretty dope, lots of metal, experimental, and psych.

more interested in this astonishing-sounding place, tbh:

http://www.foodgps.com/more-info-on-territory-bbq-and-records/

oh i never live on downloads, i usually DL just to see if i want to get something in a physical copy. or if it's something that is long out of print.

CDs are the new vinyl. Scored 10 amazing CDs for $5.
This sealed Chris Gaines CD will pay for the whole lot in five years I reckon, so it's like I got them for free.
Haven't seen vinyl go for such firesale prices since a few years back getting the Rush back catalog for 10cents an album.

Yeah, I've been getting crazy CDs off Amazon. You can pretty much have any Madonna record released after 1988 for a penny.

CDs are the new vinyl. Scored 10 amazing CDs for $5

So been having fun with this at Amoeba's clearance section as well.

dollar dvds at thrift stores too. i love that. you can't give the stuff away.

i think my favorite thing about the whole vinyl market right now is that it makes my goal of someday releasing an album and actually pressing it on vinyl seem like way less of an unfeasible pipedream

any Madonna record released after 1988 for a penny.

Well, a penny plus postage, right? Which always seems to nullify the deal for me, but maybe I'll come around. Do need to start hunting around for used CDs in stores more, though.

yeah, so like $3. Which is still cheaper than the $7.99 at a used CD store.

scott ur in western MA right? where is your store?

"Haven't seen vinyl go for such firesale prices since a few years back getting the Rush back catalog for 10cents an album.

― Philip Nunez"

you got ripped off.

my store will be located on main street in greenfield. right next to tofu a go go.

we had problems with the original space we rented (um, pee pee water dripping down onto our space from the aprtmenent above.) otherwise, we would have been open by now. but i've been having fun making money on ebay and drinking and hanging out with my kids.

x-post

im still interested in hearing about which records you guys got from john storm roberts's collection!

yeah i def buy a lot of vinyl but always have, but i echo other sentiments about CDs! great deals now all over the place...

seriously you can get like every great jazz record ever made on some fancy pants new great sounding remastered CD issue for like peanuts!

buying dollars cd's is the new buying dollar records

cool scott i'm in northampton so i'll definitely pay your store a visit when it's open

my sister-in-law lucia lives in northampton. she's a peddle person.

I wonder if that Chris Gaines CD is any good. Seems like an important period piece.

CD sales in Norway increased by 30-40 per cent from the first three months of 2008, so it seems it isn't only vinyl that makes a return.

i've been buying up used House albums and mix CDs, shit like the Metro Area album (which i already have doubles of on wax ;) for $2.50. you cant really argue with that. Dimitri from Paris mix CDs are for suckers @ $16, decent value for $1.

CD sales in Norway increased by 30-40 per cent from the first three months of 2008

^ Geir got his tax return, bought three or four CDs

For no good reason, I associate the decline and return of the LP with the rise and fall of American conservatives. The Clinton years even coincide nicely with the Incredibly Strange Music crate digging years.

So what kind of mastering job can I expect if I buy one of the major label vinyl reissues/new releases? Do they compress it all to hell just like it was a CD? Do they even bother mastering it differently for the vinyl release, counting on the fact that most people will buy it as a fetish object and never actually listen to it?

Good question - haven't heard a new major label LP in a while. I will say that most indie 7"s are mastered very badly. They don't send back test pressings b/c they aren't up to snuff as often as they used to, it seems.

i think the last major label vinyl i bought was the robert plant/alison krauss album and it sounds great.

Bought a batch of punk rock 7" lately that do not sound as good as the versions on their respective myspaces.

last Al Green LP sounded nice on wax.

New albums sound better on CD than vinyl in most cases.

i thought that post was going to be by Geir

I bought the Neil & Crazy Horse at the fillmore LP and it sounds great! But it's a fancy schmancy audiophile deal (Quiex!) and probably not representative. complaining about the fidelity of punk singles, btw, seems like a losing battle.

One thing I noticed while DJ-ing a couple years ago, mixing occasional recent indie 45s into lots of old 45s and LPs, is that the newer vinyl seemed to be mastered noticeably quieter, and thinner sounding, in comparison -- it really drove me crazy during segues. Not sure if that's improved during the vinyl quasi-boom of the past couple years since or not. (Of course, the 45s I was playing weren't necessarily representative of recent vinyl in general -- they may well have been exceptions to the rule, though I did notice a trend.) And something that became clear when Ed Christman reported his long return-of-vinyl cover story that I edited for Billboard the year before last is that, even if people are buying incrementally more vinyl than they were in the early '00s, that doesn't mean the vinyl pressing plants can afford to stay open -- lots of them have shuttered. And even for the ones that do stay open, replacement parts for the machines aren't being manufactured like they used to be, and the people who used to be trained to run those machines are getting older and retiring or dying. It's not a job young people tend to seek out anymore. So sometimes I wonder if the skill set and materials just aren't there anymore to make quality vinyl. And either way, I'm skeptical that the format could come back full force without those workers and machines. (And right, heavy-gram audiophile vinyl would obviously fit the "quality" requirement, but that seems even more a specialty market than vinyl in general. Those records are real expensive.)

i agree about most new stuff sounding better on cd. most are made digitally FOR cd. so, most new vinyl is just a vinyl copy of a cd. so, unless you are a dj or a collector it seems silly to buy, like, new electronic albums on vinyl.

I's also guess that the costs of decent fidelity are rather prohibitive if you're dealing in such small quantities of records, compared to the old days when vinyl was the only way you could put a record out.

Chuck, I know you left NYC, but within the last year a new pressing plant has opened AND Hitbound re-opened. Now along with Brooklyn Phono, there are three in Brooklyn alone. TBH Hitbound and the other place (dudes name is Will, forget the name of the business proper) don't do as good a job as Brooklyn Phono who produce EXCELLENT vinyl LPs. They do all of the Locust titles, fer instance.

xpxp That's why a lot of small run LPs now cost upwards of $20 and people will still pay it without a second thought.

The companies who press vinyl these days suck because any album that's longer than 45 minutes is made into a 2-record set, which makes no sense at all.. There were plenty of records pressed before 1990 that had 25 minutes per side..

The only example I can think of right now is not a very good one.. OK Computer is a record I wouldn't own on vinyl anyway because it's just one of those albums that's supposed to be heard digitally.. (For this reason, it does seem weird to me that Radiohead is currently one of the highest selling vinyl artists..) But there's really no reason why Capitol couldn't fit 6 songs per side. It's a 55 minute album.. is it really that difficult?

Also the 180 gram thing is overrated.. I notice no difference at all on my turntable between thick records and thin ones.

The loss in fidelity when you make the grooves smaller can be pretty serious. Ideally 20-25 minutes a side, any more than that and you're really pushing it. Also, the single LP/double LP divide can have a lot to do with the lengths of individual tracks.

Also the 180 gram thing is overrated.. I notice no difference at all on my turntable between thick records and thin ones.

― billstevejim, Wednesday, April 29, 2009 10:41 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i thought the thicker vinyl was supposed to be more durable.

I have no idea.. if there's an actual purpose for making it thicker, than I guess that's cool with me..

MacArthur grant for Howie Weinberg, to teach the children.

thicker vinyl = deeper grooves = richer sound, more durable/long-lasting medium

right?

you're probably right.. maybe i'm just ignorant..

From that article on best buy... : Compared with a CD, vinyl costs more to make and retails for a higher price -- $22.95 vs. around $13.99 for a CD -- but has lower margins.

I thought vinyl was inexpensive to press years ago.. Is it possible that all these extra "audiophile" elements to the record-making process, which seemed not all that present before the 90's, are now increasing the cost?

there isn't a single person in the u.s. selling a copy of the nitzer ebb album on discogs. kinda hard to believe. okay, 15 bucks in the store and 20 on discogs. win/win!

went into my least favorite record store yesterday. things have actually gotten worse. two of my favorite pricings were a used copy of Trans for $35 (justified by a sticker saying it is a 1st edition with a typo) and a used copy of Katy Lied for $25. I hope every track is misspelled on that one!

― bonita pooleymoon (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, May 20, 2016 1:23 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

another $100 record had a sticker that said "listed at $150 on amazon!"

― bonita pooleymoon (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, May 20, 2016 1:24 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't why these situations / types of stores are so common around the country, but it's fascinating to see so many of them alive at this point. You'd think they'd be the first to die.

Eh, Scott I'd have done $10 for it.

i never see their records on vinyl anymore actually...

it's like front 242. used to see their records everywhere not that long ago. or maybe it was long ago...

i'm actually charging extra five bucks for the near mint vinyl + original inner sleeve. if it had been VG+ i would have done 10.

it's like front 242. used to see their records everywhere not that long ago. or maybe it was long ago...

― scott seward, Friday, May 20, 2016 1:38 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've never seen anyone buying them, though I'm sure someone does.

Front 242 rule.

xp 15 is fair IMO

scott should start a thread where we can price a small selection of his bargain bin. maybe he could slap a "priced by strangers!" sticker on each.

though I would love to see people look at a $100 copy of Tango in the Night with the sticker "Alfred told me to!", it is probably not the best way to run a business

front 242 wax trax reissues used to be everywhere for cheap. i can sell the hell out of geography.

xp LOL

I bought Tango on vinyl BITD, disk is so thin you could pick your teeth with it

My Tango has a bad place on track two on both sides (probably the same bad place).

slap a "has two side As!" sticker on it and sell for $650

On behalf of Chuck Eddy, I'd like to price all your moderately-credible hard rock at $5. ANGEL CITY MOTHERFUCKERS

ANGEL CITY MOTHERFUCKERS

words to live by

my friend mike came in during the noise nomads matinee today and i sold him the nitzer ebb for ten bucks. #friendsandfamilydiscount

I paid $1 for the first one and $2.99 for the second, but I definitely got more than $10 worth of entertainment from each over the years so I'd say your friend did ok.

I don't remember much Front 242 vinyl being around in Cleveland in the late '80s/early '90s. I think Back Catalogue was the first import CD I ever bought, or maybe it was the first Throwing Muses album. Seemed very exotic buying a disc without a longbox.

http://scoot.net/gallery/bbs/IMG_4482.JPG

Returning to the crazily-overpriced records point: at the Strand, everything is $25. This is already a price point where I almost certainly will not buy a record, but my favorite was that it even applied each of the two Use Your Illusions. Fifty dollars for the whole thing! Holy shit! You could get used copies of the original LPs for substantially less, and the whole thing on CD for what, a dollar fifty?

It's laughable. I mentioned on the Neil Young thread seeing a reissue of Decade for $80. I'd estimate that $80 got me every Neil Young album from the first through to Re·ac·tor (14 albums) first time around--Rust Never Sleeps or Hawks & Doves at a minimum.

hi, bye

https://pitchfork.com/news/devastating-manufacturing-plant-fire-threatens-worldwide-vinyl-record-supply/