Shady scams and other silly business ideas to take advantage of earnest new vinyl collectors

though a lot of it is being used on digital recordings which kinda defeats his point

but tube consoles are still used in studios all the time and were even more so in 78

Hot Stamper 'First Mention': Crazy Priced Vinyl On EBAY

lmao at the last sentence here

What makes you guys think you know it all?
We definitely don’t know it all. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. If we knew it all we couldn't learn anything from the piles and piles of records we listen to every day. With practically every shootout we learn something new about our favorite records. That, more than anything else, is what makes the kind of tedious, time-consuming, mentally exhausting work we do fun. Case in point: a Columbia Pressing we played not long ago.

Self-XP And that post was about 'Better Records'!

that paragraph from frogbs makes me feel attacked

though a lot of it is being used on digital recordings which kinda defeats his point

but tube consoles are still used in studios all the time and were even more so in 78

https://vinylblade.com/product

won't this be a bit heavy and tricky to play at the right speed? i dunno about this

also, not vinyl:

Vinyl Blade’s grooves are copper-clad steel, which may wear your stylus down faster than a normal record.

and not really a saw:

Do not use Vinyl Blade on a saw. It is not rated or intended for use as a functional saw blade. Attempting to use Vinyl Blade on a saw could result in serious injury or death.

yup really got my doubts on this one

what could possibly go wrong

got to up the speed to play it right, just be very very careful

I was hoping there would be some disclaimer about having to disconnect your stereo every time you wanted to put this record on because with all of the metal bullshit it's made out of, you will get electrocuted if you touch it while everything's powered on. Just paying for the luxury of inconvenience at this point.

I'm just waiting for the tie-in where they start selling a subscription service for needle replacements. Because you just know some goober is going to SWEAR YOU GUYS THERE'S A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN FIDELITY I MEAN IT, it will become a regular thing, and then this thread can finally merge with Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil and we can sit here and just be all like, "Yep."

NEEDLE ME, PLEASE

some goofy art thing... kinda can't wait to see what they sell for, tomorrow

The funniest thing about this is that its a Weeknd song. How is this not some metal band?

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/16/49/76/164976990c547d6d697ef98b555e4a69.jpg

old school sunday: introducing the amazing compact disc.

really funny watching stuff like this now. SILICON CHIPS? SOUNDS FURPHY TO ME THERE, SHEILA.

i love that story, saw it on first broadcast on aus TV back in the day and have happily watched it through at least 3 times since it appeared on youtube - it's not just nostalgia, I think it's actually really well-made TV

have never quite lost that sense of the compact disc being a nifty modern invention, and the styling on those early players is ultra-tasty IMO

https://www.vinylmeplease.com/products/the-james-brand-vmp-knife

$79 stainless steel artisan knife for opening records, with a handle inlay made from recycled vinyl from VMP pressings.

vmp doubling down.

(or is this tripling, quadrupling, or perhaps even more by now?)

WaPo Covers HOT STAMPERS!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2022/perfect-sound-quality-vinyl-records/

Next up is a copy pressed by Analogue Productions, the Kansas-based label founded by Chad Kassem. Port says that Kassem “has never made a single good sounding record” since AP’s founding in 1991. (Kassem calls Port a “f---ing loser.”) This blind listen gets better marks, which surprises Port when he’s told it’s an Analogue.

Damn, that’s a long piece (I read the first part… the “f---ing loser” quote is great).

Lol at the golden-ears guy at the end who was pissed that the reporter

wrote that MoFi’s secret would not have been revealed without Esposito.

“It would have taken longer, but I was on the case,” Fremer said. “I would have gotten to the bottom of it. That’s what I do.”

Enlightening read. I know high-end vinyl freaks will fall for almost any gimmick, but using military and space industry tech as a selling point really takes the cake.

Also $300k plus speakers... Truly mind-blowing.

Dead link?

Have been listening to old-time radio shows lately and came across this Stan Freberg skit, Son of Herman Horne on Hi Fi (audiophile content starts at about 2:10)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oiEMeJpAaU

XP that's weird. That link is dead, but I googled the story, and it came up with the same url: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2022/perfect-sound-quality-vinyl-records/

it's because ilx doesn't hyperlink the absolutely critical closing slash

I think VMP do some good work but my god $230 for six albums of stand-up comedy? Are you having a laugh?
https://www.vinylmeplease.com/products/50-years-of-the-comedy-store?variant=40042196172890

they should just include picture frames with this kind of shit and be done with it

Do you ever see this whole Media Industrial Complex finding its way to 8-track collectors? I found a box of fantastic 8-tracks at a thrift store in 2000 (Kink Kronikles, Cheap Trick's Dream Police, Pink Floyd's Animals, compilations of disco hits, Motown classics, Dolly Parton's hits, etc.), and most of them still sound pretty decent (the Disco comp actually sounds fairly close to CD-quality, especially the Alicia Bridges and Amii Stewart songs). Considering the number of audiophiles willing to drop serious cash on hocus-pocus cables/stampers/room-air-refreshers/audio reflective paint/whatevz, I fear that era of $5 copies of Rust Never Sleeps will soon end.

Nah. If audio freaks are gonna mess with tape, they’ll go reel to reel.

there's always been a market for 8-tracks among classic car collectors, but i can't see it ever getting any bigger than that

Can't remember the album, but I stumbled upon an 8-track release while trawling the Sacred Bones website catalogue the other day. Needless to say I didn't bite, but it does make me fear for a misguided hipster 8-track revival.

This coming from someone who just bought a '90s Walkman so I can listen to Moon Glyph cassette releases...

Ok so I just looked it up, the album is Mort Garson's Mother Earth's Plantasia. Hipster revival music for houseplant lovers. Yours for a cool $30...

We recorded different tracks playing from the same set of speakers twice, once as a vinyl record and the other as a digital file.1 Listen below and see if you can tell which is which while listening through your laptop speakers or earbuds that came with your phone.

X-post

Great album and soundtrack for the ‘car wash scene’ in High Maintenance s3e2 (so impeccable hipster credentials)

There’s a guy who makes custom 8-tracks of 80s/90s albums - https://instagram.com/deadmediatapes?igshid=Y2ZmNzg0YzQ=

St. Vincent released her recent ’70s-homage album as an 8-track: https://bodega.lomavistarecordings.com/products/st-vincent-daddys-home-limited-edition-8-track

Makes sense. That album was an awful pastiche of disparate '70s sounds. Truly the worst thing she's done.

That makes sense - while there's definitely a small-but-dedicated group of collectors, the market for 8-tracks (and shady scammers) is limited by the limitations of the format - lack of liner notes or exterior viewing material of any substance to gaze upon during the listening process; low supply of working players (good luck taking tapes to parties like you do with vinyl); sound quality is a crapshoot; songs stop and start in weird spots to meet the time constraints of the 'program' function; tapes are occasionally consumed by the player at random times; etc.

Their biggest virtue: if you like to listen to entire albums, they become enjoyably convenient - no need to get up to flip sides. And if you are OK with repeating the album, 8-tracks just start all over again when they are done - hell, you have to physically remove the tape from the player if you want it to stop.

yeah but because the four programs have to be similar lengths there is endless messing around with tracklistings, removing tracks entirely, repeating songs, fading out and starting up on the next program and so on. I have carefully curated collection of a couple of dozen classics - Bowie, Hawkwind, Zappa etc, and it's just really frustrating listening to well-known albums because they are so screwed up.

Thee Oh Sees released a big box set of 8 tracks a few years back:

https://5sevenrecords.bigcartel.com/product/thee-oh-sees-the-8-track-collection

http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2022/10/19/51933/blackadder_to_be_released_on_vinyl?rss

Read this and thought "wait, was Blackadder a radio thing first?".

But no: "On the discs are the soundtracks to all 24 TV episodes"

What, just the broadcast audio? Including the studio audience laugh tracks, dialogue-free pauses and all?

The current generation Blackadder would totally be a hipster vinyl grifter.

I have to assume that is it Matt, because I can't imagine the actual music used in the show to amount to 12 records!

Apparently it's on Audible and CDs already. Half hour per side of mostly spoken word is nothing new I guess. I wonder if colour vinyl could make that a bit trickier.

A bunch of BBC tv comedies, ie Yes Minister etc, were repurposed (and sometimes rerecorded) as radio comedies, and I think Blackadder was one of those.

I used to go to a pub that played Blackadder Goes Forth audio in the bloke's toilets. Made going for a slash more interesting I suppose.