Buying Vinyl?

Bandcamp does report to Soundscan per their site

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/05/man-who-made-12m-from-fake-vinyl-records-caught-out-by-clash-fan

haha yes I saw that earlier today. I don't understand how he was manufacturing them! Aren't all the pressing plants backed up for years? Was he making acetates? Buying from some established counterfeiting group? So many questions.

"Some of these bootleggers, they make pretty good stuff."

I don't understand how he was manufacturing them! Aren't all the pressing plants backed up for years? Was he making acetates? Buying from some established counterfeiting group? So many questions.

― Perverted By Linguiça (sleeve)

welcome to the chaos that went through my head as i read this.
also, a low quality clash pressing gave the game away !?
of all the bands to be able to do a quality check on.

Aren't all the pressing plants backed up for years?

The backup is now down to between 6 months and one year, depending on the plant and the order. But apparently there are pressing plants that will happily process an order from some rando who emailed them MP3s of Nevermind.

Bootleg pressings take up so much of the new reissue stock at a lot of record stores around here, and they’re pretty easy to spot. Not to mention “legit” bootlegs that could be found on plain recordings/4 men with beards/etc. With the really blatant illegal bootlegs, the stores must know what they are and they just don’t care.

the thing is, i knew i was buying bootleg cd editions of Brainfreeze via Fopp when i had the chance, given how rare the originals were.
but with a cd, it mattered not.
whereas with vinyl, i guess its a very different ballgame.

idk man I know for sure there are some boot CDs that are MP3-sourced (e.g. Muslimgauze "Chapter Of Purity")

ooh, god yeah, i have had that re soulwax mashup boots that sound truly 128 dreadful.
but the Brainfreeze boots that were available via Fopp looked very legit, and sounded great.
guess its easier if you have an original cd as source given there is a lot less chaos in the process as opposed to vinyl.

I think there are some plants where if you have a good relationship with them they can turn stuff around fairly quickly...like within a month or two. 100% Electronica for example does a ton of small run pressings and from what I've heard a lot of it is on pretty short notice. So I guess it IS possible if you've got someone on the inside.

The article makes it sound like he was buying stock from European bootleggers, not having the albums pressed himself.

i think this is the first time I've seen the phrase "told to wear a tag" for house arrest
i had to look this up. at first i thought he had to wear a nametag or something like "BOOTLEGGER"

The Scarlet Letter, but it says "VG-"

lol

Electronica for example does a ton of small run pressings and from what I've heard a lot of it is on pretty short notice. So I guess it IS possible if you've got someone on the inside.

I have long wondered about this and have even asked a few people who I would expect would be in the know but no one seems to have an answer. I see bands on social media complaining about waiting a year for test pressings but I feel like there are 75 new dance 12"s on Boomkat, Hardwax and Bleep every three days. And I'm assuming that the cost is more or less the same to press a 300 12"s as 300 LPs, or at least the difference is negligible as far as mastering and plating and test pressings and all that stuff. I buy a lot of house and techno so I'm not complaining, and if there is indeed a conspiracy or secret EDM handshake taking place I'm willing to look the other way, but it still seems odd to me. Kidding about the conspiracy, of course. Any theories? A lot of dance labels are based in Europe and the UK so maybe the plants are more plentiful or at least more accessible over there? I really have no idea!

The Sound of Vinyl site appears to be having a sale in which LPs are $8 total. They are listed as free but shipping is $8 and I don't think you can combine shipping. Found out about this from the Hoffman forums. A lot of the PJ Harvey reissues are included in this.

https://thesoundofvinyl.us/collections/1lp?q=&hPP=30&idx=official_products_price_asc&p=0&is_v=1&fbclid=PAAab7tOr1NeaoH4bAv-I3-t3WmPqmtp8fJUkdoWJqTTawZdQoLOCmuhCYIow_aem_th_ATdsdxFfyjLKXr5QlvRxwaglZp6G1HVdzBew44IORkb6_Gy5d8ZLnHvXAlxk_k83gHY

yeah it's been funky - sometimes you can't add an album to the cart, or sometimes you add it to the cart then it disappears, they are probably getting slammed i'm sure.

was finally able to process a transaction, picked up the PJ Harvey 91-04 Peel Sessions collection for $8 - pretty awesome

Yeah similarly I grabbed the Stories from the City Stories from the Sea - Demos. A lot of her demos LPs are cheap on discogs but not free + shipping. That's a pretty aggressive sale but I assume they figure it gets peoples attention and drives awareness for their online shop? "free records + shipping" is more likely to spread word of mouth than "cheap records + shipping" so I kind of get it, if that's what they're doing.

It took a lot of messing-around (adding and removing items) because things would disappear, but if I added enough I could get two 'free' albums in my cart and pay $8 total shipping for the order. Placed 7 orders like that, so 14 albums for $56 total, a couple of them double LPs even. I mostly got PJ Harvey reissues/demos, a few jazz reissues, the last Avalanches album and some hip-hop (Jeezy, Eve,PE).

had no clue that Avalanches album was on there, that's definitely worth the eight bucks

Amazing - thanks for the heads up. Got 6 records in 5 orders for $43.

FYI it looks like albums are still being added to this sale.

I'm not really finding a good way to view them all, and this link is broken:

https://thesoundofvinyl.us/collections/markdowns

The link upthread works for me. Just check the box for In Stock.

nothing on offer on the UK site of course.

Unrelated but why is it for certain records 90+% of copies you find will have a corner cut?

Are you asking why record stores would cut the corners, or why so many ended up with cut corners?

anyway all it means is that the record companies overshot and produced way more than people were willing to buy at full price for that title. so most copies ended up getting remaindered (cut corner) and sold for a discount.

FWIW, I recognized certain titles as being poorly reviewed elsewhere due to poor mastering - Natty Dread for example - or due to digital sources when other reissues were all-analog, so it's possible certain titles were simply records they had trouble moving.

yeahhhh I looked at those and that was my first thought, bad digital rips or poor manufacturing

The reviews of that particular site have me staying away from this sale but hope everybody gets what they ordered ASAP

could not resist the pj peels

Eh sorry a bit late to reply to the above but I meant specific albums…for example, like at least 17 out of 20 copies of Zarthus by Robbie Basho (if you can even find one these days!) will have a cut corner, whereas for your average album you might find 1 out of every 20. Did Zarthus just not sell well in relation to units pressed? If so that’s interesting, as it usually fetches a decent amount of money ($60-$100 range) these days.

Well that's a pretty common thing though; the album that sold poorly upon release but becomes a sought after cult hit many years later. So common I'm actually a bit surprised you find it interesting!

But I don't mean to offend, just reminds me of some of the basic misconceptions I'd hear as a record clerk, like when someone selling back vinyl would argue about the value based solely on whether the albums were "good" or not (regarding quality of music, not condition).

But if you're implying that it would mean there should be more copies out in the wild that were never claimed, I suppose but I wonder how many were pressed initially too.

Sound of Vinyl is having another "Free" sale - just pay shipping. Picked up 4 and paid $43 for shipping + taxes.

https://thesoundofvinyl.us/collections/secret-specials

Looks like shipping fee is way up... $8 shipping last time (1LP) now displaying as $14 for me with no other options available.

yeah me too, it's kind of a gimmick sale..say maybe $10 record sale at this point or something, but still not bad depending

40 bucks for new, long out of print vinyl

https://store.bluenote.com/products/mccoy-tyner-extensions-lp-blue-note-tone-poet-series

grabbed some PJ Harvey records; averaged out to about $10/each which is not bad

What's the general state of the vinyl market at the moment? Have prices peaked and started to fall again or are things much as they were 12-18 months ago?

Asking mainly as a casual buyer who, for one reason and another, pretty much gave up on it about four years ago.

I feel like prices have peaked and demand isn’t as high — prices haven’t dropped a ton but have come down at least slightly but no idea how far they’ll fall…probably not any lower than pre-pandemic prices anytime soon.

it's still terrible i.e. expensive but yeah I feel like it may actually have peaked

I was glancing through my wantlist on Discogs for the first time in a while and it feels like I saw significantly fewer eye-popping prices.

every year or two i have a market stall selling excess vinyl from my collection and decent LPs that I have picked up cheap in my travels

the first time i did it (maybe 10-15 years ago) people were crawling over each other to buy average Lou Reed records for $20

but the stall i had a couple of months ago was the slowest day's trade i have ever had - felt like most of my sales came from lifers, but that the newer buyers had really evaporated

i ended up taking a few crates of stuff i wasn't into to the op shop/thrift store just to free up room at home, and resolved to not do it again for quite a while!

I'd say prices are rising at a slower rate, and perhaps sellers pricing more "optimistically" are willing to accept less. The gold rush aspect seems to have died down a little bit. It's possible things have peaked, but there are some recent factors that will influence the near future and possibly beyond:

Postage rates continue to rise. For americans it has become inconvenient and expensive to ship worldwide. For example, to ship anything USPS-insured to the UK must now be sent Express at a cost of like $70. IIRC, vinyl used to cost $22 or so to send to the UK on the standard service. Might still, but you can't insure standard service and must use express (this is what I was told- if anyone knows a way, please share as I'd love to be wrong). There's all sorts of new documentation, HS Tariff (whatever the fuck that means), VAT... all this shit that used to be handled by the customs and or buyers in their destination countries is now burdening sellers who are now expected to navigate this stuff on their own... it's just not realistic to expect someone selling a record every once in a while making like $15 after expenses to spend the time and effort on documentation. And you have to send insured because if buyers decide literally anything is "wrong", with or without proof, acting in good faith or bad, the buyer gets a free item or the seller must $15/20/50 whatever to get their item back. Casual sellers are going to do that once and never again, and stores are going to realize how little they make after factoring time as an expense. Sellers limiting where they ship to or not selling online at all mean less supply and higher prices.

Discogs new rate increases now include shipping, so that's another disincentive, and more sellers that sell only domestically or pack it in altogether.

Titles become unavailable (at least temporarily) almost immediately, everything is a limited edition now. Even the new Beatles single, the Stones album, those were believe it or not very scarce at retail. And speaking of silly prices, the new Red/Blue albums are about $75 each brand new. $75! Manufacturing has never caught up to the 15 year vinyl resurgence, and the resulting prices/scarcity are turning a lot of people off... and this is just for new reissues- commodity stuff, or what should be. Not all new vinyl- Target editions seem to be so overpressed that these equalize on the second hand market to sane prices, often $15-22. Much like a huge chunk of RSD stuff from last/a few years back- which can be like $8 plus shipping. I would say that most RSD titles, in the aggregate, now sell for below wholesale cost.

I think the CD resurgence is becoming less of a punchline. Let's face it, vinyl is a problematic format.

on the new side, feels like there's a real glut. some crazy sales lately (like Sound of Vinyl). Plaid Room Records had good stuff marked up to 70% off, with a warning that shipping could be up to five weeks! not sure where that inventory came from.

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

My 17 year old coworker told me yesterday she spent $100 at Goodwill and I was like right on, hope you got a nice coat or boots or something. Then she told me she bought a “Grease vinyl” for $30.
Goodwill in on the grift!

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Monday, November 20, 2023 3:10 PM