Buying Vinyl?

for me the heyday of the new vinyl resurgence really was 15-20 years ago, when so much new vinyl was $15 or under. i still remember aron's records in hollywood had virtually all new indie rock vinyl priced at $7.99, $12.99 for double LPs. i remember picking up all the sleater-kinney vinyl at that rate. i think One Beat was more premium -- $8.99!)

in the new era, there are so few artists who have enough loyalty from the new vinyl target audience. Lana Del Rey can easily sell her albums for $30-$40, same goes for Taylor Swift and a small handful of others. legacy artists or those who are favored by the slightly older more trad vinyl audience will do pretty well. but for the vast majority of new LPs, they just sit there forever, or so it seems. i don't understand who's dropping $30-$50 on some of these when the CD is sitting there a few rows away for a fraction of the cost.

related: a friend and fellow U2 fan just sent me a link (emphasized with an angry face emoji) to the RSD release of Live Under a Blood Red Sky, which is retailing for $54.99.

xp ding ding ding -- impressive

Double Decker? Yeah that's a huge bummer, curious as to what the reason is too. I feel like the owner just wanted to do other things as even on random weekdays the place would be bustling with people and on Fridays and Saturdays it was jammed, without fail.

Yes! The store was incredible - for a while they were posting sealed OG Funkadelic records, just driving me nuts that I didn't live closer - even in my few times there I always came away with A+ purchases. Their prices were mostly fair from what I had seen. 27 years is a long time in any business so you might be right.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Tuesday, 21 November 2023 15:46 (three hours ago) link

Last night I had to break the news to my Bethlehem-based friend cause I saw the announcement before he did. Did not take it well...

It's got to be a personal or lease related reason. But the fact that it closes on December 2nd and was announced last night... there must be some major unavoidable reason why they'd provide such short notice with no word of store closing sale or anything, seemed odd to me.

The one measly visit I made there I got some insane deals on a couple of Grouper records, by the way, but the high priced stuff was especially high iirc.

Their $3 bins were really good if you want stuff like near mint Hall & Oates records.

Really interesting conversation. I'm a relatively new returner to vinyl - I have no idea how common my situation is, maybe it's a little unusual...

The first thing to say is that I'm really an amateur in all this business. I also suspect I have somewhat cloth ears for the finer points of recording quality. I follow the debate of whether CD/Vinyl/FLAC whatever gives better sound quality, but in all honesty myself I just can't tell. This even applies to my total rubbish record deck (how rubbish, you ask? Well my mum bought it from *Lidl* 10 years ago). Oftentimes it sounds fuzzy as hell. I don't care though, I still enjoy listening to it.

So why have I started to buy the odd bit of vinyl? Well it comes mostly from guilt. See, for about 15 years I never once purchased music. It wasn't that I stopped listening - it was simply Napster and downloads as a teen, then youtube, now streaming. It started to get ridiculous when I consider how much joy some musicians have given me - and some are still alive and releasing music.

It's so easy for me to reach for one of these digital solutions and basically have the music available - at effectively no price. CDs are indeed super cheap but feel a bit pointless, since it's almost the same experience (if you don't count finding a CD player and fussing with the disc). So post-pandemic I've been trying to see more acts live, and buy merchandise directly, in order to support them. Picking up some vinyl at a reasonable price (I can't really justify spending more than £30) - especially if I can buy direct from e.g. Bandcamp gives me the warm-and-fuzzies. They genuinely will be the medium I reach for in the evening, it's nice having the packaging and the old cliche of the "physical object".

Not sure how big a contribution people like me make though. I couldn't be bothered to do this with the "big acts" (they have enough cash aleady!). Will also never buy a tape again.

people want something shiny to hold and look at.

this weekend I saw some 2023 Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo Japanese releases displayed behind the counter. I couldn’t tell if they were 7”s or special cd packaging or something but they looked super nice.

nice thoughts jifMoose :)

This might be answered on a different thread but roughly what are the artists making on cd vs vinyl at a gig? ie what do they get for each £25-30 record sold vs a £10 CD? (Adjust to your local currency and actually throw in a £20-25 t-shirt while we're here)

Partly just curious but I'd like a concrete idea when I'm doing these weird merch table calculations as I decide whether and what to buy (feeling flush vs feeling broke, liked the band vs loved them, beautiful artifact vs nice enough object, band needs support vs commercial monster etc etc).

Last night I had to break the news to my Bethlehem-based friend cause I saw the announcement before he did. Did not take it well...

It's got to be a personal or lease related reason. But the fact that it closes on December 2nd and was announced last night... there must be some major unavoidable reason why they'd provide such short notice with no word of store closing sale or anything, seemed odd to me.

― Evan, Tuesday, November 21, 2023 2:18 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah the suddenness is very strange and I think you're right that even if it was his decision it decision it probably was a result of some outside factors.

They are a great store and they do what all great stores do - price stuff to move and turn their inventory over, mark it down until it sells, lean on old stuff and carry a curated selection of new stuff.

Stores who price stuff like they need to squeeze every possible penny (according to Discogs stats) that a record might be worth and leave it there for months or years, what's the thinking there? Idk

I hardly ever buy new vinyl for the reasons mentioned above, but as far as used stuff goes I've recently discovered the joys of classical vinyl. Compared to other genres it tends to be cheap and in excellent condition, and the pressings are usually high-quality to begin with.

For a long time I had the mindset that classical music is best-suited to digital formats because of digital's superior dynamics, absence of surface noise, not having to flip the record for longer pieces, etc. Then a few weeks ago I found a pristine copy of Gustav Leonhardt's 1969 recording of Bach's Art of Fugue on harpsichord (this one) at a local store for $6, and it totally destroyed my world. Sacred mathematics at the gates of infinity, elevated in the indescribable way you only get from a flawless vinyl pressing. Also for music this dense I find that being forced to listen in smaller sidelong doses is the best way to take it in.

So now I'm on a Bach vinyl spree (mostly keyboard works so far), and it sure as hell beats tracking down OG pressings of 70s prog and folk records like I had been doing for a while.

I'll stop raving, but first I want to shout out this pressing of Helmut Walcha's 1973-74 recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier on harpsichord. 5 LPs of some of the greatest keyboard music ever in a gorgeous package, and NM copies currently go for about $20.

That sounds like a neat way to switch things up.

that's awesome. Leonhardt's Bach harpsichord recordings are indeed transcendent

holy shit, yes! i have that same box! amazing

also, #onethread, try switching it up later tonight or tomorrow with this extremely glittery harpsichord-adjacent Catherine Christer Hennix keyboard interface composition:

https://blankformseditions.bandcamp.com/album/solo-for-tamburium

RSD release of Live Under a Blood Red Sky, which is retailing for $54.99.

i saw this...wtf, this is barely a full album's worth of music

budo jeru, I'm liking that Hennix quite a bit.

we are having kind of a joyous Hennix celebration across multiple threads at the moment!

Yeah budo, thanks for the Hennix rec (you had me at "harpsichord-adjacent" lol). About 10 minutes into it and I'm flying.

Also awesome that you have the Walcha WTC box. Desert island material for me.

i meant the Leonhardt box actually!

but i will definitely check out the Walcha recording

Oh sorry. The Leonhardt is just as awesome! I also love the cover design on that box, really suits the dark gothic vibe of the music.

I'm just gonna buy them both ;)

and yes, old used classical vinyl is absolutely one of the best bangs for your buck in terms of value for money

I love this thing:
https://www.discogs.com/release/4340406-Sibelius-Okko-Kamu-Herbert-von-Karajan-Gerhard-Stempnik-Radion-Sinfoniaorkesteri-Berliner-Philharmon

I'm just gonna buy them both ;)

This is the way.

Been meaning to get some Sibelius and that set looks lovely

I also wonder if/when the general shoddiness of new pressings is going to catch up with them

my new vinyl buying has dwindled to a trickle (those prices!) but the few i do pick up have been surprisingly/happily free of issues bar the occasional bit of distortion (grrr the reissue of ptah the el daoud notably), def not as bad as some of the rubbish pressings i have from the 2010s era looking at you 4mwb.

re classical scores: my shelves are BULGING with cheap & amazing classical lps... will forever bless the day i lucked into a mint copy of this for the equivalent of about 5 us dollars!

I picked up this from a National Trust shop the other day, unplayed and sounds amazing and has a lovely booklet as part of the box set:
https://www.discogs.com/release/10359578-Klemperer-Wagner-The-Philharmonia-Orchestra-Klemperer-Conducts-Wagner

I remember NickB provided some tips about what to look out for when buying second-hand classical vinyl, I will try to look those out and re-post

My main interest in classical vinyl is the 60s/70s avant stuff like Stockhausen and Xenakis, unfortunately the prices on those sets went through the roof years ago.

This is definitely one of the tricks to still enjoying collecting records - find stuff the general public don't want lol. Classical records are so plentiful and cheap at pretty much every store. There are a bunch of genres like that, too. I collect local country/folk/country rock records from the 70s and yeah there are the whales that command some money but so much is available for under $10. Many of them are miserable but sifting through is part of the whole thing, really.

xp no lime tangier, that Messiaen box looks incredible. I had no idea he recorded his own organ works! I'll have to track that down at some point, though I'm sure I'll have to pay a bit more than $5...

Another recent classical vinyl epiphany: Quartetto Italiano's 1965 recording of Debussy and Ravel's String Quartets on Philips (early Netherlands pressing). They're best versions I've heard of those magical quartets with surprisingly great fidelity for 1965; the recording sounds like it could have been made yesterday.

My main interest in classical vinyl is the 60s/70s avant stuff like Stockhausen and Xenakis, unfortunately the prices on those sets went through the roof years ago.

― lord of the rongs (anagram), Wednesday, November 22, 2023 4:16 AM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's been my experience that a lot of this can still be had for under $10!

xp*They're the best, that is

xp budo jeru Yeah I feel like almost every record store I've visited recently has a copy of this pressing of Xenakis's Metastasis / Pithoprakta / Eonta for under $10. But it's true the rarer Stockhausen, Xenakis, et al. pressings can be outrageously expensive.

I actually have had my eyes on a nice $45 copy of Stockhausen's Hymnen (mid-70s Deutsche Grammophon reissue) at a local shop for a while, but every time I go I find something cheaper that excites me even more.