No more cd/record stores in 10 years? Wash. Post article

Probably ignoring the fact that independant buyers have bought several of the locations (including the one near me, shmee!).

Also, Manifest didn't surrender. There was nothing wrong with sales, the owner just was frustrated by large labels not willing to give his store the same power as something like iTunes (in-store kiosks where people could burn custom CDs and then purchase them) and also didn't want to be in a place where he would have to start firing people, etc. He saw large changes to the record retail business looming and felt he wasn't going to be allowed to make the changes he'd have to to survive. So he got out on top, while Manifest was still "working." There were some good articles on it, in CMJ and in some local papers, that talk more in-depth about why he did it.

Maybe I'm too old and out-of-touch, but I thought people do want to hold a nice product in their hand, they just don't want to pay $ 15 to $ 20 for it...

(I hate the future, too.)

End OF Records! "In ten years, tops, everyone over forty will spontaneously die, and they're useless in every way anyway, so there'll be no one to buy CDs!!!" said Roger Nincompoople for the Hyperbolic Market Analysis Group.

"Only kids are interested in music and they won't buy anything, maybe just MP3s! And they're going to die, too, eventually. In a decade, everyone's fucked, permanently..."

Because it gets you out of the house? An important thing if you're not planning on life as a permanent shut-in or facsimile of a computer chip.

I can do without the hunt. I'll take the kiss without a lot of anticipation, John Keats notwithstanding.

Well, George, that's my point....it was a rhetorical question. I'm all FOR getting up and out and interacting with the world, as opposed to sitting in front of a computer screen.

Retailers are also scrambling for a seat at the digital download table. A consortium of the biggest players -- including Virgin, Tower and FYE -- will launch their own downloadable music stores through a technology company they jointly invested in, called Echo. The idea is that Echo will allow the stores to split the cost of building a downloadable sales infrastructure, then handle transactions and downloads on separately branded Web sites.

"Our members do $5 billion worth of business now," says Echo's president, Dan Hart. "The question is, how do you leverage those assets?"

No, it's also a lash-up of anecdotes and closings knit into a tapestry of bull and passed off as daily newspaper wisdom about an inexorable trend.

Let's see, record stores in Pasadena: A couple in old town, apparently doing OK. Tower Records -- maybe doomed. Canterbury in the center of town, apparently doing OK. Poobah's -- recently forced to move toward west side of town on Colorado because the house it was renting in was sold. Liquid Music -- still open the last time I passed by a few months ago. Mom and pop's outnumber the giant boxter,
which is supposed to be in trouble. Oh yeah, and BestBuy -- which is also doing all right. And I'm sure I've missed a couple.

Talk to friend who runs mom & pop record store in Lehigh Valley, about once a week. Business was poorer a couple years ago, now better.
No forcast, either way.

That's the Manifest near me too.

I believe that plenty of music lovers will continue to purchase cds. Hell, plenty of people still buy vinyl, don't they? Wasn't that supposed to end with the advent of the cd? Weren't we supposed to be living in a paperless society right now due to the advent of the personal computer? Things change. The music industry is being forced into change, so everyone runs around screaming that the sky is falling.

Rockist, do you have a stereo? I run a line in from my pc to my tuner, and play mp3s through my stereo speakers. It makes a HUGE difference in sound quality.

I've got record collectors disease so i know i'll keep my friendly neighborhood independent record store in business as much as i can. I love the vibe, i love removing the outer plastic wrap, i've even learned to love removing that pain in the arse Pull sticker at the top.

...and it's a chance to get out and hear stuff i never would otherwise.

There will always be Russian FTPs.

Ho-ho-HOOO! ;)

Amoeba makes very little money on new releases (10-30% mark-up depending on the distributor). They make more money on buying used LPs/CDs/DVDs for a fraction of their retail price and managing the float on ROI.

He never buys software or video games either.

His dad always was into ripping off the cable company for the pay channels.

Not to say Alex in NYC doesn't, but think of the rest of us socially disabled types.

It's okay though, as long as I have dancing to fall back on I manage.

The single, as an actual physical format not just something you download, may be dying though.

1. Wake up in the morning
2. Wash
3. Post Article

Clean 'n' sober since Audiogalaxy's untimely passing... and still counting.

Maybe you should change your moniker to DICKO DICKO, `cos that's what yer being.

By no means did I really mean to imply that rifling through bins at record stores equates with "interacting with the world," but it at least gets one out of the house, n'est-ce que pas?

I don't think you did suggest it, actually - George Smith did. I see what you're saying though, I got excited about paying my rent cheque today cos it got me away from my work (and my avoiding of it on ILE) and into the fresh air. I just thought George's shut-in crack was funny given the shambling excuses for humanity I've seen/been in record shops.

The ones that will have most trouble are labels specializing in compilation CDs, such as Rhino, Box Music, Circa Records etc. Obviously, when you can put together your own compilation (or fill your mp3 player or Ipod) why then should you have other people compiling your disk for you?

With the RIAA cracking down on 12 year olds for downloading, and the fact that Kazaa just got raided, how long do you see us downloading for free? Audiogalaxy has filters all over it. Napster actually charges.

The record stores should be around for years yet. Though a mate in NYC said that there's only one HMV left in all Manhattan, out of (I think) 5 10 years ago.

I'm not sure there's even one left!

Think about this, though: my local record store (an HMV) went defunct in 2002 and was eventually replaced with a Best Buy...which also happens to sell records, though obviously with a much tighter selection.

I think that's what clearly what's been happening with record stores in general -- records that might've been bought at Sam Goody's or Tower ten years ago are now being bought at generalist electronic stores like Best Buy or even stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart. And now many record stores also carry DVDs, too. It's as if, for whatever reason, records just aren't enough anymore to carry a whole store.

This possibly makes the listener completely superfluous, too, though: I mean, if I can't jump into the skull of the artist and see things through his fisheye lens, why bother ever having any kind of opinion about any piece of music I didn't make?

Tell that to "his" manager.

So, here we are, 10 years later...

"The fat lady is warming up, but she's not exactly singing," says Mike Dreese, who runs Newbury Comics, a music chain in Massachusetts. "We're five to seven years from a complete meltdown. The only question is whether our death is in seven years or eight. Everybody's lights are out in 10."

There are currently 26 Newbury Comics retail locations

http://www.newburycomics.com/rel/v2_home.php?storenr=103&deptnr=60

Is that more than in 2004?

i hear mash-ups are the future of music and blogs are the future of journalism holler at me

I hate the future.
― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, February 9, 2004 3

10 years later
Go see the doctor

not sure that folks could have predicted the vinyl resurgence 10 years ago. also CDs have taken a little longer to die than the hyperbole would have had you believe. but almost all the chain record stores are dead. newbury comics is an exception, though last time i was there (2011) it was a pale shadow of what it was in the late 90s.

and i do think some newbury locations closed. is there still one in government center?

obv "vinyl resurgence" is itself somewhat hyperbolic as vinyl sales still pale in comparison with... just about anything else. but it's a major resurgence compared to where vinyl was at the turn of the century.

I'm highly skeptical of the vinyl resurgence hype - at the turn of the century tens of thousands of DJ's were still spinning wax by the caseload and every track was available on vinyl, nowadays nearly everyone had gone digital. So while vinyl *album* sales might've gone up, the huge 12" market has fallen off a cliff, and pretty much all specialty dance music stores have closed down.

newbury comics is an exception, though last time i was there (2011) it was a pale shadow of what it was in the late 90s.

feel like now it's a pale shadow of what it was in 2011 even! and yea i think a few locations have closed (cambridge alewife for sure) others have opened in new locations, as well. they replaced most of the cd sections with overpriced vinyl sections. i don't buy shit from them any more.

I still try to buy domestic releases from Newbury but they closed the location closest to me. I'm basically committed to Amazon now.

Last time I was near Berwick Street, I thought "hey, let's go Sister Ray"

Blimey, that's relocated and shrunk, hasn't it?

Aw... Berwick St was like a holy shrine when I visited London in the 80s and 90s. Not so much anymore I reckon.

i really like discogs for buying shit. amazon marketplace too (btw, what cut does amazon receive from third party sales?)

Err can't remember. Store I used to work at almost completely depended on our daily amazon sales of used CDs/DVDs.

Newbery Comics, at least the one near me, is now primarily a seller of T-shirts, coffee mugs, comics, various pop cult junk/trinkets, overpriced vinyl and, deep in the back, an ever-diminishing shelf of CDs

yea they are all pretty much like that, music selection itself is a joke

i mean i don't really blame them, if people aren't buying music there (other than overpriced vinyl) they have to figure out someway to survive

Haven't been to one since 2008? Wow. Last one I visited was somewhere in CT. I remember the music section at the time was pretty full then! Bummer if it's gone downhill since.

used to buy tons of shit, mostly jazz, from cutler's records in new haven, they used to have two adjacent storefronts. went a year or two ago and they lost the other storefront. arrghh i know formats change and everything and there is so much that is convenient about digital music but i have so many connections and memories about these places, most of which are gone now (not all though).

I'm highly skeptical of the vinyl resurgence hype

sales data doesn't lie. CD market share is declining. vinyl market share is increasing.

When do we estimate the hip resurgence of CDs is going to happen?

I'm guessing never

i still buy new releases at newbury comics cause old habits die hard i guess. they just opened another mall location tho. glad they figured out how to survive by being the slightly classier hot topic.

hot topic, lol yes i feel super old going there, at least to the one on newbury street which is pretty much all filled with college kids

I'm guessing never

I was half-joking, but it'll happen. There was so much 90s stuff that was only ever issued on CD, so the fetishization of some of that stuff is bound to come at some point.

^^^

people always make this weird assumption when a new format reaches saturation that everything previously available in other formats is now also by default available in this new format, which is actually never the case.

When do we estimate the hip resurgence of CDs is going to happen?

― ƋППṍӮɨ∏ğڵșěᶉᶇдM℮ (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, October 10, 2014 10:51 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm guessing never

― sleeve, Friday, October 10, 2014 10:55 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

after seeing new cassettes every show i go to i'm not going to discount the possibility!

i saw a young hipster with a discman the other day

there is so much stuff (still!) that was never issued on CD or issued digitally

there are about three MORE record stores in the twin cities then there were when this article was published btw

barely brothers, into the void, and agartha...might be more

there is so much stuff (still!) that was never issued on CD or issued digitally

― Οὖτις, Friday, October 10, 2014 11:42 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno man all the boutique labels really seem to be scouring for any last things that haven't been

Right, the boutique labels will reissue stuff on vinyl/digital, but you are always going to have people that fetishize the "original" release. As pointed out above, if cassettes can come back from the dead, CDs will too, at some point.

I can totally envision a whatever 2028's tumblr equivalent is dedicated to late 90s CD singles packed with remixes.

there's loads of comps and reissues but there are tons of old country albums that were never issued on CD

xp

complete versions of Waylon's 60s records were never issued on CD. ditto a lot Dolly's late 60s/early 70s stuff. ditto Buck Owens etc. And these are people that were gigantic/huge names in the genre! imagine what else is out there.

Man I love CDs tbh. I like to have that focus on one album at a time.

reggae catalogs also rife with stuff that's never been properly issued on CD

xp

sales data doesn't lie. CD market share is declining. vinyl market share is increasing.

But total market share of all physical formats is down

that is true and will probably continue to be the case, but it looks like what's going to decline for the foreseeable future is CD sales

this whole market is a red herring, vinyl sales are increasing, but it's future is not as a mass market, no one on earth is suggesting that it's ever going to be the default music playback technology, but as a special interest item it seems to be thriving and sales have been increasing by larger percentages each year. this probably won't continue indefinitely but it does seem to be a trend and not a fad...also at a certain point, it's self-reinforcing as the more records you have you tend to collect more and see the value in it.

but the vinyl industry already went through its traumatic fall from being a mass market media 20 years ago, so the scale is already adjusted to being what it is, a niche market item.

the whole ARGUMENT is a red herring (correction)

yeah I agree w all that

I hope so. I asked a class full of 18-19 yos + a few older students if they thought vinyl would be more popular in 10 years and they all said yes, emphatically - special case admittedly, since they are doing a music production course, but they're much more confident than me.

r/vinyl is a good place to see what 18-19 year old collectors are like

http://www.reddit.com/r/vinyl

anything that starts with r/ is not a good place to see anything, ime

used to buy tons of shit, mostly jazz, from cutler's records in new haven, they used to have two adjacent storefronts. went a year or two ago and they lost the other storefront. arrghh i know formats change and everything and there is so much that is convenient about digital music but i have so many connections and memories about these places, most of which are gone now (not all though).

― marcos, Friday, October 10, 2014 11:20 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think Cutlers is completely gone now. They weren't adapting to new music buying trends, that's for sure.

"and while sales may continue to rise a little bit more over the coming years, its never going to be much more than what it is, a niche."

http://skotrok.blogspot.com/2011/03/my-2011-emp-pop-conference-paper.html

from my 2011 vinyl paper thing. not much has changed since i wrote that. vinyl is still back. every year it is back.

anything that starts with r/ is not a good place to see anything, ime

― ƋППṍӮɨ∏ğڵșěᶉᶇдM℮ (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, October 10, 2014 1:33 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah probably not but I would bet based on the majority of posts I've seen there 18-19 demo makes up 95% of the subscribers.

Newbery Comics, at least the one near me, is now primarily a seller of T-shirts, coffee mugs, comics, various pop cult junk/trinkets, overpriced vinyl and, deep in the back, an ever-diminishing shelf of CDs

― col, Friday, October 10, 2014 10:12 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's how i felt when i stopped in in 2011. even in 2001, the last time i had been to a newbury previously, they were already moving in this direction. i'm really turned off by "record stores" that seem only marginally like record stores--more like "lifestyle" stores with vinyl as just one of numerous accoutrements. not my thing.

as for a CD revival, who knows? i wouldn't bet against it. i think the CD is a great format, all things considered. superior to vinyl in many respects. perhaps most respects. that's a /very/ unfashionable opinion at present, if i mention it in certain company i get looks like i just told them about my alien-abduction experience.

i mean part of me is seduced by the collector cache and current hipness of vinyl, but i'm prevented from going "all in" by the expense of new vinyl... and frankly I'm likely to play a CD more often.

cds i can take in my car and upload to my laptop and ipod touch if i want to. vinyl i can only listen to at home during the two hours of alone time i have each week

? why can't you play vinyl when other people are around is there some kind of embarassing ritual involved

no pants

reason: acoustics

lol

for real though those other times i am cooking, taking care of a 2 year old, eating dinner with my wife, watching a movie with my wife, getting shit done around the house. suppose i could put on some vinyl during a few of those but it seems extraneous sometimes. catching up with my wife at the end of the day, we're normally talking about a ton of shit sometimes that is pretty important and having some cool buck owens or miles record on in the background can be fun but other times just burdensome to the conversation, often not worth doing. vinyl while my kid is awake = no fuckin way since he would be mystified by the turntable and want to open the lid and play with the arm and stylus. wife works 2 nights a week and after i put the kid to bed i might feel inclined to put on some vinyl since i might not have much else going on

i mean lets face it vinyl is really cool and there is definitely a lot of shit that is only available in that format but otherwise it is a pretty inconvenient medium for people w/ busy lifestyles

Thing is, all I see is articles that claim vinyl *album* sales are up, nothing about the collapse in the much bigger 12" market. Granted, you'd need to have access to pressing plant numbers, but I doubt there's more vinyl being sold now than in, say, 2001.

Then again, if the huge market of $5 12"s has been replaced by much smaller numbers of $40 limited edition coloured extra heavy boxed set vinyl, total revenues and profits might not have suffered so much.

i know that a lot of pressing plants have added 3rd shifts, that more plants are being brought online....and from friends who own and run indie labels that they plants are very much pressing to capacity to the point where there can be delays with getting stuff

much bigger 12" market

uh

plants are very much pressing to capacity to the point where there can be delays with getting stuff

this matches my experience as well

vinyl while my kid is awake = no fuckin way since he would be mystified by the turntable and want to open the lid and play with the arm and stylus.

I've got a 2yo too and he just learned not to mess w the turntable but I dunno every kid is different etc. my daughter will turn the record over/put something on if I ask her to :)

i do think that the vinyl bubble is going to burst in the next few years. maybe that's not the most apt metaphor... it might just kind of fade away. but the kids will only keep buying these useless (in the sense of not needing them to hear music; indeed i think a lot of people buy the vinyl and spend more time listening to MP3s), overpriced status symbols for so long.

i buy a lot of vinyl still, but it's mostly stuff that isn't on CD or just stuff i can get for cheaper or easier on that format.

(or occasionally stuff where the CD sounds like shit)

it might just kind of fade away. but the kids will only keep buying these useless (in the sense of not needing them to hear music; indeed i think a lot of people buy the vinyl and spend more time listening to MP3s), overpriced status symbols for so long.

yea, agree with that

i feel like ppl have been saying that for the last 10 years too and yet....

there's this other possibility that people actually really enjoy the hobby and enjoy listening to music on vinyl

no they are all poseurs

disappointed that it wasn't /r/vinyls

there's this other possibility that people actually really enjoy the hobby and enjoy listening to music on vinyl

some do, for sure!

but i sort of doubt those people account for the current vinyl bubble.

(FWIW urban outfitters is the #1 largest vendor of vinyl records in the USA.)

it's so weird how while most people have generally accepted one of the core truths of popism ("people listen to the music they enjoy because they enjoy it, it's really as simple as that") there's still a pretty aggro contingent of people who get all BLAH BLAH SCIENCE YOU DON'T ACTUALLY LIKE RECORDS OR IF YOU DO IT'S NOT FOR THE REASONS YOU SAY, THE HUMAN EAR BLAH BLAH about vinyl

people like what they like, back up off vinyl people just dig it is all

The data doesn't even account for used sales of vinyl at stores, on ebay, and discogs. I would wager used sales dwarf new sales by multiples.

(FWIW urban outfitters is the #1 largest vendor of vinyl records in the USA.)

― I dunno. (amateurist), Friday, October 10, 2014 5:21 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I heard that ended up being a lie.

Also Urban Outfitters is the biggest because they have a zillion locations chainswhere all the rest is largely sold in single owner retail stores or very small regional chains

they're probably the largest vendor of *new* vinyl aka m@tt otm

Record stores only really make money on used items, too.

yeah actually amazon--predictably--sells more copies. and yeah Urban Outfitters sells more vinyl b/c they are one of the few massive chains that sells vinyl. so it's a misleading statistic.

maybe i'm just kind of blinded by the fact that i cannot understand why a 19-year-old wants to spend $30 on a new vinyl version of some hot new album when it is much cheaper and more convenient to spend $15 (or less) on it by downloading it from the label, iTunes, whatever. more convenient as a purchase, more options re. where and how to listen to it, etc. and based on my limited knowledge a lot of folks have really shitty USB record players.

i have to wonder if it's the very inconvenience and expense of vinyl that makes it an attractive purchase to some people. it becomes a symbol--of one's devotion to a band or to music in general, or just to one's ability to make such a purchase. i don't think these "reasons" would need to be fully conscious to be true.

FWIW i still think younger folks buying vinyl is very much the exception. i briefly DJ'ed at a local college radio station and all the undergrads there just brought in flash drives, laptops, iPads, etc. with MP3s to play over the air. in fact, the record players and CD players were used so infrequently that they were often left in disrepair and nobody complained.

the result of playing lossy MP3s over the air results, btw, in predictably shitty-sounding radio much of the time.

there were a few undergrads who insisted on playing stuff on vinyl but they formed a small, hard core of nerdism

"maybe i'm just kind of blinded by the fact that i cannot understand why a 19-year-old wants to spend $30 on a new vinyl version of some hot new album when it is much cheaper and more convenient to spend $15 (or less) on it by downloading it from the label, iTunes, whatever. more convenient as a purchase, more options re. where and how to listen to it, etc. and based on my limited knowledge a lot of folks have really shitty USB record players."

Few things-

1. It isn't always $30 vs. $15, Sometimes it's $17 vs. $12 or something
2. Incentives can be a really snazzy package, with limited colored vinyl and all that stuff that makes them want it beyond reason because they're suckered into the hobby of "collecting"
3. Most importantly- you left out the part about the MP3 card included with 90% of albums teenagers would buy! This makes any mark up justified because they still get the convenience of MP3s.

yeah, i guess as i get older and accumulate more stuff i really highly prize space and all the deluxxxe box sets the size of my head have little appeal...

i'm still kind of weird in that if i'm going to pay for something i want a physical copy, not a file that might disappear when my hard drive decides to play dead. but i want that physical copy to be maximally convenient and minimally sized....

Like if you check r/vinyl as an anthropologist, you'll see that they fetishize mostly new and common releases that cater to the MP3 need. They'd probably lose fans if they didn't. And even if they can't get the files directly they'll figure out a way to download them.

right xp

Convenience is why vinyl went away in the first place, it has nothing to do with why it came back.

Teenagers were brought up with the idea that they could get anything from the internet they want. So if they're actually going to shell out money for something physical it better be substantial. CDs don't provide the reward of ownership, and they aren't as free or as convenient as MP3s so they're in a kind of purgatory.

xpost

right -- i was suggesting that the very inconvenience of the format has something to do with its current (and possibly ephemeral?) appeal.

and by inconvenience i mean its stubborn, cumbersome nature, which also imparts its collector appeal, because it's big and snazzy

I presume that unless they're nerding out about their equipment and the sound of vinyl vs. other formats, they're just buying the records as trophies they can mine mp3s from. 2 kinds of customers there.

my SO had a roommate who certainly fit the first description. she bought her favorite albums on vinyl but never listened to them in that format. but maybe i'm being an asshole by assuming that's true of a lot of the other folks who are helping to drive the current vinyl bubble.

part of me is just grossed out that "capitalism" (i know that ascribing agency to an impersonal force like that is problematic) has found a way to sell people vinyl based in part on the very qualities for which it was (not so very long ago) disparaged in favor of the CD. it just seems so stupid and wasteful to me. but i also realize that in some cases it is one of the few ways that artists can make money off of their music, the very reason vinyl is pushed so heavily on merch tables at shows etc. so it's not a simple thing.

i think in general it's a very confusing time. the music that most people would want to listen to is quite easy to get for free, so paying to listen to it becomes a choice. all kinds of different and sometimes contradictory behaviors and choices flow from that--ones that wouldn't make sense in an era when for the most part if you wanted to hear something you had to go out and buy it.

it just seems so stupid and wasteful to me.

How do those workers who make your iPhone in Chinese factories feel? Or copper miners?

I'm sorry but it just drives me nuts when people are like "oh haven't we moved on beyond this fetishization of objects in this digital age maaaan?" When apple products are some of the most fetishized objects ever

FWIW i still think younger folks buying vinyl is very much the exception

Thirdly absolutely no one was arguing that God was the case

This not God

yeah instead of buying records now people buy entire new mediums to play their music on every couple of years, the magic of capitalism etc. (I have had the same record player for 25 years btw)

or what matt said (again)

xp

I, for one, am looking forward to the day when I go into a used vinyl store and find numerous $5 or less copies of Lana Del Rey and Paolo Nutini vinyl.

???

why are you making me into some apple-adoring straw man?

and why would you assume that i think that the contradictions involved in the vinyl market somehow negate or trump the problems with the digital consumer product supply chain?

xxpost

"God was the case" makes me think of a born-again snoop dogg album

i've been buying more (used) vinyl lately! discogs is kind of dangerous. but i just look for deals. it's always been about price for me.
here's what I got this week, it is great
http://store.acousticsounds.com/images/large/UEMI_SLS988__81696__03272012090142-2718.jpg

why are you making me into some apple-adoring straw man?

Because you've been making every one that bus vinyl into a straw man urban outfitters shopping extra from Girls?

lol

why are you making me into some apple-adoring straw man?

Because you've been making every one that bus vinyl into a straw man urban outfitters shopping extra from Girls?

― u2 removal machine (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, October 10, 2014 6:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i suppose i've been leaning in that direction in some posts, but i've mentioned a few times that i don't think all vinyl collectors (I'm one of them!) are like that, just that a lot of the "boom" in new vinyl sales in recent years is likely due to a kind of mainstream interest in vinyl among younger folks. do you think that's wrong? it's possible that it is.

you're being kind of ass btw, but this is ILM, so you know...

and yeah classical vinyl can be had for really cheap, except for the real collector bait stuff. actually classical anything can be had for real cheap. my tastes were shaped in large part by what genres you could get used CDs and LPs for cheap in the 1990s/2000s... that means a lot of classical and jazz, esp.

what are we supposed to be upset about again?

people who aren't as cool as us

Let's see, record stores in Pasadena: A couple in old town, apparently doing OK. Tower Records -- maybe doomed. Canterbury in the center of town, apparently doing OK. Poobah's -- recently forced to move toward west side of town on Colorado because the house it was renting in was sold. Liquid Music -- still open the last time I passed by a few months ago. Mom and pop's outnumber the giant boxter,
which is supposed to be in trouble. Oh yeah, and BestBuy -- which is also doing all right. And I'm sure I've missed a couple.

― George Smith, Monday, February 9, 2004 1:28 PM

Tower is closed, Moby Disc is closed, Liquid Music is closed. Poobah's is continuing on the strength of vinyl, their CD section (even the used) is sad. Canterbury is still there, but I don't think they're doing that well. Best Buy has sunk quite a bit in selection, as has Fry's in Burbank (they were very impressive when they opened). The jazz store on Hill I think is gone. The record swap meet is still going strong, for both vinyl and CD. Thank god for Amoeba.

Man I love CDs tbh. I like to have that focus on one album at a time.

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Friday, October 10, 2014 12:55 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^

Interesting thread here. My habit is to buy everything I really want or like on vinyl, but like marcos, I find there is very little time nowadays to devote to actually sitting down and interfacing with a record. The result is that my wife and I buy a lot of vinyl that sits in a pile, unplayed, for weeks, even months at a time (the same was true of Netflix DVDs before we had streaming). As opposed as I am to the idea of a digital or cloud-based music collection (see below), I'm not sure Spotify or whatever has as much to do with this as just having a life that doesn't really accommodate those wonderful hours of sedentary sloth many of us prized when we were teenagers / undergrads / etc. Listening to vinyl becomes, for us, a special occasion sorta thing; a reward for having accomplished shit during the day. We drink wine, smoke weed, jam a Freddie Hubbard record.

I can't listen to vinyl while I cook because flipping the sides (especially if it's a double record) becomes a pain in the ass and a major obstacle to enjoying the music. I can finally admit this now: vinyl is sometimes not worth the trouble.

But here's where things get wacky: I recently decided to buy a cheap stereo CD player--not a boombox, but the cheapest thing with actual detachable speakers I could find--and a spool of blank CDs. I have been burning things from my iTunes and listening to them one at a time (as opposed to within a playlist) in my office. I've been burning albums that are 33 minutes long and not coupling them with other short albums, because I want to know, definitively, when the albums begin and end. I have found that I have been absorbing music the way I used to--I am listening to albums as opposed to hearing them while other stuff is happening. Each album gets its own time, and remains in the CD player until I'm done with it for the day. I realize this shows my age (I'm 36, and my relationship to music was definitely formed, more or less, by the CD). But I also find CDs really underrated as a format, especially now that you can get them for pennies on the dollar: There's a Half Price Books near my house that regularly sticks things in the dollar bin I'd have gladly paid $15.99 for ten years ago. I'm sure the idea of buying a basket full of Constantines and Tortoise CDs seems wasteful and maybe even crazy to some of you, but I just can't resist those bargains.

As for CDs ever coming back, though, I definitely wouldn't count on that. Cheap, yes, and underrated, yes, but these things don't even have the shelf life of cassettes (I inherited some of my dad's from the early 80s that still play fine). Have you tried to play a CDR from 2005 recently? You might be pretty disappointed when you do.

Yeah like all those awesome rudy van gelder jazz reissues

these things don't even have the shelf life of cassettes

You're referring to CD-Rs and not CDs, of course. I've many cassettes that we used to record our band in the 90s that tragically were not digitized before they went flakey. And yet, with the exception of my PDO discs and those that I stupidly treated with that purple shit to try to remove scratches, I've had no trouble with information loss on CDs.

traded with a pal and got this the other day. 1st stereo press. sounds awesome. silkscreened cover is heaven.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/10710868_10153393837037137_3551678626599861571_n.jpg?oh=6b0e703c70afd98d96155c679b3bb9e0&oe=54B9BCF7&__gda__=1422296387_13ce7a893b35a8476f9864db02e74a22

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10409724_10153393838302137_2793724790645861257_n.jpg?oh=a9c4eba5b6465396e5cd29ef48ff6d0a&oe=54F4813C&__gda__=1421588778_99c467f9fe02eb9db6bf63e37acbcb4e

good story with my cranky record brother. go to the fair if you are in hudson, ny today:

http://www.registerstar.com/news/article_8f5a8532-5082-11e4-bf21-3be9064a6cf5.html

“With a CD, there’s an endless ringing in your ears if you play it at high volume. On a cross-country trip, with a cassette player, your ears would still be fine, but with a CD, you’d have hearing damage.

This is the first I've heard of this phenomenon. Any empirical evidence? Also as someone who suffers from tinnitus acquired in the pre-digital sound era, I'd argue that loud is loud regardless of the source.

I feel like some of that was explored in one of our digital compression threads but I can;t search right now

yo are you the big homie doug watson or some other doug watson?

i can definitely get ear fatigue from CDs. but maybe its a phenomena reserved for me and my brudder.

xp likely someone else

Sure, CDs are prone to over-compression which can lead to ear fatigue (if you don't throw them across the room first.) But this is a problem with poor mastering, not the actual format.

But my ears are always quietly ringing so maybe I'm not the best one to draw comparisons.

yeah a lot of the putative advantages of one format or another are actually just people debating mastering practices which are not intrinsic to a format

btw I've owned 1,000s of CDs and I have exactly one rot on me: a Pretenders CD I bought from BMG Music Club in the early 1990s.

and it's true that really piss poor mastering in the 1980s or over-compression in more recent years has probably convinced some people that the CD format is terrible, but it's not the format, it's the choices made by mastering engineers

it's funny when you read people talking about how much superior vinyl is and they use as an example a recent vinyl reissue that's been cut from a CD master.

...but no funnier than people in the 80s who thought the shittily-mastered CDs sounded better than their pristine vinyl

my neighbor in the late 1980s ditched his entire, huge collection of jazz LPs because he thought the format was obsolete. if i had been a little older i would have gladly bought it off of him but as a 12-year-old i didn't exactly have the resources

I did, one time, see a huge collection of Jazz junked like that at a car boot, but I know not, and I'd have just been spoiling it for a jazz buff that would have found them after me.