Why Vinyl Can't Survive

1) Downloads are killing off CD sales, slowly.
2) Vinyl sales are on the up.

Fill in the 1,000 word article around those two points yourself, I have things to do...

At the moment I buy alot of vinyl, some mp3s, and I download others, the cheaper way! When I play it's a combination of these 3, this is the case for lots of people I know.

Some use all mp3s yes, but not all, it's generally not a big deal, it makes NO DIFFERENCE.

There are quite a few fallacys in the article tho.

1. That buying MP3s is cheaper: it's quite expensive considering you get no physical product.

2. That the MP3 stores have the same stock as vinyl ones: plenty of times I can't find the track I want on beatport.

3. That John in Nova Scotia being able to buy a tune on MP3 actually has anything to do with the death of vinyl, dance music starts with Hans in Berlin and Fred in London, and filters down to these other places, John in Nova Scotia never could buy vinyl so how does this affect the sales?

4. Isn't the biggest threat to vinyl diminishing supplies of the materials used to create it?

I mean I can definitely see that vinyl is so much heavier and stuff, but as long as it keeps getting produced it will keep selling. Why do I feel the writer of the article is a US house purist or something and his friends think "CDs have no soul", so relatively he feels he is a modern day Eno.

hahahahahahahahahahaha .... yes, music was on the verge of being phased out of popular culture before the iPod came along.

And next week they're writing about why vinyl *will* survive ...

Every album released since has been creatively constrained to that same 75 minutes.

and thank god.

But speaking as someone who just lost 10,000 songs due to a hard disc failure, from now on if I really like a track, I'm going to spring for the vinyl. In the long run, vinyl will trump digital. If you want to make sure you still own that song when you're 90, best get it on record and store in a nice cool place.

And in the very long run, the musicians are out of luck. People in the year 4000 will be analyzing 20th century culture from pots and sculptures not info on circuit boards.

and if you want to listen to the track on the move it's still hassle to record and encode it from vinyl (i'm about to do a LOT of this over the next few weeks).

Get an iMic. They are cheap and good.

They look like this:

http://www.macfriends.com/productImages/adapters/13892.jpg

02 - Tiesto - "I've moved totally to CDs this year - vinyl is dead"
05 - Ferry Corsten - ...."I've pretty much switched to CDs"
--------

what you can do with mp3s and cds on the newst pioneers and suchlike makes the traditional vinyl deck look like a museum piece.

they're just moving to CDs because they're the next "dead format."

If we assume that our current global culture will be dead and buried with nothing left, not even a folk memory, what will people make of the material culture we have left behind and will they be able to extract the immaterial data on it?

A player piano roll, a cylinder, a vinyl record, a piece of magnetic tape or a CD, combined with evidence of what was originally used to play them, wouldn't present too much of a challenge, but say you found a mp3 CD. It's quite a leap to go from the laser-read pits to the data to the digital-analogue converter and so on and actually work out what on earth it was meant to be.

It reminds me of a Bruce Sterling novel, where all the criminals keep their data on long obsolete technology instead of encrypting it.

(Off the point, I know, but interesting, I reckon. Fwiw, I doubt there will be anything commercially available that will play an mp3 in 10 years time and that a lot of people will be re-buying an awful lot of music in some sort of loss-less format)

Anyway, the point of vinyl for us non-DJs is that we like the big pictures!

Isn't the biggest threat to vinyl diminishing supplies of the materials used to create it?

A few months ago a friend of mine told me that the company that actually makes one of the key chemicals or materials used in vinyl was planning to close all its factories because they'd ceased to be profitable. And no one else was making this stuff, ergo no more vinyl.

At the time, I dismissed this as bollocks and I'm still sure it is. Am I wrong?

ILM will be the new Rosetta Stone.

there is a fine answer to this. not now.

who gives a fuck if music lasts 2,000 years or not!!!??? not people 2,000 years hence, that's for sure.

It's a big debate as to whether to 'go digital'. Apart from retrievability, COST is obviously the issue. How long would it take them to turn everything they've got into a .wav or whatever?

(Anyway, I am derailing the thread. Lets talk about Ferry Corsten some more.)

Hahaha - the ultimate rockist criteria

the BL barely lets you look at stuff more than 200 years old without a gloves and a mask, let alone 2,000 year old music.

as a user, i can think of about a million other things they could concentrate on over this.

but i guess to keep all the wonderful undergrads they've started letting in interested, mp3s will be their main shit from now on.

Not at all. Remember that vinyl's not just for records. It's also for siding, car seats, clothes... All sorts of stuff.
It has become more expensive to dispose of polyvinyl chloride since people are finally wise to the fact that it causes wicked cancers.

From the perspective of a DJ working in a smaller dance market, MP3's are cheaper on a month-to-month basis once you get over the initial investment in computer gear and Serato or whatever. At $1-$2 per MP3 versus $7-$14 for a 12", I get a lot more music out of my budget every month if I download.

The online stores still don't have an adequately broad selection, but this is changing *quickly*. There are at least a dozen DJ-oriented MP3 stores operating now, and I'm starting to regularly experience the phenomenon where I'll search for something in MP3 format unsuccessfully, buy it on vinyl, and then see it pop up on Beatport or Kompakt-MP3 a week or two later.

Now if someone would just convince Perlon to get with the program.

I find this statement HIGHLY dubious!

Pappa, you are the smoothest dude of the 1985 timewarp.

But Ian, what happens when Robert Pollard finally runs out of spending money?

x-post to ian who is making brooklyn sink into the mud with the weight of his fleetwood mac demo bootlegs.

Person #1: "Yay, I just downloaded the entire Trapez catalogue. All that hard work was totally worth it!"

Person #2: "Yay, I just found that elusive Perlon 12” I've been looking for. Now I have every release. All that hard work was totally worth it!"

I dunno about anybody else, but the *feeling* I get from looking at a crate of records in the corner of my bedroom knowing full well the time and money spent searching for some of them is quite a bit more satisfying than looking at my hard drive full of mp3s, awesome though they may be.

Personally I'd think, "Hey nice, now I can spend my time and money on stuff like, say, food. And travel. Etc." would trump said feeling several times over. At least that's how *I* feel!

600 Records = 6 months Club Play. I'm paid to change each song.

26,000 MP3's = 16 years of home listening. Software changes song for free

having said that, i certainly don't look back fondly on the time and money involved. i would be much happier if i had found them all in someone's basement for free. free records are the best. soon followed by records for a quarter, records for fifty cents, records for a dollar, etc.

x-post to ned the un-romantic.

exactly HOW LONG has the death of vinyl been predicted? i still think vinyl production will outlive CD production.

Yay! Er, wait.

the wall of wax (great pics btw) just makes me think about the pointlessness of accumulation & the inevitability of death. at least mp3's are already virtually nothing.

tapes, on the other hand, I just chucked out a huge trash bag full of 'em

easy bro, that's some heavy jive yr layin' down.

there is no wishbone ash in the afterlife.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/RussianRainbowGathering_4Aug2005.jpg/180px-RussianRainbowGathering_4Aug2005.jpg

http://www.popsike.com/php/detaildata.php?itemnr=4795374289

i've never heard it! i still haven't. i'm gonna get him to make me a copy.

M@TT, please keep in mind that cocktails are not smoked

rough diamond - s/t

golden avatar - a change of heart

bell & james - only make believe

vance or towers - s/t (awesome rekkerd! 1975. A&M Records)

karen alexander - voyager (also awesome! elektra. 1978.)

tiger - goin' down laughing

trigger - s/t

john randolph marr - s/t (a nilsson house production. and nilsson fans would certainly dig it.)

susan barlow - s/t

romanelli - connecting flight

queen samantha - the letter

the reggie knighton band - s/t

the max demian band - take it to the max (i would definitely buy this on cd. my copy is kinda crappy.)

http://www.needledoctor.com/s.nl;jsessionid=ac112b791f43d48b52deeb8e4799a189daca6ed5666d.e3eTaxeKbh0Te38Kah8MahqSbx90n6jAmljGr5XDqQLvpAe?it=A&id=7481&sc=2&category=401

http://www.needledoctor.com/s.nl/it.A/id.680/.f?sc=2&category=791

http://www.roksan.co.uk/Radius5Photos/radius5_01_JPG.html

http://stereophile.com/turntables/258/

http://www.needledoctor.com/s.nl/it.A/id.1973/.f?sc=2&category=45

http://www.simonelvins.com/paper_record.html

http://cgi.audioasylum.com/systems/663.html

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue16/lavigneroom.htm

So great...it's like when the Pope gave his blessing to The Passion of the Christ. "It is as it was," baby.

2. CDs are teh worst. As in, I have more problems with CDs and their players than I have ever had with any of my vinyl, new or used, or my record players. Obviously, I get why CDs can be truly excellent in certain situations.

3. IPods suck the joy out of music simply because of their awful interface. I can't deal with that shit-- scrolling scrolling scrolling accidentally touch something with the nub of your finger and fuck the song's changed and it's totally jarring. Unless I win one in some contest, I can't see myself ever owning one.

4. Since people relate to music and music-as-object in different ways, any sort of argument here is sort of silly. I like records and mp3s and tapes. You might not. But we might listen to the same things and feel similarly about them. So what is the debate about? Nobody's going to stop buying records, and the plants will keep making them as long as there is some demand. At least in other parts of the world.

shuffle shuffle shuffle all the great shit you put on there on shuffle

(also, playlists)

I love my iPod

but records are the best

also, god punch otm

Also, tho an orchestra conductor might have some cred in the matter, your audiophile friend likes Sting. Cred = eliminated, in my mind.

I FUCKING HATE SHUFFLE GODDAMNIT.

Sting is very popular at those shows; I was almost seduced by something off Ten Summoner's Tales on a Kuzma Stogi, it sounded so bleedin' lovely.

Vinyl is a bit of treat, a more serious purchase (though I'm not one of those audiophiles who think the sound is inherently superior); CDs I tend to think - oh, I can always dump this on eBay somewhere down the line if it's disappointing. I haven't sold a vinyl record for 13 years, whereas we've slimmed our CD collection by 10-15% in the last year. If the vinyl doesn't fit, buy more storage; if the CDs don't fit, junk some CDs.

-- scott seward

I thought you already had a copy of that (amazing) Debris rec, Scott! I remember it showed up a couple of years ago on somebody-or-other's long list. No, NOT the NWW list - more like "What's the rarest album you own?" or some such.

If not yours, maybe it was Stormy's list I'm thinking of...

iTunes pretty much reproduces the exact same thing on your computer fwiw (enqueue? no, that song is switching RIGHT NOW!) and it would drive me INSANE if I had to use it.

I do like my iPod nano though... I'd like it more if it actually had BASS (fucking Apple) but it's functional enough for the price.

I only just started buying vinyl again heh. I covet vinyl collections too, if only because I feel people with them have more foresight & wisdom than I do. I have no problems with CD's though... I'm pretty (anally) careful with them though.

-- mark grout (mark.grou...), August 17th, 2006.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

you couldn't have said it better.

I got thew Avengers record too and School's Out by Alice Cooper, those are good records too.

It would have been easy to see the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood performing that year, though I never did. Its lone record was a sunny mixture of straight-up jazz with a blues spine, a music that wants the latter-day word “fusion,” though that word does so little good. Above all, it was a reminder of the eclecticism of the time. Audiences that would soon diverge found themselves packed in a hall together all night long, like one October weekend at Fillmore West when the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood shared the bill with Van Morrison and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.

I heard “Martha’s Madman” in my head, and I did what I usually do. I went to the iTunes Music Store. Nothing. Same at Amazon. So I walked down to the barn, where all my old albums are stored, and dug out my vinyl copy of “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood,” which is now sitting on my desk. I no longer have the equipment to play it. Nearly every album in those boxes in the barn was converted to CD long ago — some of them several times over. But not “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood.”

We live, of course, in an age of accelerating digital replication. Before long, it seems, every recording of every kind in existence, along with all the outtakes, will have been turned into a CD or a DVD or a digital file for download over the Internet. But some things get left behind.

Digital conversion seems almost effortless, a virtual transcription of the world as we know it. But there is a financial friction to it nonetheless. These days it’s no longer necessary to produce an actual physical CD to sell in record stores. Downloadable files will do — no packaging required — but even making these has its costs.

What it takes to push a work from analog to digital is a marketing opportunity. The death, for instance, of Johnny Cash and a movie based on his life was a wonderful chance, as one industry spokesperson put it, to revisit his inventory, which, as it happens, is partly on Columbia, a company now owned by Sony BMG.

There will probably never be a movie based on the Jerry Hahn Brotherhood, no commercial incentive to remaster and rerelease this album. The story of the band is a good one but all too familiar — the inevitable clash between the artistic and business sides of the recording industry. The band fell apart disputing the honesty of its manager.

What’s left is an orphaned vinyl LP. The inner sleeve, a space for record company promotion, says, “If It’s in Recorded Form, You Know It’ll Be Available on Records.” Well, I wish it were available on CD.

I talked to Jerry Hahn the other day. He teaches jazz guitar in Wichita, his hometown. He’ll be 66 in September, with grandkids. He sounds good. “You should have heard us,” he said. He also said that the master tapes of “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood” are stored somewhere in New York State. The man who produced the record has retired to Hawaii, where he and his wife own several restaurants. I haven’t been able to track down the manager. I’d like to hear his side of the story.

And as for hearing “The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood,” one fan has posted the whole album in MP3 form — ripped from the vinyl — on the Web. I downloaded it the other day. It’s a digitally compressed version of an analog recording that was, according to Hahn, too compressed to begin with.

Even through the mist you can still hear the brightness of the music. But someone needs to find those master tapes, breathe some air into them, and do this minor masterpiece (and all the outtakes) justice at last. I’d buy a copy, especially if I thought that some of the purchase price might make its way to the artists.

Have you replaced the white earbuds with something else? Makes a GALAXY of difference.

But it's not quite as bad as the sound I get out of iTunes, which only bears some resemblance to music to my frustrated ears. I don't have any explanation why this is the case.

And as for all of those weird complaints about mp3 and sound quality, er -- FUCK A DUCK! Haven't these people ever heard of lossless compression?

poseur. vinyl's nice, i just never play it. i get freaked out by the fucking expertise needed to get the arm/weight thing right.

this doesn't even make sense.

also, why is that dude who wrote that article storing his records in a BARN? either sell 'em or keep them safe to sell them later, don't put them in a fucking barn.

At first I had the gear in the family room (connected to the kitchen/eating space)... competing with the noise of the dishwasher, the kitchen sink, and 'life' in general. I kept eyeing a large den (a favorite room of my wife) where we had a desk and piano. One afternoon when my wife was gone, I moved all my gear into the den. All of a sudden, I had a dedicated room... which was to be my audio home for the next nine years. I got lucky with the den; it had a very high ceiling (almost 11 feet), a bay window and floor to ceiling bookshelves on the rear wall. Soon the desk and piano were evicted and I settled into audio bliss in MY room.

i bet his wife feels really "lucky" too

yournullfame's girlfiend sounds rad

... isn't it?

I've lived with one person who had this setup -- very handy -- while the good Mr. Donut has similar at his place.

Veteran singer Bob Dylan has called the quality of modern music recordings "atrocious" and "worth nothing".

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, the 65-year-old said: "There's no definition of nothing, no nothing, just like... static".

Dylan, who is to release his first studio album in five years, added that his music sounded better in the studio.

He also failed to denounce illegal music downloads, saying: "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

'No stature'

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he said.

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really.

"CDs are small, there's no stature to it," added Dylan, who has released eight studio albums in the past 20 years and 44 official albums during the course of his career.

His new release, Modern Times, features 10 original tracks recorded by the musician and his touring band last winter.

Dylan plays keyboard, guitar and harmonica as well as singing on the record.

So you're saying that you don't do cocaine all night?

Thank you NYT for the cheesy vinyl's back article.
Thank you 200X 90's indie rock nostalgia culture bullshit.
Thank you pre-holiday season bullshit.

I was able to sell off most of my vinyl last night for the price of a decent used car.

That is all.

http://www.appalachiananimalhospital.net/baby%20owls.jpg

That Resident Advisor article is dismal.

It's also not wrong.

I hope you bought those owls with your profits, Mackro.

Never going out of style.

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/7218/imageuploadimageun8.jpg

I was able to sell off most of my vinyl last night for the price of a decent used car.

Just out of professional curiosity, about how many pieces was the collection?

and how many miles was on the car?

You are going to miss those records 10 years from now, trust me.

i think more ppl should sell their old records so i can buy them

You are going to miss those records 10 years from now, trust me.

Mackro can speak for himself but I'm plenty positive he won't.

i think more ppl should sell their old records so i can buy them

― M@tt He1ges0n, Wednesday, September 24, 2008 12:54 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

OTM

I was just thinking of selling off most of my own vinyl last night, in fact. I've got about a couple boxes of it that I just never touch. I'm curious as to how Mackro chose to sell his stuff?

I would buy all these used vinyls

Bimble would be crazy to sell as he is the type that in a few years would want to play it again and regret selling.

It also depends on how rare the record is. I buy old dance records that had short runs on small labels, I have sold records that I am never going to see again unless they get bootlegged.

The other thing that drives me nuts is how much a lot of not great records are worth these days. I have sold more 30 dollar records for a buck in store credit than I care to count.

That being said, I have also sold a shit ton of records and cd's that I never think about/don't even remember owning. I guess I am saying that you should be very careful about what you get rid of because I find myself haunted by the handful that got away.

The story is: I realized I was never going to DJ at clubs anymore, much less DJ using vinyl. I'm approaching my late 30s. There's tons of new blood who are far more connected with bars to get DJ gigs than I am. More to the point, I was still able to hold a weekly (as a sub for Matos) just using two iPods.

I think it's cool that there are younger kids who want to spin out records, have their friends look at them. I wish I could be in that position, but I'm now too old for that.. not mentally but physically. I'm a fucking grandpa now.

I only sold everything that I already had on CD or I know is available on iTunes or Amazon, no matter how rare or not it was. (I sold my Silver Apples LPs for example... that's wow I got many pretty pennies. I mean, I have the two-fer CD for Silver Apples. I didn't lose their music!)

My next phase is to digitize the never-got-to-digital-format stuff, then sell that off. After that, sell off the CDs. It will be a while, but this was part one of the plan.

I know, tl;dr lol

i do think there's an interesting spin-off from this, though: regardless of the fact you "didn't lose their music", you're obviously no longer so concerned about the actual OMG RARE ARTEFACT quality of the silver apples stuff. and i think that's got a lot to do with the changed way we consume music ... i mean, sure, someone was always going to be the iconoclast (or just the skint dude going, fuck, i need to flog my records) but i know i feel very differently now about what was once a treasured collection of vinyl.

for fuck's sake, i can't even remember the last time i played an actual record.

the fact it's easier to make high-quality digital copies isn't, i think, the key issue here (because it's not even what you've done); what really matters is the fact that the physical artefact is no longer seen as THE MUSIC.

I like records. for example just the other day I was cracking up at the merch/hip-hop gear offered in the liner notes of my copy of EPMD's "Business As Usual"

Grimly, you're pretty much OTM with me.

That said, I did keep about a dozen boxes of records, but mainly things, mostly dirt cheap, that I would never see again in any format if I were to sell it. Mostly Incredibly Strange Music fodder.

And I did NOT sell my very first record: "The Harmony Of The Worlds". That was my very first record -- an astronomical data records. It changed my life, although I didn't know it at the time. And that record will die long after I die if I can help it.

I guess my point is: I still do very much have the OMG THE ARTIFACT! attitude towards vinyl. What's changed is: I don't need to have that attachment to so many goddamn artifacts anymore all around me, especially if they're in my way.

cue Sanford and Son music

more and more i just can't stand listening to mp3s at all unless it's like work and that's my only choice.

it just doesn't seem worth even taking the time to listen to when it sounds so robbed of so much. like watching a great movie on an ipod screen or something.

i don't have a problem with MP3s per se, just a problem with my shitty laptop speakers.

also, i collect but try not to hoard vinyl. i sell things all the time. i sold 20 records or so this week, got enough for a week's worth of lunches with some $$ leftover to buy a baggie of weed.

a good culling once a year is a good thing. like do i really need this late 70s pretty things record? how the hell did i get this marshall crenshaw record?...that sort of thing

yeah I cull stuff pretty regularly. then my wife gets mad that I want to get rid of those Linda Ronstadt records from her mom that she never listens to.

I need to get on Ebay.
Saw a Daniel Johnston record in a Time-Lag update listed for 90 dollars.
I got a copy for fifty cents.

i have a VG++ heart like a wheel ORIG PRESS VERY CLEAN by linda...i accept paypal :)

more and more i just can't stand listening to mp3s at all unless it's like work and that's my only choice.
it just doesn't seem worth even taking the time to listen to when it sounds so robbed of so much.

did you have to really concentrate to notice the quality defecit or did you just notice it straight away (from say 256k/s up)?

while i think Grimly's OTM about the changing state of how we feel about collecting music, in my case my treasures have gone from being the OMG ARTEFACT to being the "backup". I do think that many folks have switched from thinking of the physical item as THE MUSIC, i also feel many of those folks switch back to their previous view once their HD crashes and they lose all their tunes.

like watching a great movie on an ipod screen or something

see, i watch more movies now on my iPhone than i do on any other type of screen. i am time-poor but gadget-rich. and -- oddly, for someone who's spent 12 years in a job that's effectively about maintaining unrealistically and often unnecessarily high standards of quality within an industry that doesn't give a shit -- i don't care at all about what i'm missing.

sorry, everyone.

Never trust anyone who likes Keane :)

hahahahahahahah :)

i'm not saying it's like, immoral or something, do what you want to do. watch shit, listen to shit...just for me...i would rather just listen to something of better sound quality...but what's important to me doesn't have to be important to everyone else.

i just get annoyed when ppl suggest that vinyl is just an object/collector fetish when my own ears tell me a very different story.

i have an ipod and watch movies on PSP on flights fwiw

the 'film on iphone' comparison is more like why would you compromise sound quality by listening to it with standard earphones

i just get annoyed when ppl suggest that vinyl is just an object/collector fetish when my own ears tell me a very different story.

yeah that's some bullshit. I have a ton of MP3s that sound horrible. I have some records that sound horrible too, to be fair. I also have some records that sound AMAAAAAAAAAZING. I do not have any MP3s that sound amazing.

but anyways who cares? i hope ppl do what they want and yes sell them records off! they are an albatross around your neck!!

my stereo isn't good enough to surface the differences btw high-bitrate music files, cd, and vinyl.

;_;

i just took the test here: http://mp3ornot.com/

picked the wrong one

altho i should've gone with my initial judgement which was the opposite

i got it, but it was a guess, or felt like one. couldn't consciously hear a difference.

the fact its louder gave it away i thought

vol sounds the same to me.

just spent an entertaining two minutes clicking rapidly between them creating my own scratch remix.

with headphones or at home I can't tell the difference between any mp3's above 192 kbps, but i can tell that they're mp3's. the biggest difference is on either a high-end hi-fi or in a nightclub (where this is the most obvious thing ever, to me)

yeah listening to two mp3 files on a computer with headphones really doesn't mean anything as compared to listening on a good stereo with good record player

The trick is to not use those shitty little earpieces that come with your iPod. Get some Grado headphones. SR-60 is fine. Grado + iPod = good times.

please, sir, ipod ear buds aren't even fit to shove up a dead racoon's ass.

grados are nice though i have a pair

i just took the test here: http://mp3ornot.com/

I picked the right one - 128 sounded flatter but it took some concentrated listening. bass response tends to be less defined at lower bitrates so the orchestra hit at the end is a good thing to focus on.

however that wasn't the best clip to demonstrate the difference - it's a simple passage (most of it is one long chord) recorded crisply & clearly so it didn't degrade much. a randomly rotating selection of 50 clips of various music styles would point up the difference between 128 + 320 pretty quickly, especially if you get into rock / punk / indie that tends to have lower engineering quality and denser mixes.

I don't have a lot of uncompressed files on my computer right now, so this isn't the best example either, but I can definitely hear a difference at certain points in this:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/6138g5

128 has a more watery, realaudio type sound.

Yeah I picked the 320 file too. My ears are really sensitive to compression and digital distortion for some reason. When I'm mixing a record, I generally catch things the engineers miss.

A few nights ago, standing about ten feet from the stage while Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds performed, I just reveled in the glory of massive sound and subwoofers in a ballroom with pro engineers at the board and pro players making the music.

You can argue all you want about vinyl vs mp3 vs headphones vs pro speakers. But the best sound will be a great band in a great room at full blast.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121483273

There they go blaming hipsters again.

This seems like as good a place as any.

http://sickmouthy.com/2013/02/06/why-the-vinyl-revival-can-sod-off-as-far-as-im-concerned/

The pop album edition last night, with Hepworth and Dent and Boy George, was SO much better. No bullshit mythology (despite better stories and myths and more magic), and zero bullshit format talk.

I dont really understand format wars, but you're the one bringing it up in an article, are you sure you're so above format fighting?

I don't know who any of those people you mention are but from where I'm sitting vinyl never went away, most 12"s dont come out on cd, vinyl only is still the norm for many good labels, and the better DJs all have to play vinyl if they don't want to be restricted in choice - not to mention all the masses of $1 hidden gems from the past that will never get reissued. It might be a revival to you because you only just noticed, but for many scenes, people, djs - it never went away.

I don't mind whatever people play, you're the one criticizing a format here...why?

I'm bringing it up in an article because there's a whole season of programs dedicated to it on the BBC at the moment; 6music has a dedicated vinyl show, fashion shops have displays of vinyl records, there have been innumerable articles about how vinyl is making a resurgence over the last few years, etcetera etcetera. Have you really not noticed this? I'm not saying vinyl ever went away, nor criticising it as a DJ tool - that's a very different thing from Beatles reissues and Tame Impala and Toro Y Moi and the D'Angelo reissue being in sale at the front of Urban Outfitters. I'm also not criticising a format; in fact I'm at great pains to say I'm criticising the mythology that surrounds it in a rock sense, which is a very specific thing.

Most 12"s will come out as a download, apart from select vinyl-only releases, and even then there will probable be more ripped files out there than the record.

But you are criticizing it as a format choice, implicitly. Why do you have a problem with a record sleeve in a window? I've never seen any of those programs but sure i'm aware of articles like yours talking about its resurgence, and the fashion of putting on display - but if you don't want bullshit format talk - then why introduce it in the first place

Most 12"s will come out as a download, apart from select vinyl-only releases, and even then there will probable be more ripped files out there than the record.

― Chewshabadoo,

I'm still finding proportion of vinyl that has a download to be pretty low. This is probably tangentially one of the bigger problems with vinyl currently, artificial scarcity with releases coming out in too small runs, selling out too quick and then vanishing or seeing the discogs price go through the roof (even worse for records from 10-15 years ago that used to be $1).

I don't bother with rips or illegal downloads but those are diminishing too as people seem less into ripping stuff that is now scarce

ie - biggest problem with vinyl is discogs speculators

but labels/artists are partly to blame for that with small print runs (and who can blame them - guaranteed cost-effective)

Nick, it seems unusually touchy of you to feel like a bunch of people (even rather a lot of people) who fetishise vinyl somehow invalidate your relationship with the music you listen to and have listened to.

It's certainly true that there's an element of rubbing-it-in here on the part of old gits (like me) who always preferred vinyl and who were pretty much given the choice of moving to a new format we didn't much like or stopping buying music altogether. We win (kinda sorta, I mean we don't at all, but you know what I mean). And it's also true that the alliance between th eold gits and the retrohipsters is a bit unholy. But you shouldn't take it so personal, dude.

I'm mostly wound up as a rhetorical device, in all honesty (as usual); it's the rockism that bothers me far more than the format.

Well, yes. As an Old Git I was more than happy to switch to CD - easier to handle, collate and shelve, much more convenient in every way - and I don't miss vinyl at all. I only ever get something on vinyl if it's completely unavailable in any other format but I don't "not" buy something because it's only on vinyl. I don't draw a line in the sand but I'm fed up with people my age and older droning on about how much better their lives were than ours because they listened to a different sound reproduction format. I also feel it's had a kickback effect on British rock music which now does little except look back, or peer back in a "we can never be as great as..." fashion. It's like saying that the next generation are, somehow, failures.

What rock music?

I just liked vinyl more and switched from CD to it in '94 or so, btw

Two points re albums over CDs, hope you agree,,

1) An album is two discrete units of performance, side 1 and side 2. This promotes two 'start' tracks, two 'endings', and a performance between.

2) CD albums can be up to 78 mins or so, tempting the artist to use all that time, often not a good thing. (At least with double albums you could boff the artist with the point that the product will cost more and earn less. plus, four discrete performances, see 1.)

In most other respects, CD albums win.

I almost never skip tracks, LP or CD.

Totally agree with both of those points, of course.

Each to their own of course but it's merely CDs that I hate. I use MP3s/WAVs and vinyl in equal amounts, most of my DJ friends are switching back from digital DJing to using vinyl just because the skill set needed keeps the process more tactile and interesting and, finally, it's not a 'revival' for those of us who never stopped buying it. I'm not saying some people don't have rose tinted glasses on when it comes to vinyl but it feels like a strawman when I look at my peers. Newer labels who do a lot of vinyl tend to have a sonically progressive agenda and not just in electronic music but in more traditional forms like Southern Lord.

I'd be the first to admit that there are a lot of bellends who collect vinyl. Ebay profiteers are scumbags but I have more (irrational) dislike for 7" collectors (especially of psych, northern soul, reggae, dub, funk etc) who always, in my experience, value price and rarity over quality. But I collect records, I am not a record collector if you take the distinction. I'm more concerned with the quality of the pressing and the condition of the vinyl than I am with whether it's original or not.

But seriously, always vinyl over CD. Always.

Hahah, those 7" "collectors" who clog up MVE with their printed-out lists of "rare" funk 45s.

Still, I see the Soul & Dance MVE in Notting Hill is closing down, or moving upstairs in the main branch, so maybe they'll move somewhere else. Helmand Province, for instance.

Really? So, the 'collectible' 1st floor is shifting? or incorporating?

Stick them all on an island in the Pacific with no means of escape and Mark Lamarr as their tribal leader.

CDs have become litter to me, pretty much. Their worth has become inverted and I never buy them any more if I can help it, because all I'm going to do is rip them and then they'll sit on my shelves gathering dust and taking up space. Since receiving a small portable turntable for my birthday I've acquired a few pieces of vinyl and I rather like it. The change in medium makes a change in the listening experience for me. If I'm going to own music, and while it's great to have an infinite amount of songs at my disposal on my computer, I feel like having a physical artefact to hand can affect a stronger psychological tie to the music for me. Agreed that all vinyl should come with a download - if that were the case I'd buy a shitload more music than I do now.

Every record I buy that doesn't come with a download, I just download illegally. I'm kinda comfortable with the ethics of this system.

No-one ever cared abt CDs, is the thing.

That's not true and you know it's not.

any technophiles know if higher resolution 3d printers will actually mean we'll be able to make records at home?

"Make my own records at home, I can't go out in the rain," as Sting used to sing.

apparently the resolution is currently not fine enough

By the time I started buying LPs, the actual quality of the vinyl was pretty shoddy, and even brand new albs would often skip or jump, even when treated with great care (this seemed to be especially the case with back catalogue reissues). So I've always preferred CDs and will be sad to see them go.

I liked CDs when I had a use for them, but I don't any more.

This is several xposts, but I'm gonna post it anyway:

I've no huge emotional stakes in vinyl versus digital debate, but I've always found the current vinyl revival a bit curious... I do own a vinyl player and have a bunch of records on vinyl, but that's only because there's so much stuff that was only released in vinyl and never reissued on CD. However, what I don't get is people buying vinyl when the same material can be bought on CD (or as lossless files, if that's your thing), usually at a much cheaper price.

Basically, for me the biggest reason I buy records on CD is that they're easier and more comfortable to use. I love to lie on the sofa, read a comic book, and listen to an album all the way through. But with vinyl you can't do that, you have to get up every 25 minutes to switch sides, and with longer albums you have to do that more than once. That is quite irritating, and with albums that are supposed to work as a whole it can totally ruin the mood.

Another thing is that vinyl deteriorates much more easily than CD. Unless you treat your albums with kid gloves, you are are gonna get those crackles and pops, which can be pretty disruptive, especially on albums which have "quiet" sound. Other sorts of deterioration tend to happen to vinyl with age too, such as disruption at high sounds, which I personally hate a lot, as it sounds awful to my ears. None of this will happen to CDs.

I don't think anyone disagrees that vinyls are much more of hassle to play and handle than the alternatives. So what are the pros of vinyl? The myth of vinyl being able to reproduce sound better than CDs has been debunked many times, so forget about that. "CD rot" is another myth that's been propagated by vinyl enthusiasts, but that was only an issue in the pressing process of a particular pressing plant, and it was fixed 20 years ago. In general, your CDs are not gonna "rot".

Then there's the issue cover art, and obviously art usually looks better in bigger size, so I agree it looks nicer on vinyl covers. But I tend to buy records mostly for the music, not to look at pretty pictures, so this is not a big issue. And the bigger size also means vinyl takes more space in your flat.

So yeah, that's the reason why I only buy vinyl if there's no other option, and why I don't get choosing it over other formats.

I think there is still plenty to be said for the tactile pleasures of vinyl. Taking the record out of the cover, lowering it onto the spindle, getting the stylus in the right place and lowering the arm down, then hearing the kwika-kwika-floop as the needle finds the groove. These are small but not insignificant pleasures compared to the business of inserting a CD in a tray. Also a nice turntable is an aesthetically pleasurable device to have in one's front room

lots of records only have one track per side

they can be pitched up or down for mixing with

its a pretty redundant argument, these people who aren't concerned with the format sure seem to be paying attention to what format other people might be playing

XP^^^^This is essentially how I feel. If you want to invoke logic you can but it's an aesthetic choice governed by using all of your senses not just one. I can't drink a cup of tea out of a light blue or green coloured mug no matter how well brewed it is. Pour the same brew into a white mug and it becomes my favourite drink. The taste is exactly the same but the colour isn't right in the first instance and the way you perceive something has a massive effect on the way you appreciate it.

I don't care what format other people are using, but like with Nick, it irritates me when people tout vinyl as the superior format without any good justification, and that tends to happen a lot among music geeks these days. People are free to buy and listen to vinyl if that's what they prefer, but if they start saying to me that vinyl is the best, I have no problem explaining why it isn't, to me.

And sure, vinyls can "pitched up or down for mixing with", and obviously if you're a DJ vinyl is probably the best format. But most people who buy music aren't, and to them pitching isn't very important.

(xpost)

cds feel v disposable to me i don't really respect them that much, i never have, even when it took me a month to save enough money to buy one.

some music only sounds great on cd tho, with the full freq range available. my little classical / ecm / sound art cd collection is one of my most treasured things. i don't think i'll miss cds that much on the whole tho, high quality digital audio files can do that job better than cds can.

records are bizarre. limited bandwidth, will sound drastically different depending on your equipment. they age badly, get dirty, they're bloody massive, heavy, get fucked up easily but they make me smile. they inspire a different way of listening that i prefer. i like having the two sides, i find i explore the end of albums a lot more. some music also really benefits from having the limited bandwidth. i like the sound and the ridiculousness of them. music is cool and cds just aren't.

wrt to sound quality, they're different, all formats are slightly different. i do love digital but not as much as i love analogue. i don't care how many times a second you're sampling the sound, it still goes through a adc-dac conversion, it becomes static, stuck in time, it makes things bland.

i really do find format has a huge impact on my enjoyment of something. i found this on LP a while back:

http://www.discogs.com/Catherine-Ribeiro-Alpes-Paix/release/1274544?ev=rr

fell in madly in love with her, got the 4 cd boxset of reissues and it's just. not. the. same. thing. at all! hypnotic french psych folk prog sounds better when it's warbling a bit. her voice sounds better when it distorts in the high end and the shillness is toned down a bit, the silences work better when there are crackles and pops in the background, the album art doesn't feel like album art when it's 1/4 the size and printed on flimsy card.

if they start saying to me that vinyl is the best, I have no problem explaining why it isn't, to me.

which is the person that said it was the best, that you were responding to?

otoh, music for 18 musicians, for example, is a totally different thing on record, the information that's lost (those 'singing' harmonics dancing around right up there at the top) are all warbly and sometimes non-existant on my copy, and isn't that kind of the point of those pieces? when i've seen Steve Reich rehearsing it, that's the area where he seems to focus his attention.

I have a several friends (music collectors, and general vinyl fetishists) who are saying that quite often.

(x-post)

hypnotic french psych folk prog sounds better when it's warbling a bit. her voice sounds better when it distorts in the high end and the shillness is toned down a bit, the silences work better when there are crackles and pops in the background

Maybe someone should come up with (if someone already hasn't) with an application that adds these standard effects of vinyl wear to FLAC/WAV files. Then those who prefer that sound could switch to digital too...

well yeah, or just make a digital recording of the record itself. i can't stand the digital versions of annette peacocks's i'm the one that i have, so i made a recording of the record and it's much better.

and you're right there is that thing where if you buy vinyl you're seen as a ~serious music person who should be taken very seriously~ that's def a thing

I still buy both (as well as downloads), I do marginally prefer vinyl but I'll happily buy CDs if the vinyl isn't in print or is too expensive (often the case with new releases). I started buying music in the mid-90s and CDs seemed ideal, there are plenty from my teenage years I still feel attached to, too. I've got rid of loads over time but they still outnumber my vinyl by about 2:1.

In terms of the physical object, I think CDs sometimes get short shrift - there's lots of nicely-designed CD packaging out there and some artwork suits the shiny, clean lines of CD boxes. They look neater on shelves too, which I have to admit appeals to me.

I have to say, though, that something much more bizarre than vinyl revival is the cassette revival that's been going on here lately with certain genres, mostly local rap music. Cassettes are worse than CDs and vinyl in pretty much every aspect I can think of (dynamic range, sound deterioration, longevity, sleeve notes and art), so I can't really explain this revival with anything else than object fetishization. The most interesting thing I've noticed is that many/most of the cassette enthusiasts are people who came of age during the CD or digital age, and don't really remember the era when cassettes were popular. So my theory is that the main reason for this cassette fetish is nostalgia for an imaginary golden age they weren't quite part of (in rap music's case, the 80s and early 90s). I would suspect this same nostalgia is a big factor in the current vinyl revival too, as many of the people who sing the praise of vinyl are actually of the CD generation, not people who grew up when vinyl was the dominant format.

I have a several friends (music collectors, and general vinyl fetishists) who are saying that quite often.

(x-post)

so no one here even said "vinyl is best" for you to respond to with that?

The people who claim to be above "format bullshit" are the same people that bring up vinyl dislike in first place, then claim its other people that bring it up and go on about it

You can stop saying that same thing now, if you want.

np!

C'mon, vinyl vs CD vs digital is like debating your favorite beer - there's no wrong answer unless you're stating sweeping generalities like "vinyl is superior to CD". A mate of mine has an expensive system and has fallen in love with Blue Note jazz vinyl reissues - and they sound bloody MARVELOUS on his system. But I'm not going to invest in that sort of gear and I've ALWAYS preferred the convenience of CDs to what I perceive as interruptions, surface noise, unportabilty and hassle of vinyl. So y'all keep selling your CDs, I'll buy them and happily clog up my shelves with their liner notes and make my own rips. Everybody wins.

So y'all keep selling your CDs, I'll buy them and happily clog up my shelves with their liner notes and make my own rips. Everybody wins.

yeah. it has to be said in recent months my middle of nowhere charity shops have had some rather fine selections (far more than normally).
people are clearly ripping and clearing out shelf space.

"Cassettes are worse than CDs and vinyl in pretty much every aspect I can think of (dynamic range, sound deterioration, longevity, sleeve notes and art)"

ahh but sometimes these are good things, all about context! i mean cassettes sell pretty well in the diy/noise/punk scenes, do you really think all these people are frontin'? just being nostalgic? i don't. i think some music benefits greatly from limiting the amount of information that reaches your ears.

Very true.

C'mon, vinyl vs CD vs digital is like debating your favorite beer - there's no wrong answer unless you're stating sweeping generalities like "vinyl is superior to CD".

This is otm. The problem I have with the debate is when people claim one format is more faithful to the original recording than the other. Unless you were in the studio or mastering room when the final master was being played back, you don't know what the original recording sounded like (in terms of sound quality, I mean).

And the irony with vinyl fetishization vis-a-vis present-day reissues is that the overwhelming majority of them are digitally mastered (and nearly as many are mastered from digital sources). The Beatles box is, for all intents and purposes, the 2009 CDs remastered for vinyl. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, unless claims are made that it's "analog" and therefore "superior."

And the cassette revival is baffling to me, too. As Dave Marsh said, "rewinding is the longest distance between any two points."

If all my music I heard/acquired was straight digital from this point in I really wouldn't complain. And I'll indulge as/when I choose (thus buying the DVD-A files of the new MBV, which I don't think is even being released physically in that format...)

Just want to say that with a good cartridge needle and good record player, surface noise is not a huge issue if simply take reasonable care of your records

The whole ”records get destroyed everytime you play them” is hogwash, I have records from the 40s that sound fine.

lots of cds sound great, but hearing the original presses of records on vinyl can be just revelatory

I've a/b'd stuff like PIL Metal Box and it's not a small difference, if you haven't heard that on vinyl you haven't heard it

All this said I'm buying alot of cds lately, so cheap and lots of recent jazz reissues sounds great...we were finally getting cds and cd players pretty good when we abandoned them, I have a marantz cd player, might upgrade to an oppo, but it's made a large difference

i just really want people to stop calling records vinyls. that's my only complaint. nobody ever said this until the internet.

haven't had time to read all this cos of work, but the idea that enjoying vinyl automatically = rose-tinted rockism is a load of old guff really.

God yeah I hate the pluralisation of vinyl to vinyls.

But CDs are records too, in that they're recordings...

I've been ripping a lot of my CDs lately for convenience, one thing I have noticed while doing this is that this whole "CD rot only from a few p-pressing plants in the late 80s" is bullshit, I've got several CDs from the late 90s with it.

not sure where that stutter came from

i just really want people to stop calling records vinyls. that's my only complaint. nobody ever said this until the internet

this is a European thing, you hear it a lot from the mouths of non-native English speakers.

xps

But CDs are records too, in that they're recordings...

Yeah, in Camden Record & Tape Exchange someone would always point out that tapes were records too...

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_250/MI0001/815/MI0001815647.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Was the Record & Tape Exchange ever actually called that? When I lived in London (early 90s) it was only ever the Music & Video Exchange.

It was def called the Record and Tape Exchange before it became M&V, yes.

Lots of x-posts

I love vinyl and have been buying it over half my life (I'm 32), and it's been my go-to format for a long time. It used to be far, far cheaper to buy old records on vinyl, and I'd say 75% of my collection was purchased for $5 or less. I like the way it looks and sounds. People fetishize pops and crackles, but really, those shouldn't necessarily be there. If you buy vinyl that's been taken care of, and you yourself take care of it, it's a pretty damn clean presentation. Also, you guys are talking about the degradation of vinyl like it's rubbing metal on a wax candle or something. It takes a fuckload of plays to make an even barely noticeable dulling of the sound of an LP--unless, that is, your setup is poor (with a poorly balanced tonearm, bad needle, bad tracking weight, etc.). Which brings me to another point: vinyl requires a bit of care, knowledge, and patience in its setup and playback. So what? Learn how to balance your tonearm; learn how to align your cartridge. It's not hard, and it feels good to know about. Also, Sick, you talk about how vinyl is unwieldy and gets so easily scratched and smudged. Just don't put your fingers all over the grooves and don't drop your records! Don't leave them sitting around naked! The notion that "oh it's such a PAIN to have to get up and walk five steps to flip a record every 20 minutes!" is funny to me, too. Although there have been plenty of nights where I've fallen asleep on the couch and woken up a few hours later to an LP spinning it its runout groove, so that's not entirely a bad point. But really?

Yeah, before Videos became a sell-through item (around 1987).

Ah, Camden MVE RIP.

Anyway, don't have a problem with enjoyment of vinyl records, just the placing of vinyl records on a moral and/or spiritual level above any other form of sound reproduction because a lot of middle-aged white men are worried about death.

"records are bizarre. limited bandwidth, will sound drastically different depending on your equipment. they age badly, get dirty, they're bloody massive, heavy, get fucked up easily but they make me smile."

http://cl.jroo.me/z3/R/x/i/e/a.baa-cute-dirty-child.jpg

Haha, agreed, But taking a moral/spiritual stance *against* vinyl just because the thought of middle-aged white men confronting mortality crinks you up is just as bizarre to me.

(That was to Marcello...)

"People fetishize pops and crackles, but really, those shouldn't necessarily be there. If you buy vinyl that's been taken care of, and you yourself take care of it, it's a pretty damn clean presentation. Also, you guys are talking about the degradation of vinyl like it's rubbing metal on a wax candle or something. It takes a fuckload of plays to make an even barely noticeable dulling of the sound of an LP"

huh, interesting. you almost sound like an...adult!

99% of middle-age white men haven't listened to vinyl in decades. just throwing that out there.

It's the 1% who hog the media that I'm concerned about.

It's a cold world, man. Let sad old dudes be sentimental about *something*.

99% of middle-age white men haven't listened to vinyl in decades. just throwing that out there.

― scott seward, Thursday, February 7, 2013 10:30 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is blindingly true.

I own lots of both, but as an object, records are hands down more attractive. There is something pathetic about an old CD with its scuffed, cracked case and yellowed inserts. (CD box sets, however, were in general very nicely done in their hey-day and are attractive objects).

What I personally fail to understand is why people want to buy LPs of recordings made digitally in modern studios. I get the object factor, but it to me it seems kind of silly to take a digital recording and then put it on an analog format.

What I personally fail to understand is why people want to buy LPs of recordings made digitally in modern studios. I get the object factor, but it to me it seems kind of silly to take a digital recording and then put it on an analog format.

― Johnny Hotcox, Thursday, February 7, 2013 10:42 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm inclined to agree, but man, a good vinyl mastering of a digital recording can be a beautiful thing. I mean, listen to a lot of the stuff guys like Rashad Becker from Dubplates & Mastering are doing; flat-out gorgeous and RICH sounding.

i love a good cd, man. my kompakt CDs are some of my most treasured possessions. when CDs are done well - especially with electronic or electro-acoustic or well-made/produced classical - they are awesome things to hear.

Pro tip: most of the snap/crackle/pop you hear on used records is dirt & grime. Unless you're buying cheap scratched vinyls from the charity shoppe, a little cleaning solution and a soft cloth will make a noticeable improvement.

I've always been a 'native format' guy and prefer to listen to music on the media it was originally released on (pre-'87 vinyl, 80s rap/metal on tape, 90s CD, 00s on mp3), but, as a nostalgic middle-aged white guy, it thrills me to no end to see bins of new, shrink-wrapped LPs in the record store again.

Thread title is Thomas Friedman editorial in Tape Op

"I've a/b'd stuff like PIL Metal Box and it's not a small difference, if you haven't heard that on vinyl you haven't heard it"

over the last couple of years i have had the pleasure of hearing some of the best music from 70's jamaica on 12 inch and 7 inch and if someone has only heard cd reissues or trojan cd boxes or whatever, wow, they have no idea what they are missing. but they really have no idea, so they aren't missing anything. but, man, they will make you weep. a good Rockers 12 inch or an Orchid 7-inch oh god for real they are so huge and deep. and CDs just don't get that. for whatever reasons.

i just can't afford new vinyl. wish i could. tons of reissues i would buy. i'm a volume guy though. would rather buy 10 or 15 old records for the price of 2 new vinyl releases.

Thought Jamaica had notoriously bad pressings

The comment about PIL recordings on vinyl is completely true. When my mate was demo-ing phono pre-amps we went to a high-end store. On a $3k turntable with a $2k pre-amp feeding into $30k speakers in an acoustically treated room at ungodly volume, PIL's "Flowers Of Romance" on vinyl sounded completely new to me, despite having owned it on CD for years. I really GOT what Lydon was after with the recording.

But, really, I'll never hear it like that again. So I'm content with my CD. I kinda know what I'm missing and I just don't care.

The CD reissue era's worst offense was the occasional re-mixing and the even more drastic re-recording of original material (one of the most flagrant examples was ZZ Top). That problem alone should make you want to search out the original issue when cost and availability are not huge factors (alas, they often are).

i just really want people to stop calling records vinyls. that's my only complaint. nobody ever said this until the internet.

false. in Germany record collectors always called them "vinyls" and the "v" is pronounced more like a "w." And they would ask you at the merch table: "Do you have any vinyls?" and you'd say "no this is CD only" and then if you were lucky you'd get a "you must force the label to release it on vinyl!"

jamaica had AMAZING pressings. i'm astounded on a weekly basis. its a common misperception.

tons of americans say vinyls now. it's a thing.

in Germany record collectors always called them "vinyls" and the "v" is pronounced more like a "w." And they would ask you at the merch table: "Do you have any vinyls?" and you'd say "no this is CD only" and then if you were lucky you'd get a "you must force the label to release it on vinyl!"

^^^ read this in the voice of Grandpa Simpson, it's hilarious

Also scott's right, baby boom dudes love cds! They are always surprised when I say I have records still, they upgraded in the 80s and never looked back

after years of reflecting and bullshit posturing I've decided that I just like formats including digital ones. I like to think about format when I'm engaging with music; physical formats lend themselves to a more concrete experience of this. I'm in a tape phase right now because there's some really good metal bands that prefer tapes and also there is a toddler in this house who thinks cassettes are just the coolest things to pick up and carry around. (I like to hand him stuff that will literally no longer exist in any form if he breaks it because then I am delegate a sort of supreme power to a guy who hasn't got language yet.) Doubtless there's a sense-memory nostalgia to it, too. If I were an audiophile I suspect I'd be an analog believer but let's be honest I've been listening to loud music for years, my ears aren't exactly Robert Parker's nose

^^^ read this in the voice of Grandpa Simpson, it's hilarious

a sad otm btw, curse you Phil D., I'll steal the onion from your belt

The recording did such a good job of running down vinyl to get everyone to buy cds a lot of myths still persist

I know of a local indie record store that only sells new and used vinyl now because their cds weren't selling at all. People are willing to spend crazy amounts on old vinyl.

xp my conspiracy theory is that industry purposely made late-80s vinyl sound shitty so the LP vs CD comparison would be a no-brainer.
I held out for so long at the time until I heard the CD of Skylarking, which sounded amazing compared to my record, esp since they squeezed it all onto a single LP.

Are there any 'only new vinyl' stores yet in hipsterville? that would be a total trip

i used to listen to 90% of my music on a crappy little radio i got for christmas one year. before that people had crystal radios. and a lot of people just use their phone speakers to listen to music. this is probably part of the reason why i'll never understand being an audiophile, or a record "collector" for that reason. there's definitely an argument to be made that if you accept the crackles and pops and digital degradation, then you'll be a much happier music fan than if you worry obsessively about 50Hz hums or low bitrate encoding. that said, i'm not stopping any lower than 256kbps cos that shit sounds HORRIBLE!

xp my conspiracy theory is that industry purposely made late-80s vinyl sound shitty so the LP vs CD comparison would be a no-brainer.
I held out for so long at the time until I heard the CD of Skylarking, which sounded amazing compared to my record, esp since they squeezed it all onto a single LP.

Late 80s vinyl was made very cheaply because it was so vastly mass produced, so I've been told.

I dunno, re: industry crappy 80s vinyl conspiracy...there were complaints about shitty vinyl starting in the late 70s. I seem to recall a '78 or '79 article in RS about how rampant the problem was, and how it was becoming standard practice to tape a record on first listen, given how quickly the vinyl would wear out.

But now that the music industry got everyone to replace their vinyl with CDs, they can convince everyone to replace those CDs with vinyl reissues!

in short: don't listen to anyone EVER.

We have a califone player which flatly refuses to play any vinyl cut after 81 or 82. Just skates its way right across the side. SOMETHING must have changed around then.

If I were an audiophile I suspect I'd be an analog believer but let's be honest I've been listening to loud music for years, my ears aren't exactly Robert Parker's nose

This, above all. I'm pretty sure it's been years since my ears would have been capable of perceiving the benefit of lossless over 320kbps mp3, let alone vinyl over digital.

Which is to say, I AM an audiophile, but only within my physical hearing capabilities which are not great.

There are so many weird arguments your article sick mouthy. 12" records are hard to hold!?

I'm only a year older than you so it's strange to me that you say that CDs were the format through which you experienced music. You didn't listen to any records when you were a kid? CDs weren't even available until you were 5 and you say you didn't get a player until you were 14. You didn't listen to any music before then!?

You say that records have been expensive for 20 years but that's really not true and you're old enough to have been buying lots of cheap used vinyl in the '90s like a lot of us did. Nobody really wanted records back then and they were dirt cheap most of the time.

You try to expand the argument into an album vs. single thing which makes no sense at all since vinyl singles have always been available. It's not a rock thing either. One of the main factors keeping vinyl alive over the past couple of decades was electronic music 12" singles!

If you "literally can’t buy any new vinyl in the city where I live" then you're hardly being oppressed by this vinyl revival are you? And I don't get the point of that complaint at all. What do you care if you're not interested in vinyl anyway? And how is the lack of a good record store in your town a fault of the format?

Finally, you seem opposed to the idea of musicians being able to make a living. The album vs. singles argument is primarily about the economics of making records. Yes the industry wants to push albums on you because that's the only way that artists can really make a living. But you don't sound like you think that's a good thing when you say that CDs "made incalculable profits for a greedy industry in the 90s" as though it's a bad thing.

Late 80s vinyl was made very cheaply because it was so vastly mass produced, so I've been told.

I don't think that's true across the board but there were some particularly crummy pressing techniques in the '70s like Dynagroove and Dynaflex. If you buy a popular '70s Dynaflex album that somebody played a million times with a stack of quarters taped to the top of their cartridge it's probably going to sound like shit.

What I personally fail to understand is why people want to buy LPs of recordings made digitally in modern studios

but it has to be mastered differently for vinyl...less bass, maybe (esp. for a full length), but it will also likely be more dynamic b/c it can't be brick-wall limited.

This, above all. I'm pretty sure it's been years since my ears would have been capable of perceiving the benefit of lossless over 320kbps mp3, let alone vinyl over digital.

― there were chinchillas, these weird little rat animals, in cages (Jon Lewis), Thursday, February 7, 2013 10:42 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I actually think a lot of the things vinyl brings are pretty easy to hear, probably more pronounced than comparing digital formats

The whole idea that you have to be an ”audiophile” to notice is annoying, it's like saying you have to be a ”tvphile” to spot an hdtv

yes the industry wants to push albums on you because that's the only way that artists can really make a living.

this is not really true fwiw

Yeah, pretty sure the industry was never particularly concerned with whether or not artists made a living.

but it has to be mastered differently for vinyl.

^^^totally otm. vinyl mastering is a completely different process

I don't think that's true across the board but there were some particularly crummy pressing techniques in the '70s like Dynagroove and Dynaflex.

true but these techniques were redeemed by having awesome names

Love the vinyl, and wouldn't mind ditching my CDs, since I'm fine with the rips. But I'm not convinced that the "warmer" sound many people hear in vinyl doesn't have something to do with surface dust crackling like a cozy fireplace.

I chase down and exterminate surface noise, it is my enemy, war will never cease

We're gonna find the folks who did this n' we're gonna smoke 'em outta their holes

But seriously do you guys like leave your records out of the sleeve or scratch them with screwdrivers or make a pb&j them handle them with messy fingers or something?

this is not really true fwiw

do tell

diminishing returns from record sales, other revenue streams have become more important (esp licensing), labels have never cared about musicians making a living, album format was also the result of technical and physical manufacturing constraints, the list is pretty long

So where are the big pop artists who only release singles? Why do these supposedly singles oriented artists all make full length albums? It's still the most economically sound way to produce music and pretty much every area of the industry from songwriters and recording studios to marketing departments benefit from focusing on full length albums rather than singles.

hey I'm not saying mouthy's argument is correct, just that musicians in general aren't making money, much less a living, off of album sales these days.

to marketing departments

^i think this is the key

The industry essentially killed the single in the late 90s due to the higher profit margins on albums. Ironically, this was a large part of what led to the rise of file-sharing: if you wanted the new Backstreet Boys single, your options were to buy the $18 CD or, since you only wanted the one song, download it via file-sharing.

In 2012 there were 316 million albums sold in the U.S. and. 1.3 billion digital tracks. So the album side of the industry is still worth about 3 times what singles make. And as album sales continue to fall there's no way to make that money up in singles sales.

I can't help but feel that people who dismiss albums and focus on singles are really just hurting the artists they like. It's fun to turn it into some kind of rockist vs. popist culture war, but the economic reality is that all of the "filler" that the evil corporations forced you to buy is what helped subsidize the awesome singles.

The industry essentially killed the single in the late 90s due to the higher profit margins on albums. Ironically, this was a large part of what led to the rise of file-sharing: if you wanted the new Backstreet Boys single, your options were to buy the $18 CD or, since you only wanted the one song, download it via file-sharing.

I think this is somewhat of a canard. The biggest thing that led to the rise of file-sharing was "yay, free stuff." Even after itunes forced labels to sell singles people still downloaded stuff for free rather than paying a dollar.

If your two options are $18 for a CD with a bunch of songs you don't want and $2 for a single with the song(s) you do want, you're likely to pick the latter. But the latter wasn't an option, so file sharing took its place. In the ensuing tumult, and prior to iTunes, labels did everything they could to NOT get in front of the situation (including, but not limited to, paid services where you didn't own the song and/or could only play it on proprietary hardware; and the rootkit debacle). Labels had to be dragged kicking and screaming into iTunes, and only did so because of how spectacularly and comprehensively they'd fucked up every other possible solution.

I never bought the "yay, free stuff" argument; if you don't want something, it being free doesn't make you suddenly want it.

If your two options are $18 for a CD with a bunch of songs you don't want and $2 for a single with the song(s) you do want, you're likely to pick the latter. But the latter wasn't an option, so file sharing took its place. In the ensuing tumult, and prior to iTunes, labels did everything they could to NOT get in front of the situation (including, but not limited to, paid services where you didn't own the song and/or could only play it on proprietary hardware; and the rootkit debacle). Labels had to be dragged kicking and screaming into iTunes, and only did so because of how spectacularly and comprehensively they'd fucked up every other possible solution.

I never bought the "yay, free stuff" argument; if you don't want something, it being free doesn't make you suddenly want it.

Labels had to be dragged kicking and screaming into digital single sales because album sales are far more economically viable! Look at what happened to the industry after iTunes.

I didn't say that people downloaded free stuff just for the sake of free stuff. Of course it's music that they want. But illegal downloading didn't go away when iTunes came on the scene. If people want something and their options are $18 plus filler, $2 for a single, or $0 for a free download, they're going to choose the consequence-free $0 option.

If your two options are $18 for a CD with a bunch of songs you don't want and $2 for a single with the song(s) you do want, you're likely to pick the latter. But the latter wasn't an option, so file sharing took its place.

lol no. people share albums you know. like, primarily. people don't say "could you post that link with just the single?" any number of other variables one could bring up but really trust me here. filesharing did not become a thing because of consumer frustration with the decline of the single.

i sell classical records in 2013! that's all i know. life is good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQpq4T-cGjM

US and UK market and cultures very different, please remember. I'm speaking from my experience in the UK.

lol no. people share albums you know. like, primarily. people don't say "could you post that link with just the single?"

That's definitely the case now, and has been since at least 2001, absolutely. I was referring to the beginnings of file sharing (ca. 1997-99).

i hated when they got rid of singles in stores. and i totally blame the big record companies and they totally lost out on tons of money by not selling them. going into a record store and not being able to buy a top 40 single...kinda half the reason why most record stores even existed!

I used to go to a drug store near my house that had cutout 45s. "Back Off Boogaloo" for 50 cents!

also, plenty of great-sounding vinyl in the 80's. and dynaflex pressings can sound nice. just listened to a stellar ziggy stardust the other day. but it depends. not all pressings are created equal. in the 70's the oil shortages had a direct effect on records. smaller labels had to use cheap/recycled vinyl.

i loved buying singles. bought them up until the end of the 90's. even cd singles. then i couldn't. unless i went to dance stores and found euro pressings of pop songs. you reap what you sow. you want people to buy a 20 dollar cd and not the single? welcome to napster, idiots.

My Dynaaflex Ziggy sounds amazing! I really think the importance of condition can't be overstated. Also, while I'm sure there are some easily-led out there who hear crackles and think "ohh, warmth, like fire; me likey!" I don't think that's by-and-large what people mean.

I guess if there's a problem with albums having too much filler you can complain and reminisce about the glory days of albums that were good from start to finish, or you can buy just one track and the artist and label will make 1/10th of the money. But I don't get why the people who do the former are the assholes. The singles solution doesn't seem like a sustainable option compared to making albums that people actually want to buy (ask taylor swift or adele).

One thing that frustrates the bejeezus out of me is poorly pressed current releases, especially on 180-gram or when they're explicitly touted as "audiophile"... And you've got a crackle throughout the entire thing, or audible distortion. The second LP of Kaputt by Destroyer (my copy at least) is pressed for shit. That drives me nuts. Did that happen as much in the 70s heyday? I mean, I feel like all my old stuff sounds pretty swell when it's in good shape.

So much straw manning in that blog post holy shit.

I don't even know what this vinyl discourse is, I don't hang out at urban outfitters or w/e though.

I mean, CDS and vinyl are mastered separately. So when you buy a CD Bookends or something, it's not going to sound the same as the og vinyl. (Not necc. Better! Just different!!). I can't believe I actually have bring that up.

I love cds too. It's all wonderful music.

endless vinyl-fetishists waxing lyrical about their favoured delivery method online or in print for what seems like the last decade.

Nobody does this.

idg arguments about vinyl vs. CDs re: durability. if you take care of either they will last (in general). if you scratch a CD, it's fucked. if you scratch vinyl, it skips. both will last as long as you take care of them. (altho I have had the odd CD that just doesn't wanna play anymore after 3 decades or whatever. not sure what to attribute that to)

In terms of the sound, the warmth that so many people describe vinyl as enjoying just sounds like surface noise to me most of the time, a veil through which detail often has to struggle to emerge

And this is just insane... Like, wow. Get a better turntable? Better needle? Records that aren't scratched?

my workplace right now -- 6 people looking at used records, one person looking at used CDs.

Ian: you are Ian from Academy? How did I just now put that together?

yes, clarke, are you a customer???

I was in last night just before closing with my bro-in-law... Bought some Discharge, Gorguts, and Roxy Music!

One thing that frustrates the bejeezus out of me is poorly pressed current releases, especially on 180-gram or when they're explicitly touted as "audiophile"... And you've got a crackle throughout the entire thing, or audible distortion.

a lot of the time crackle is from static electricity

I always use the little Discwasher anti-static brush before I play anything...

my workplace right now -- 6 people looking at used records, one person looking at used CDs.

― i guess i'd just rather listen to canned heat? (ian), Thursday, February 7, 2013 2:35 PM (8 minutes ago)

Yeah but at the Academy on 18th the inverse is most likely currently true.

One thing for singles lovers to keep in mind is that the last time the industry was centered primarily on singles (mid '60s) a 45 cost about 60 cents which is equivalent to about $4 today. And the b-side was usually filler. So if everyone is willing to pay $4 for a single track download on iTunes then maybe a singles-based industry could work but I don't see that happening.

Yeah but at the Academy on 18th the inverse is most likely currently true.

certainly true - plus lots of people checking out the DVDs.

I still don't get the 'but it's got vinyl mastering!' argument. So...we record onto a hard drive, use digital pre-processors, mix in ProTools then ship out the final mix as digital...and then voila, via vinyl mastering we all of a sudden get sonic awesomeness. I haven't done much A/B'ing myself but I'm going to assume the gains are minimal here. I think most records post-1980 sound terrible anyway on any format, fwiw.

it's more a bullwark against the common practice of brickwall limiting and overly loud mastering that goes on today....

yeah i definitely notice lots of warpage with new vinyl. i think its the demand thing. the pressing plants that are left are working a LOT and i think quality might suffer.

xp Fair enough, but seems like you'd have to know beforehand that care was taken to avoid that. I have modern vinyl that are compressed as hell and it sounds awful.

One thing for singles lovers to keep in mind is that the last time the industry was centered primarily on singles (mid '60s) a 45 cost about 60 cents which is equivalent to about $4 today. And the b-side was usually filler. So if everyone is willing to pay $4 for a single track download on iTunes then maybe a singles-based industry could work but I don't see that happening.

― wk, Thursday, February 7, 2013 2:47 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think an argument was being made in favor of singles vs. albums. It certainly doesn't have to be either/or (for consumers, that is).

And yeah, it's too late for the industry to start on $4 singles downloads; it wouldn't have been too late if they'd consistently released $4 CD singles in 1997 or whatever. Or if, at the dawn of file-sharing, they'd gotten in front of the situation instead of being dragged behind it with ever-increasing speed.

i love a lot of pre-CD digital classical vinyl from the late 70's and early 80's. and audiophiles like them a ton. but if something is recorded digitallynow i have no problem just having the cd. plus, with albums being so long now i'll definitely listen to the cd more. when i was buying rap albums that were 3XLP i ended up not playing them much. or i would just play a side or two.

i own almost no heavy metal vinyl from the 2000's. too expensive and i'm usually fine with the cd version anyway. and most were recoreded digitally. (and a great percentage of them don't sound all that hot no matter how you play them. but i can overlook the in-the-red shit if its music i like.)

One thing that frustrates the bejeezus out of me is poorly pressed current releases, especially on 180-gram or when they're explicitly touted as "audiophile"... And you've got a crackle throughout the entire thing, or audible distortion. The second LP of Kaputt by Destroyer (my copy at least) is pressed for shit. That drives me nuts. Did that happen as much in the 70s heyday? I mean, I feel like all my old stuff sounds pretty swell when it's in good shape.

this is a windmill I'm always tilting at but the place to look first for bad vinyl sound is the mastering job. the cutter and the plant can only do so much with the mastered recording they're given, and practically everybody skimps on that end. people send final mixes off to the plant and let some guy they've never met or seen master their recordings, but mastering is a crucial step, especially as regards the vinyl. there are only a few really great mastering dudes left, a couple in the US and one or two in the UK iirc. Plenty others who I'm sure would be great if the artists/producers were at the sessions but again a lot of people just send stuff off to be mastered which is imo insane.

yeah i think now a lot of bands just think its cool to put out vinyl but they don't really have anything to do with the final product.

but i do see actual physical problems with new vinyl that doesn't have anything to do with the music and it makes me think that things are rushed because demand is so high.

a lot of people just send stuff off to be mastered which is imo insane.

mastering engineers seem to actively discourage attended sessions though?

in the 70s people would return defective stuff to stores and the stores would sell the returns to middlemen/the mob and the middlemen/the mob would just reseal them and sell them back to stores as dollar bin stuff. everyone was happy.

I don't think an argument was being made in favor of singles vs. albums. It certainly doesn't have to be either/or (for consumers, that is).

I was responding to his claim that "The music industry wants us to worship the LP rather than the single in order to draw more money out of us, and the esteem within which vinyl is held is a part of this mythology." I disagree with that and I'm arguing that the music industry wants us to focus on the album rather than the single because it's the only way that selling records can be a viable business. It sort of is either/or, because the question is whether or not a singles-oriented industry can really survive if album sales continue to plummet and the price of music stays at an all time low. And if not, I don't think mythologizing the album is some kind of greedy, nefarious conspiracy.

And yeah, it's too late for the industry to start on $4 singles downloads; it wouldn't have been too late if they'd consistently released $4 CD singles in 1997 or whatever. Or if, at the dawn of file-sharing, they'd gotten in front of the situation instead of being dragged behind it with ever-increasing speed.

You really think that $4 CD singles could compete with free downloads? Napster started in '99 and iTunes in 2001 so I don't think the industry was that far behind the situation.

also i'm seeing more instances where the vinyl master is used as the digital master too, probably because people don't want to have to pay extra for different versions (and there's no way of getting around the vinyl master if that's what you're putting out), and because the vinyl master sounds good. i know that's true of some friends' records on Not Not Fun for ex.

yeah i definitely notice lots of warpage with new vinyl. i think its the demand thing. the pressing plants that are left are working a LOT and i think quality might suffer.

i was shocked on the beatles thread re a comment as to a lot of mispressings re the recent vinyl boxset.
given the premium price and flagship product status, i would have thought emi et al would have pulled out all the stops to make sure this one hit the audiophile spot.
clearly this wasn't the case, and i suspect the point re the lack of pressing plants is a key factor here ..

given the upsurge in demand for vinyl, have any new pressing plants opened, or, is the industry still relying on remainders of the old network ?

i think existing place have started running more shifts, like night shifts and stuff, heard something about some eastern european new plants supposedly coming online

"to focus on the album rather than the single because it's the only way that selling records can be a viable business"

selling singles was a viable business for decades. i still think it could be. if you could buy a taylor swift cd single at the check-out line at a grocery store for 2 or 3 bucks i would totally buy one. i love singles! and i'm not the only one. they just took the option away! there was no choice involved. that's what sucks about it.

i'm seeing more instances where the vinyl master is used as the digital master too

yeah this happens. because vinyl mastered versions do tend to sound better, aren't brickwalled etc

quality would almost have to be lower with pressing plants. everyone who was good at it went out of business or died years ago. need some hipster record pressers. stop making candles, make quality records.

and enough with the heavy vinyl. would buy more new stuff if people would just do regular normal weight record pressings and charged me 15 bucks. this 30 dollars for a new album thing is crazy.

stop making candles, make quality records

kinda surprised this hasn't happened actually. seems like so much of the vinyl on the market is pressed in like one of a couple places in eastern europe iirc

when i was shopping around for my last record i was surprised by how many U.S. plants there were to choose from! i think a lot of new places have opened in the last few years.

180g records just makes shipping cost more nevermind the lp costing more too.

Throws off my vta too. So important.

good news imho, Jordan!

xp

For once, Cleveland has something good! http://gottagrooverecords.com/

Local 7" and 12" pressing plant, in its 4th year of operation. IME their stuff sounds terrific.

selling singles was a viable business for decades. i still think it could be. if you could buy a taylor swift cd single at the check-out line at a grocery store for 2 or 3 bucks i would totally buy one. i love singles! and i'm not the only one. they just took the option away! there was no choice involved. that's what sucks about it.

The record industry was a pretty small business back before LPs took off, and singles were about 4x more expensive in the mid '60s than they are now adjusted for inflation. You can already buy Taylor Swift singles on iTunes and it's the artists and labels who had their options taken away by Apple when they were forced to make all tracks available a la carte.

You really think that $4 CD singles could compete with free downloads?

Definitely not. That's why I used 1997 as the point at which $4 CD singles might have been viable for the industry as a means of heading off file sharing, which was about a year away.

how would that have headed off file sharing???

By making singles available (which they weren't, which is why people started looking to file sharing).

yeah i just go to youtube if i wanna hear a single. i don't buy anything. but i would have kept buying physical singles.

my conspiracy theory was always: cd singles got long! like, album-length in some cases. and record companies couldn't have people put 2+2 together. why am i paying 20 bucks for this 45 minute album when i just bought a 35 minute single for 4 bucks?

Totally. I have some "singles" that are longer than some "albums."

scott when you say you bought singles did you mean 7"s or cd singles?
in the 90s I bought tons of both. Used to get them for 99p or £1.99. Even if i hadnt heard them Id buy them if they looked good or if i had read about them in the music press. OK so i ended up with some crap singles but for 99p it didnt matter. And sometimes I'd end up with some crackers like supergrass caught by the fuzz for 99p

a lot of people just send stuff off to be mastered which is imo insane.

mastering engineers seem to actively discourage attended sessions though?

― keef qua keef (Jordan), Thursday, February 7, 2013 3:46 PM (30 minutes ago)

the ones who are running factory shops discourage it, but a quality engineer will be open to it, folks like jeff lipton @ peerless actually *want* you to be there:

If you are able to attend the mastering session, we highly recommend that you do. Your feedback will be invaluable in assisting our mastering engineers during the session. We do not penalize artists or stakeholders for attending sessions. However, we realize that attendance is not possible for all clients. We will do our best to make the experience as personal as possible for those who are unable to attend. Since we work with artists from all over the world, many of our sessions are unattended.

the 2 cd singles thing with different bsides was annoying though.

tbf mastering sessions can be amazingly boring

in the 90's i would buy cd singles but i preferred 12 inch vinyl singles for new pop/rap/dance/etc. i didn't actually buy a lot of 7 inches back then. not new ones anyway.

tbf mastering sessions can be amazingly boring

-― Welcome to my world of proses (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, February 7, 2013 4:44 PM (3 minutes ago)

at least you can get it over with in one shot says the guy who just spent a month and half on a remote mastering job

" my conspiracy theory was always: cd singles got long! like, album-length in some cases. and record companies couldn't have people put 2+2 together. why am i paying 20 bucks for this 45 minute album when i just bought a 35 minute single for 4 bucks?"

aha so so we can blame the orb/FSOL for the decline in the record industry !

something tells me that they would love to be a part of the problem ...

mastering engineers seem to actively discourage attended sessions though?

this may be true with some guys - I know John Golden was always happy to have company during his sessions when I mastered out there & we'd always get an incredible history-science lesson bundled in. Same's true with Brent Lambert, who I consider an absolute genius, like seriously one of the best people I've met in the biz ever, worth at least twice as much as his nearest rival. I

have

tbf mastering sessions can be amazingly boring

been mastering w/the same guy since '05 and have never gotten bored in session after session, ymmv I guess

lol stray quote thing sorry

i've attended all my mastering sessions and honestly i kind of regret it because we didn't know wtf we were talking about and often got kind of "in love" with certain things and told him to keep doing it even when the mastering engineer expressed concerns about it, in one case we actually decided we hated the mastering that we participated in and he was nice enough to charge us a half-fee for him to go back and re-do it to correct the previous session without us being there

i also think there are WAY more than like THREE dudes in the U.S. that can do a good job mastering, i can think of more than that in Mpls alone

By making singles available (which they weren't, which is why people started looking to file sharing).

come on man, people did not turn to file sharing because they couldn't buy a CD single of their favorite Backstreet Boys song.

I mean, sure file sharing happened to provide a solution to that particular problem but it also allowed you to download any album you wanted for free.

i just think it was mean. something really kinda great and not nostalgic at all about saying OMG i love that song! must go buy that song! and go buy it at a store - cuz if you heard it on the radio they probably had it - and listen to song over and over. and when you could physically do this it was cool. computers are different.

i mean is that just uh middle age white male nostalgia on my part?

this may be true with some guys - I know John Golden was always happy to have company during his sessions when I mastered out there & we'd always get an incredible history-science lesson bundled in.

ha, the remote session I just did was w/ john golden, and yeah it would've nice to hear some wisdom straight from that ancient well

matt also otm about being yr own worst enemy, every mastering job should start with a one hour training session for the artists

"You know that Queen gatefold of them in the huge studio? I want my album to sound EXACTLY like it was recorded there."

"...sure."

i just think it was mean. something really kinda great and not nostalgic at all about saying OMG i love that song! must go buy that song! and go buy it at a store - cuz if you heard it on the radio they probably had it - and listen to song over and over. and when you could physically do this it was cool. computers are different.

yeah, I agree. I think it's really cool that there was a time in the '50s and '60s where somebody with a little independent label could go into a studio in a day, record one song and press it to a 45 with any old filler on the back, and then end up selling a million copies and being set for life.

It would be great if there were some kind of desirable physical object that you could buy for a couple of bucks with a couple good songs on it. It would be especially great for kids to be able to buy something physical with whatever little money they have. There's just something weird about buying mp3s. But I don't know if a $2 CD with two songs on it (let alone 35 minutes of extra stuff) is economically feasible. I would love to be able to press my own music to 45s and sell them for one or two bucks but you can barely even press them that cheaply let alone ship them, take out the distributor's cut or paypal fees, etc.

come on man, people did not turn to file sharing because they couldn't buy a CD single of their favorite Backstreet Boys song.

― wk, Thursday, February 7, 2013 4:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure they did. The only other option was buying the $18 CD (or having a friend burn said CD for them, I suppose). It began with songs, and very soon after the obvious leap to sharing albums was made.

i agree. millions of people just want the hit.

early days of napster was dial up for most people so unsurprisingly it was songs at first then it developed from there. Napster was amazing for me as I could finally hear long oop albums I hunted years for.

the oop thing has always been a bigger deal re: filesharing than the "must find top 40 single for free!" angle

er, to me that is

people really have no conception of how much music was not released on CD/digitally

"You know that Queen gatefold of them in the huge studio? I want my album to sound EXACTLY like it was recorded there."

"...sure."

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, February 7, 2013 4:20 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We want this to sound "really pro", can you do that?

I think it's really cool that there was a time in the '50s and '60s where somebody with a little independent label could go into a studio in a day, record one song and press it to a 45 with any old filler on the back, and then end up selling a million copies and being set for life.

I think there are way, way fewer examples of this than you seem to believe, in fact I doubt you can cite a single one that ended up with the artist being "set for life". Goes back to earlier points made itt about the music industry in general.

Sure they did. The only other option was buying the $18 CD (or having a friend burn said CD for them, I suppose). It began with songs, and very soon after the obvious leap to sharing albums was made.

So why didn't they just buy the track they wanted for $1 from iTunes? The scenario you're talking about really only happened for a year or two.

tbf wk didn't say the artist, he said somebody with a little independent label. altho yeah I agree that even those cases are much rarer. much more common was for people to get screwed out of money then to be "set for life"

xp

I think there are way, way fewer examples of this than you seem to believe, in fact I doubt you can cite a single one that ended up with the artist being "set for life". Goes back to earlier points made itt about the music industry in general.

Sure, it wasn't common but I'm pretty sure I've read multiple examples. I'll dig out the books and do my research later tonight. Let's say somebody sold a million records in the late '50s, early '60s and ended up making $250k from that, which is about 1.8 million now. They could have bought a nice house for say $15k. Sounds pretty set for life to me.

I'm pretty sure Phil Spector's first record is one such example but I think I can find others.

Spector was not "set for life" on the basis of "To Know Him is to Love Him". He became a millionaire very young by being totally ruthless, fucking over his partners, recording a ton of hits, owning his own label/publishing, etc. he is the exception (in SO many ways!) not the rule.

I bet Fowley was pretty comfortable after Alley Oop and Nut Rocker. xp

but ignore "set for life" if that bugs you. The fact is that it was a lot easier to make a living off of singles in an era when they cost the equivalent of $4 today and an independent label could get their song on the radio without spending $1 million to promote it.

well okay yeah that's true. because there was more money flowing into the music industry then, is the main reason.

So why didn't they just buy the track they wanted for $1 from iTunes? The scenario you're talking about really only happened for a year or two.

Because iTunes didn't start until 2001. And you're right, my scenario would have only been effective from 1997-2000 or so (or later, as AG pointed out re: bandwidth -- DSL/cable didn't become widespread until 2004-2005 at the earliest). And in those three years, file sharing completely exploded. It caughton quick, and the industry was simultaneously caught unawares and WE HAVE TO TRY TO STAMP OUT FILE SHARING IN THE MOST INEFFICIENT WAY IMAGINABLE INSTEAD OF TRYING TO COME UP WITH A WORKABLE ALTERNATIVE! (cf. the Sony and Universal attempts at iTunes-like services that were beyond unwieldy for users. Neither service lasted more than a couple of years).

Itunes in the row was much later i think

when the big labels did away with selling singles in stores they got people out of the habit of buying music! a lot of people. people who just wanted the newest/biggest tracks. which is a huge portion of the buying public. so if they are out of the habit or they came of age right as singles were disappearing, ripping them for free was no big deal. they were already used to not paying for stuff.

man this idea that it was the lack of available singles that drove filesharing is just so not even...it's just not the case. people had moved away from the single in the post-vinyl age, period. You couldn't sell CD singles or cassette singles, not even if the CD singles had extra tracks. The single lost viability when album sales experienced their dizzying CD-boom era rise. People didn't want 'em any more, they didn't buy them in the formats they were otherwise consuming in large numbers (CD and cassette).

there was a weird cd single market back in the 90s to be fair, but it was feeding the obsessive fan base more than a mainstream one to be fair. one little indian sold a crapton of those bagazillion bjork singles, for instance.

jesus man i dont think ive ever used to be fair twice in a sentence. busy day at work, my head hurts etc

the other prime mover i remember was tori amos

if you say so. i bought them. and then i couldn't and i hardly ever bought CDs again. and i didn't fileshare or download music. i've never napstered in my life. in the 90's it was not uncommon for bigger stores in philly to still carry new 12 inches too. and then they didn't. and then they all went out of business.

x-post

people didn't by cd singles but those now what I call music comps sold well through the 2000s, no?

Aerosmith I bought one of your cd singles once...but I'm no hero, just a regular guy doing his bit

in the 70s people would return defective stuff to stores and the stores would sell the returns to middlemen/the mob and the middlemen/the mob would just reseal them and sell them back to stores as dollar bin stuff. everyone was happy.

My uncle (now living in Germany) apparently used to scratch such records with a key before returning them to make them un-resellable, as a service to future buyers. I have no idea if that worked. Sounds specious.

I bought CD singles too but I am a music nerd!* I'm just pretty sure that in terms of numbers, they fell off real quick & real early

*only a terrible one because I can't remember names, dates, people's names, etc

The fact is that it was a lot easier to make a living off of singles in an era when they cost the equivalent of $4 today and an independent label could get their song on the radio without spending $1 million to promote it.

Totally agree w/this, just not sure how many 1-hit wonders got to quit their day jobs for life.

I think it's really cool that there was a time in the '50s and '60s where somebody with a little independent label could go into a studio in a day, record one song and press it to a 45 with any old filler on the back, and then end up selling a million copies and being set for life.

I think there are way, way fewer examples of this than you seem to believe, in fact I doubt you can cite a single one that ended up with the artist being "set for life". Goes back to earlier points made itt about the music industry in general.

― sleeve, Thursday, February 7, 2013 7:01 PM (56 minutes ago)

to wk's point, I think it's pretty cool that somebody can record a song in their bedroom, upload it to youtube, and end up with a record deal nowadays

and sleeve, plenty of folks were set for life based on a hit single, but only if they didn't sign away their publishing rights (many did, but many didn't). performing rights societies are a controversial part of the music biz but they ensure musicians can get paid as long as their songs remain in the public consciousness. boxcar willie talks about being destitute and wondering how he was gonna buy xmas presents for his kids when a check showed up from BMI for "king of the road" performance royalties. the guy who wrote "spirit in the sky" got some fat checks when it started getting used in vietnam films of the 80s. for better or worse the rembrandts don't have to work a day in their life after writing the friends theme. paul pena (close to mind cuz I just watched genghis blues) had a middling music career, but I'm sure his royalties from writing "jet airliner" kept him in good shape for the remainder of his stay on the planet.

per wikipedia:

Sidran gave an unreleased copy of New Train to Steve Miller, who recorded "Jet Airliner" with the Steve Miller Band for the 1977 album Book of Dreams. Miller's version of "Jet Airliner" was a hit single, and went to #8 on the charts. Pena's primary source of income in his later years were royalties from that single, which was a song about Pena's airplane trip from Boston to Montreal to play the first-ever date with T-Bone Walker's band.

well okay yeah that's true. because there was more money flowing into the music industry then, is the main reason.

well yeah, that's my point! you can't say "hey the industry ran on singles in the past before" and ignore the fact that everything else about the music industry landscape is entirely different now.

to wk's point, I think it's pretty cool that somebody can record a song in their bedroom, upload it to youtube, and end up with a record deal nowadays

yeah a record deal to make a full-length album. I'm sure there are some people who have made a boatload of money solely off a single in the past decade but the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Rebecca Black.

Sidran gave an unreleased copy of New Train to Steve Miller, who recorded "Jet Airliner" with the Steve Miller Band for the 1977 album Book of Dreams. Miller's version of "Jet Airliner" was a hit single, and went to #8 on the charts. Pena's primary source of income in his later years were royalties from that single, which was a song about Pena's airplane trip from Boston to Montreal to play the first-ever date with T-Bone Walker's band.

well, that's publishing money - this could still happen, and does

soulja boy, kreayshawn, carly rae jepson, etc

xp

I mean obviously there are also plenty of artists who would still be hugely rich if you only counted their single sales and the album didn't exist. But they all have albums too! And they tend to sell pretty well. And if you cut out that whole chunk of income, the entire industry that's set up to produce those singles can't really function in the same way anymore.

xp to myself

i can definitely see a domino effect though. someone wants a new song goes to store they don't have it in single form so they grumble and buy the album for $18.99. they do this enough and then when free internet sites pop up they're like fuckit i ain't paying those prices anymore. i still feel the need to blame the record industry for everything.

soulja boy, kreayshawn, carly rae jepson, etc

these people have all released albums afaict

the guy who wrote "spirit in the sky" got some fat checks when it started getting used in vietnam films

NORMAN FUCKING GREENBAUM deserves more respect than this ffs.
also, you ever play that 45 at 33rpM? wooooaaahahh it's heavy! can't do that with a CD! (not easily, anyway.)

I was going to say something earlier about how I think EPs are the future (present actually I guess) and I'm looking at Carly Rae Jepsen now and didn't realize that her hit is originally from an EP. She's a good example though. 10 million singles sold and only 226,000 albums in the US. So yeah, a few people can still make serious money primarily from singles. But not the kind of money that she would have made if she sold 10 million albums! Not Adele money. And then when you extrapolate that down to the lower tiers of artists who only sell in the tens of thousands you can figure out the huge chunk of great music that is no longer financially sustainable in a singles dominated world.

so how many actual singles would she have sold in stores? not enough to break even, i guess, if i'm to believe you guys.

although come to think of it she's probably one of those people whose single you CAN actually buy in gas stations and drug stores and stuff. they had a huge taylor swift display in the walgreens down the street. probably still there.

The only cds I see in gas stations are bizzie bone and Alabama.

The only cds I see in gas stations are bizzie bone and Alabama.

the gas station of my dreams

But see that's the thing, Red has sold over 5 million copies worldwide. So yeah, 5 million $10 albums vs. 10 million $1 downloads is kind of a no-brainer.
xp

If the 5 million people who bought Red only bought WENEGBT and Trouble, that would be $10 million vs. $50 million

And a band who makes a living selling 10k albums a year is not going to do so well selling 10 or 20k single tracks.

has aerosmith ever put out his uh their own records? i thought that was the future for "cult" artists. the cult of aerosmith...would join probably. unless they met in boston...

is their a good current indie money breakdown thing on the web? please don't make me read albini. something that lists costs and describes the current situation. what people make. what people do. i guess everyone has different situations now.

Is there a similar discussion on ilx about film distribution/dvds?

the other factor that hasn't been mentioned re: CD singles is shelf space. If the retailer made 50 cents or a dollar on a CD single but $3 on an album, then why would they want to take up valuable shelf space with singles? but I guess the death of CD singles came before places like best buy sold cds as a loss leader to get people in the store to buy washing machines.

i think the chain music store across the street from me makes all its money on dvds and games. they sell a ton of new video games. i buy dvds there. out of the giant buckets of dvds. i graze in them for a while.

i'm really glad that chain store is there. cuz people who want to steal stuff just get confused in my store. they don't know what's flippable. so, the dumb chains do serve a purpose. they keep shoplifters employed and out of my hair.

Without wading through this whole discussion let me say that I LUVVV my vinyl and that I LUVVV my CDs and that I'm against arbitrarily pitting them against each other because they have their own pros and cons and 'cause it's kind of pointless to argue about one being better than the other 'cause they're their own singular entities and, y'know, peaceful coexistence and all.

Same here. (Someone said the same thing earlier.) I don't have the emotional/goopy-nostalgic attachment to CDs that I have to my records, but the simple fact is, I'm a car guy, and I can't play my records in the car. Once I accepted them, CDs were a big leap forward from cassettes as far as motorvatin' went. I play my albums in fits and starts, but they'll always be there. Having to treat them carefully is a somewhat inconvenient reality, but if you aren't going to do that, or if you're someone who finds that difficult, you should never buy records.

ok y'all I'm gonna give you my SUPER SECRET NINJA SECRETS OF CARING FOR YOUR FRAGILE RECORDS THIS SHIT IS CRAZY:

1) put your records on a shelf side by side

2) when you want to play a record, pull it out on the shelf

3) Take the record off the shelf, pull out the inner sleeve

4) Remove the record from the sleeve, hold the record by edges and don't like put fucking mud on it or let your dog bite it or take sandpaper to it or let a toddler take a shit on it

5) Put record on table, press button, gently put needle on record

unless your this guy you should be fine

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr02/2012/11/8/18/anigif_enhanced-buzz-31123-1352415867-5.gif

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr02/2012/11/8/18/anigif_enhanced-buzz-31123-1352415867-5.gif

But see that's the thing, Red has sold over 5 million copies worldwide. So yeah, 5 million $10 albums vs. 10 million $1 downloads is kind of a no-brainer.
xp

― wk, Thursday, February 7, 2013 9:00 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If the 5 million people who bought Red only bought WENEGBT and Trouble, that would be $10 million vs. $50 million

― wk, Thursday, February 7, 2013 9:03 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And a band who makes a living selling 10k albums a year is not going to do so well selling 10 or 20k single tracks.

― wk, Thursday, February 7, 2013 9:04 PM (2 hours ago)

don't have time to get into details but your assumptions about how artists make money over the course of their lifetime are a little skewed

I mean more specifically -- is there a discussion about people who make movies and try to distribute them to people who want to buy them, not the sales of DVDs that are already produced and floating around in vats?

I don't think I said anything about how artists make money over the course of their lifetimes
xp

I've just been trying to point out the basic math of an industry geared around selling $10 units vs. $1 units and how that relates to sick mouthy's perceptions of albums being some kind of greedy scam or outdated boomer nostalgia rather than being the driving force that allowed the creation of 90% of the great music that people like to talk about here.

Stop strawmanning me for that remark, which was a tiny bit of the piece, based on an excellent presentation by someone else (ie evidence) and only meant to illustrate that the album (which I am a vocal and much criticised fan of on this forum) started life not as an artistic statement but as a money-making scam.

As for what I listened to before I got a CD player, it was almost exclusively cassettes. I had a Walkman and a cassette ghetto blaster thing, and I played cassettes, over and over again. My first ever music purchase was. 7" though - Bad by Michael Jackson. The shape and size of it irritated me and I threw it across the local park like a frisbee.

"well, evah since I was a young boah, I hated vinyl.."

Yeah, I was the same with me in the pre-CD era: cassettes. Cassettes were cheaper and easier to store, I don't think my family even had a vinyl player when I was kid. The same with my friends too. I dunno how it was elsewhere in the world, but in here cassettes were the format of choice for people who didn't have much money and/or weren't big music consumers in the 80s (and all the way to the early 90s).

I inherited a load of cassettes off my brothers, and they copied some albums they had onto tape for me too.

It's a generation thing really, not many people who were born at the very end of the 70s onward really got into the habit of buying vinyl records, they were already seen as a bit old hat by the time I got into pop music. For most of my generation it was tapes then CDs (and for a very long time afterwards CDs copied onto tape). I think I still regularly used a Walkman until about 2003.

I bought a minidisc walkman when I went to uni in 1998, and that replaced the cassette walkman I'd had since I was 10 (which I won on a TV quiz show!).

It's a generation thing really, not many people who were born at the very end of the 70s onward really got into the habit of buying vinyl records, they were already seen as a bit old hat by the time I got into pop music. For most of my generation it was tapes then CDs (and for a very long time afterwards CDs copied onto tape). I think I still regularly used a Walkman until about 2003.

― Matt DC, Friday, 8 February 2013 11:25 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm a little younger than both you and Mouthy, but I was into records from the age of about 9 and kept buying them til I was about 16 or 17. Tape ran concurrently with that. I saw tapes as a cheap convenience, or I'd use them to make comps. But vinyl was a big part of my early career as a music fan.

This is old-guy arrogance, but I'm glad I never had to go the cassette route. I continued buying new releases on vinyl right through to '88 or '89, then gradually made the transition to CDs. I've got maybe 40 cassettes stored away downstairs, every one of them bought for two or three dollars. (I did, during the second half of the '80s, make numerous mix-tapes for people.)

Cassettes were great for the car when it was that or the radio. Bought Screamadelica on cassette from Woolies for £1.99. #rosetinted #oldfart

Fuck me I just hashtagged in an ILX post. #wanker

I did love playing my own mix-tapes in the car for 10-15 years, yes, but only rarely would I throw on a commercially-released cassette. At home, I continued buying and playing vinyl. Today, homemade or commercially-released CDs in the car, vinyl or any kind of CD at home. I'm more a creature of habit than logic.

I mostly was split evenly between cassettes and vinyl growing up. If I bought a cassette, it was either because the store didn't have the vinyl, or because I really wanted to listen to it (in the car, in my Walkman) at that moment. Taped tons of records, made tons of mix tapes, but generally hated cassettes. The fidelity sucked, finding songs on a tape was annoying, and they would always have this EQ warble thing happening that I found maddening.

All my early music purchases were cassette, I have a huge box of them

When I was six or seven, I was given my very own blue plastic Sears record player, and it was a fine day when I could hear “Little Willie” any time I damn well pleased. Never again would I have to wait for some guy on the radio to play it. “More than a Feeling” by Boston was the first 45 I bought with my own money, the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer the first LP. I still have the latter, and listened to it a couple of months ago. It sounded pretty good, whereas I have CDs that inexplicably stopped working within a few years of buying them.

30-plus years and many, many records later, this record collecting habit and the fetishization of vinyl sometimes troubles and puzzles. Why do these objects exert such control over otherwise sane minds? Is it not absurd or even humiliating for a grown-ass man to obsess over Ebay auctions of records made decades ago for teenagers, when the same recordings can be downloaded anytime on the cheap or for free? It is madness, no? (And I’m nothing compared to some friends. I just witnessed a pal pack close to 10,000 records for a cross-country move. It was indeed a dreary thing to see.)

It is the fidelity, you say? Some of my most loved 45s sound like someone is frying bacon in the background. When people say those crackles and pops make for a more “authentic” listening experience, what does that even mean? In my darker moments, I suspect much of this talk is merely sentimental malarkey, nostalgia, or a desperate justification for a vapid materialism. Others say it’s the packaging and the art work, the band photos, and so forth. I say when you have seen one long-haired burnt-out case, you have seen them all. I say all this and yet why did I have to buy “She’s Gotta Wobble When She Walks” by Sugar Boy Crawford (Imperial 5424,1956) this week on 45? I have it on a compilation already, and that should be enough. Why did I recently have a dream about Starday country 45s when I used to dream about girls?

Some friends recently got interviewed about their band/also about records, worthy insights --
http://www.thevinyldistrict.com/newyork/2013/02/prince-ruperts-drops-the-tvd-first-date/

Also, in the "I've seen it all, now.." folder:

http://www.spincds.com/blonde-on-blonde-nbrd-ltd-ed-180-gram-45-rpm-three-lp-box

Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde, mastered onto three slabs of vinyl to play at 45rpm.

This means you get to hear the surface noise speeded up!

Also, that "Sad eyed lady of the lowlands" no longer takes up all of side four.

Yes! It now takes up all of side six!

<i>This means you get to hear the surface noise speeded up!

Also, that "Sad eyed lady of the lowlands" no longer takes up all of side four.

― Mark G, Friday, February 8, 2013 10:45 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink</i>

45 shouldn't necessarily have more surface noise? idgi....45 12 inches can sound pretty great, def can have better bass, cfe metal box

so many rap LPs are 12" 45s that sound amazing wtf

hopefully a bunch of teenagers will buy that at urban outfitters, listen at the wrong speed, and think dylan is supposed to sound like that

"Skellington" Julian Cope is mastered at 45rpm, I was halfway through side 2 when the penny dropped...

i went and saw this garage band from the UK called The Hipshakes, they were good, really high energy and then i bought the record and thought goddam these guys are amazing, really cool production but i realized it was a 12 inch 45 being played at 33, but they were fast and hyper enough that it still sounded "kinda" normal :(

12 inch at 45 is the way to go. the japanese made some of the best reissue pressings in the 70's and 80's of jazz and classical at 45 rpm. i never knew that the first skrewdriver album on chiswick is 45 rpm until i played it a few weeks ago. sounds amazing! certainly one of the best-sounding punk records ever made.

PJ Harvey's White Chalk is another 45rpm album. I played it at the wrong speed the first dozen or so times and only found out my mistake when I downloaded it to put on my iPod. If you think that record sounds strange and haunted as it is, give it a spin at 33rpm.

Still can't believe that pressing it at 45rpm wasn't a mistake in fact. There is no indication on the label about it.

Uuuuhhhh... 45rpm 12"s sound BETTER than 33rpm 12s.. And it sounds better whenthengrroves are spread put. Jesus.

spread out. Sorry, sputtering with rage here (not really)

its all about the grooves. i would definitely buy well-made reissues of old stuff like that if i saw stuff i liked. i was almost tempted by those 45 rpm metallica reissues some years back but i didn't get them. if someone made high quality 12 inch singles of old songs i would buy them too. black sabbath singles! with huge bass and drums. or even huger drum and bass anyway. only if they are from the master recordings though. someone get on that. (jukebox sabbath bloody sabbath EPs sounded good if i remember correctly. made in the 70's.)

I mean, it's fine if yall don't care about this stuff, but some people do, and their not snobs about it it's just a hobby. Sheesh. Go after em for being rich of you must.

scott there's a pressing maybe from early 00s of Master of Reality by sabbath on Earmark (UK label i think) anyway, if you ever see that, it's pretty great...they also reissued that kooky Come to the Sabbat Black Widow band you probably know them

that's why when people say vinyl in the 80's sucked i wanna say uhhhhh i could play you like a thousand 80's 12 inches that would make you change your mind about that.

Blue Note's apparently doing insane business with their current series of (limited, prohibitively expensive) multi-disc 45rpm vinyl reissues.

i actually like the cheap NEMS sabbath reissues. i got some for the store and ended up taking some home. they sound good. i mean they are probably digital remasters and i probably just like them cuz they are loud but on vinyl the loudness sounds fine. on cd it would probably make me throw the cd out the window.

yeah if you ever see any old japanese 45 rpm blue note stuff just buy them if you can afford them. so good.

man, you guys, you should have seen this jazz record store i went to in tokyo, it was way below street level, this little maybe 15x15 foot room, two old dudes just sitting their spinning jazz records all day...but the selection and quality was UNREAL....like everything in the store was basically NM, and all polybagged with new inner sleeves...i bought an eric dolphy record, and the guy actually took it out of the polybag, and replaced it with a NEW polybag when i bought it, because i guess the old one was maybe "worn" or something? i could have spent $5000 in there easy...it's like if you went to, say the Coltrane section, they wouldn't just have a few it would be like near perfect copies of like EVERY coltrane record...could not believe it, so may records jammed in a tiny space

i forgot that Dolphy record on the shuttle bus to the airport. :(

the other factor that hasn't been mentioned re: CD singles is shelf space. If the retailer made 50 cents or a dollar on a CD single but $3 on an album, then why would they want to take up valuable shelf space with singles? but I guess the death of CD singles came before places like best buy sold cds as a loss leader to get people in the store to buy washing machines.

― wk, Thursday, February 7, 2013 9:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is why all comic stores are now basically toy stores

xpost what dolphy was it?

lol m@tt

Lately I've been thinking of buying a metal box from ebay. worth it?

xpost what dolphy was it?

― try a little crowleymass (Jon Lewis), Friday, February 8, 2013 11:50 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Iron Man but with a way cooler cover than i've seen before ;_;

Well, anyway, that Dylan thing was £99

wk - i think so - the 2006 4 Men With Beards reissue is great, was manufactured and overseen by lydon and it's pretty indistinguishable, might be cheaper and in better condition

cool thx. didn't know about that. the originals seem to all be rusty which is kind of a drag for something so expensive.

Only the tin, the records are fine

i think the reissue made the metal box out of a different metal so it wouldn't corrode...everything else is pretty exacting to the original specs, including making the records a pain to get out of the tin lol lydon

Originally, the t'ing was £7.99 whereas most LPs were £5 or less

records? But I'm just buying it for the tin

It was meant to resemble a film canister. The rust is part of the design.

I remember the RS Record Guide (1983) saying "import copies of Metal Box go for as much as $20.00!"

haha if only

i should have spent the mid to late 90s dumping money into prog, folk, and jazz records, i would have beat the market considerably :(

you know what sounds really great? post-war 78rpm records.

you get a rare glimpse at my classical closet in this video i just put up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdxXf8x2WfE

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/07/world/vinyl-records-future-lifestyle/index.html

A quarter of young adults buy records they never listen to, a survey of British music fans discovered last year.

Some might take this as baffling or pretentious behavior, but the future of vinyl may rest on its ability to find selling points beyond its basic function as a music format.

didi not know this:

Just two companies worldwide produce lacquer needed in mastering, one of which is a one-man operation in Japan. When his business was affected by the 2011 tsunami, so was the global industry.

If they dont listen to it then it will be just a fad that will fade away, but for those who have been buying it 10 or 20 years they will continue. It's never gonna be *back* but i see no reason why it or CD will go away, it just wont be the biggest format.
And there will be endless reports of demise/revival for the next half century, just like rock/pop/rap or whatever

It'd be funny if all these records these kids never listen to had the wrong music on them. Like, you think you just bought that RSD copy of Deja Entendu, but it's actually some Liza Minelli album. Joke's on you, millennials!

Of course, this raises issues about quality control and accountability. If plants know that a quarter of the listening audience won't even ever hear the damn thing, well, what's the motivation to make it sound awesome, especially with plants as overworked as they are already? If I worked at a record plant, making twelve bucks an hour or something, and was working overtime to make sure the 180 gram reissue of The Return Of Bruno or something made its street date, I'd probably not be giving too many fucks.

some optimistic soul on amazon is asking $29.99 (plus $3.99 shipping) for a vinyl copy of The Return Of Bruno

THIS IS THE ORIGINAL FACTORY SEALED RELEASE THAT IS ALMOST 20 YEARS OUT OF PRINT. This title is still factory sealed but has a small cutout slash in the cover but probably has all of the original LP sleeve graphics.This title has been discontinued by the manufacture over the last few decades. The nicest thing you can do for your stylus and your ears. The ultimate record -- the way music was meant to be heard. If you really understood that less then a 1000 titles have been pressed on vinyl over the last few years and that these pressings disappear so qiuckly from the market it will make your head spin. Do not second guess yourself on this masterpiece because once gone it's gone forever and will skyrocket in price on the collectors market

A quarter of young adults buy records they never listen to, a survey of British music fans discovered last year.

Seems like there's waste built into most things we consume, Americans throw out nearly half of the food they buy.

i see no reason why...CD will go away

Optical drives are already no longer common on new desktop and laptop computers. CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays will probably last for a while longer, but not into the next decade imo.

https://www.nme.com/news/music/vinyl-set-outsell-cds-first-time-since-1986-2545781

A retreating tide exposes all shipwrecks

vinyl records earned $224.1 million (from 8.6 million units) in the first half of 2019. This figure is impressively close to the CD numbers ($247.9 million, 18.6 million units).

revenue vs units.
still a massive difference.
basically, this proves that vinyl is insanely priced.

No kidding! I saw the headline but that’s really misleading.

pricing is particular shitty or certain labels who I assume either don't have decent european distributors / any product made in europe.... case in point being the Purple Mountains lp is £31 in fopp.

vinyl is priced according to what people will pay

it's also much more expensive to produce

Vinyl is sorta abstracted from listening now though... media used to have an overriding commodity value because buying it was your gateway to listening to the music. Now you can listen to everything online, so when you're buying a record, it's a different transaction. You're not really buying the music.

2015 CD revenue was artificially inflated by Martin Shkreli $2mm Wu-Tang purchase

i am not asking rhetorical questions here; i would genuinely like to know:

why are vinyl reissues so expensive? a decade ago, i remember buying brand new single disc jazz reissues pressed on 180gram black vinyl at amoeba for $8.98 (seriously — i still have some with the shrink wrap on them and the pricetag intact). it's literally the reason i preferred to buy music on vinyl: it was so much cheaper! i understand inflation, so i know that the same records produced the same way now would inevitably be more expensive. but, looking at most reissues these days, the price range for similar items is $25-$35. why? has the cost to produce the same materials risen that drastically?

preliminary assessment: it's a cash grab by dickheads.

Someone just shared an amazing quote from Walter Becker with me: "if you prefer a medium that can't tell the difference between signal and noise, that's your problem."

it is a cash grab by dickheads.

DIY punk labels are still able to produce small runs of 500/1000 LPs and sell them for £9-12 a pop. if they can do that there is no reason why a mass produced reissue has to be £25, the production costs will be less if anything

I don't mind the price of vinyl so much. Albums when I started buying a lot of them, 1990 or so, were about £8 for vinyl, £11 for CD. £20 for a record now seems about right. £10 for a CD in 2019 feels ridiculous. This is why I'm not rich.

when you're buying a record, it's a different transaction. You're not really buying the music.

Agree with this. Buying vinyl now seems more about fetishizing the object, whereas the music is essentially free. Audiophiles aside, but I assume they're a minority.

a decade ago, i remember buying brand new single disc jazz reissues pressed on 180gram black vinyl at amoeba for $8.98

yeah, i fondly remember this era too. back then, i'd tell non-record-buying friends that a bonus for vinyl collectors is that they were usually cheaper than CDs. that is definitely not the case now

hell, decent originals of rare/oop albums are frequently around the same price as new reissues of the same

Little Axe and the rest of the Mississippi Records diaspora are still putting out new LPs in the $12-15 range.

Vinyl only felt cheap as long as my portable listening medium was cassettes... once mp3 became my portable listening format, I abandoned vinyl almost entirely for CD. The time it takes to rip vinyl and have it sound good makes it too expensive. Right now we're in a golden age of dirt cheap CDs, although the Internet means rare stuff will always be expensive regardless of format.

I buy CD's because:

- They're far cheaper than LPs.
- I still make my own rips to MP3 as I stream my own library. But this is becoming less and less necessary when buying from Bandcamp et al.
- They represent a backup in case Spotify removes an album I love, and more often they're necessary when an album isn't on any streaming service at all.
- I like having the liner notes when they exist, more and more CDs don't come with them.
- They take up less space and weight than LPs, though I'm not planning on moving anytime soon.
- I never, ever cottoned to pops & clicks, having to clean vinyl, flipping them over or shuffling through multi-LP sets and generally worrying about the fragility of LPs. But I do acknowledge the experience of listening to an LP on a great system different (and often superior) than listening to a digital copy. But I don't own a great system.

To each their own, I salute anyone buying physical music at this late date.

I rarely buy vinyl now, mainly because of price. But buy lots of cds for the same reasons Gerald mentions above. I own many more cds than I'd ever have thought when I was a vinyl-only teen/twenty something. Because I've become less used to vinyl I now find it slightly inconvenient when I *do* play a record - changing sides etc.

I also (so far...) refuse to stream. I listen to my own, ripped library.

yeah, sidepost: i recently opted for the new appleseed cast album on cd because of the much more reasonable price in comparison to the vinyl ($12 for the cd as opposed to $34 for the vinyl fucking lol). funny part: they were pushing the cd as "LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!" which is just weird.

the irony of CDs being the cheap landfill fodder and LPs being the overpriced items for "audiophiles" and collectors, what a difference a couple of decades makes

everybody otm, CDs rule and are cheap, also new vinyl has flaws maybe 30% of the time at least, it's gotten so bad that I need to read Discogs reviews of pressings before I buy anything (another reason to just go for that maybe-slightly-more-expensive OG in many cases)

the Scorpio represses of all those Sun Ra Saturn titles sound just fine and are $12 new in my local store, I was fully addicted to impulse buys there for a while

I'm a little embarrassed at how much more I like listening to jazz on LP than on CD.

og presses ruuuuuule

My mate buys original pressings of jazz LPs (or high-quality Japanese reissues from the 70s/80s) and I will concede listening to them on his $30k system is astounding. If I had a similar system, I might think twice about picking up vinyl, but I know how obsessive-compulsive I can be and it might be a rabbit hole and money pit.

you can build a great vinyl setup that will pin your ears back for $1000

Please offer specifics.

og presses ruuuuuule

in most cases, yes. for Saturn or ESP records... not so much

xpost $1100 but...

Cambridge Audio AXA 35 Integrated Amplifier (has built-in phono amp) $350
ELAC Debut 2.0 bookshelf speakers $300
Pro-Ject Debut Carbon turntable $400
Record brush, speaker wire and RCA cables $50

The BYG/Actuel series original pressings are pretty dicey, too. Problem is, some of the reissues (CD and vinyl) are mastered from needledrops of said dicey pressings.

xp

when mucking around with vinyl I generally try and acknowledge that it is enjoyable for reasons other than sound quality - ie it is fun to do all the voodoo with cleaning and handling and crate digging and appreciating the big artwork (+nostalgia as I bought records in the late 80s) - and when a record sounds good it often feels like a personal triumph because there are so many variables that can make it sound fkn terrible -BUT a well-mastered CD on a capable player will simply sound better in 90% of cases

prime era jazz records definitely sound great but they can often sound great on CD too - so do i just like the idea, or the adherence to the original intent of the recording session?

sometimes i am truly knocked out by a record though - eg when i first put on the 12" of Memories by PiL it was uncanny how powerful and weird it felt floating out of the speakers, maybe it is simply better mastering than any CD copy i've heard but there was something special going on - the new CD & Kreme 12" on Trilogy Tapes has a similar quality

I'm a bit fed up with vinyl at the moment, partly due to shitty modern pressings but also because there's something wrong with my record player (I think the cables have gone between the cartridge and the tone arm) and I don't know how to fix it, don't really want to know how to fix it, and can't really afford to get someone else to fix it, so I haven't really been playing records at all. also I already have tons of records and could probably do with getting rid of some. too much stuff

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

shitty modern pressings

how many new pressings are advertised as "HIGH QUALITY!!" and then are pressed on 100% inferior colored garbage?

it almost feels like all of the historical conspiracy theorists that were so outspoken about cds and how shite they sounded in comparison to vinyl were just propaganda all along so now everyone is okay paying $40 for literally worse quality.

makes me feel like my life as a music fan could be likened to be on the receiving end of the aggressor in an abusive relationship.

I'm always curious about the "colored vinyl is inferior" argument because...black vinyl is "colored" vinyl. Vinyl starts out clear, and they put black stuff in it. So why is the black stuff OK, but the red/green/swirly stuff not OK?

I could see how *picture discs* might not sound as good as regular vinyl, because there it's two half-slabs pressed on either side of a piece of visual art, rather than a single slab squeezed between two plates. But any other color of vinyl manufactured using the usual process should be fine, seems to me.

I have a picture disc that was pressed about 10 years ago. Sounds great.

I think maybe most people are just misinformed, re: clear vinyl

I’m not really into the look of colored vinyl

CDs are ugly travesties and i just don't want to see them is my reason for preferring vinyl.

i don't really fuck with new releases tho

DIY punk labels are still able to produce small runs of 500/1000 LPs and sell them for £9-12 a pop

Do these sell for this price in shops or from buying directly from the label? I am mystified how any label could have an album sell for £9 unless they were selling it to the shops directly.

Tbh yeah £9 is from mail order, not necessarily direct from label, but not rare to see the same going for 12-13 in shops

Just bought one for £12 from a record shop last weekend

New release as well. I don't mind the higher prices so much for new releases, it's the reissue stuff going for £20-30 that gets me

£12 should just be possible.

Euro pressing costs are around £4 for an album without any extras, ie no inside sleeve etc, maybe slightly less if doing 1000. To sell for £12 they would have to have a dealer price of around £5 so label would be making a very small profit . £9 retail price just seems impossible.

the converse of this is that some labels, especially reissue labels are definitely price gouging. Their only excuse would be if they had to pay very expensive advances to secure the release.

unperson here's a detailed breakdown on the badness of colored vinyl

https://www.gottagrooverecords.com/vinyl-colors/

I don't like vinyl or CDs. I just want the big artwork/liner notes with a download code. Am I a weirdo?

Given the buffet of bundle options that accompany a lot of releases now, I'm surprised we don't see "poster + download"

I love records. Old records. New records.

I don't necessarily think they sound better, although in some cases they do. I like the experience of them and it suits my collector tendencies. I think of them like hardcover books. The same content can be had in other, more convenient ways, but it sure feels nice.

Spotify is too much, I like limitations to a certain extent.

The medium is sometimes the message, or a big part of it. There are certain recordings where the first format I heard them on is integral to my enjoyment. Others feel especially suited to a format. Like, Master of Puppets and Badmotorfinger are two I prefer on CD, not just cause that's how I first heard them, but I want the chiseled, precise guitar sound, and no break halfway through. The weird mastering of the original Rid of Me CD, where I'd always turn it up as it started unnaturally soft compared to whatever I'd put on before, only to get blown away at the first loud bit- integral to how I think of that record.

For stuff from the same era, I don't feel disposed to hearing the Pixies or LL Cool Jay in a particular format, yet Husker Du and Public Enemy have a reduced impact when digitized. My Mingus phase was smack in the middle of the CD era, and I bet I'd get a whole new perspective on him if I heard those albums on vinyl. I do have a bunch of six eye Columbia LPs of 50s Ellington, and that may be why I hold that period in higher esteem than most.

Spotify has been life-changing for me, especially allowing for dives into international genres - where I can paddle around in a form until I latch onto a particular artist who takes me for a deep dive. Gets over the problem with Rough Guide-style comps, where I'd only connect with a small fraction of the artists.

overpriced vinyl happened because of audiophile pressings.

i've never once heard an unplayed record that sounded bad enough to make me wish i had access to a more expensive copy.

there were some really bad soul/funk reissues making the rounds like 10 years ago. Marvin Gaye’s i want you and Donald byrd’s ethiopian knights I remember sounding like high generation boombox cassette dubs.

As for me, the main reason is that it can't live for a long time. Surely, the clarity is great, but the device itself... Very sad.

Spotify is too much, I like limitations to a certain extent.

this is a thing for me as well. The main reason why I still engage with physical mediums for music is that i need the objects as tactile/visual aides to help me think about the music, remember things, and organize my thoughts & listening. A stack of records to flip through, a pile of CDs on my passenger seat, heres that record I listened to last week still sitting by the turntable, heres that CD my friend Ray told me about, which one of these 7" EPs havent i listened to yet, etc. The endless choice of digital streaming overwhelms my brain. I use Spotify/Youtube for exploring and discovering, but when I hear stuff I like and will want to hear again I almost always get a physical copy so that, frankly, I can have a reminder to help me remember that it exists.

yes

i need the objects as tactile/visual aides to help me think about the music, remember things, and organize my thoughts & listening.

Ditto. Every time I've moved or otherwise had to pack/unpack my CDs and records, the process of going through each individual object has reminded me a) that I had this one record I'd forgotten about, and b) "I should listen to ____ more! I'd forgotten I had so many of their records!" Then I make a stack of things I need to listen to/re-familiarize myself with.

There is no equivalent to this rediscovery with streaming.

I was a little flabbergasted recently when one of our local Targets which had been (to my chagrin) slowly winnowing down their physical media section to an insignificant nub suddenly had an entire aisle devoted to vinyl, and mostly older albums at that. Like I can't pick up a Blu-ray that was released any earlier than the past 90 days but if I wanna throw Doggystyle on the turntable I'm set.

lol, yeah the selection can be pretty inscrutable. My local Barnes and Noble had multiple copies of Ron Wood's I've Got My Own Album To Do one of the last times I flipped through their rack.

taking hints from ILM obviously

LOL

I'm sure I mentioned this on some other vinyl thread - I saw a reissue of the original cast recording of Hello Dolly and I cannot imagine the target demographic

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hello-dolly-ocr/32465957

...like, silent gen grandfolks already have this on LP somewhere, but they all love their CDs and Bose wave radios. Who would want this that is completely unaware that it's always available at the Goodwill? Are there really younger Broadway-heads that are seeking out the hipster cred of vinyl and the impulse buy at B&N? I'd imagine the original pressing sounds great. Near mint on discogs for #1.98 plus shipping.

There is no equivalent to this rediscovery with streaming.

I have a giant physical music collection but this statement is kinda spurious

Well, for me there's no equivalent. I mean, I don't go through menus and lists on streaming services and think "Oh, I forgot I had that/bought that!" because I don't "have" it, nor did I buy it.

One equivalent would be me coming across an old mp3 folder on my hard drive that I hadn't opened since like 2007, especially if it had mixes I made for people, another one is paging back through your Facebook history/Livejournal entries/whatever blog and seeing what you were listening to at various points in time. The process is intrinsically human and exists independently of anything tangible or intangible that it attaches to (IMHO).

I'm sure I mentioned this on some other vinyl thread - I saw a reissue of the original cast recording of Hello Dolly and I cannot imagine the target demographic

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hello-dolly-ocr/32465957

...like, silent gen grandfolks already have this on LP somewhere, but they all love their CDs and Bose wave radios. Who would want this that is completely unaware that it's always available at the Goodwill? Are there really younger Broadway-heads that are seeking out the hipster cred of vinyl and the impulse buy at B&N? I'd imagine the original pressing sounds great. Near mint on discogs for #1.98 plus shipping.

― bendy, Wednesday, September 11, 2019 3:12 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Maybe young adult Wall-E fans?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIfD2g9QOTo

I’ve noticed an odd trend: it seems if you know someone who loves music the most adequate and accesible gift is a vinyl record of a band they like. It doesn’t even matter if they actually own a turntable.

People love gifting other people physical formats, I know I’ve gifted way too many books in an era where people don’t really read (they’re photography books for the most part though, people seem to like to leave those as decor in coffee tables in their living room) - and honestly is there a better format for music to give as a gift? They might use a yearly spotify, apple music, tidal, etc... more but you’d probably look cheap if you gave that one.... cassettes, cds are awful gifts unless you know the person collects them. But with vinyl it doesn’t even seem to matter, the fetish works as well as those fancy illustration/photography books, you can frame them and have them in your media room or something.

xxp Even with Spotify (and, I have to imagine, the others), I like to look back over saved albums sorted by newest save first... it works, there's memories (see also: folders of old playlists). And I still buy music as well. There's room for all this, if you've got the room.

I sometimes gift vinyls from my collection if the person seems very enthusiastic about a certain album in there... I think I’ve gifted 11 so far. recently I was hosting a party in my house and some dude was very curious about my collection and my audio system, he’s married to one of my friends so I know for a fact they don’t own a turntable. He got so excited to see I had some Rolling Stones records, specifically Exile on Main St., I don’t actually play that one much because it’s a 70’s print and while the sleeve looks great the actual record is not in a good condition, but I bought it for like 2 dollars so it’s fine for what it is. Anyways, I told him he could keep it and he was ecstatic. As if I has given him like the rarest record in the world.

So yeah, some people seem to think of these things as some sort of treasures. It’s ridiculous to me, but then again I collect vinyl so I’m guilty as well

Moka i've thought a lot about this, about how people used to be able to GIVE each other music and that gift was meaningful because it said something about the giver's identity, about how they perceived the giftee's identity, where they overlapped, about their relationship. And it was something that could be kept. People send playlists to each other... feels like it's not the same to me, that it's disposable, easy to forget, not easy to love and treasure, but maybe I'm just an old git

aw that's cute. as is "I think... 11"

I had that experience giving a Rappers Delight single

Moka brings in an angle I wasn't aware of - the pure gift, like a singing fish novelty or something.

Vinyl does give me this bizarre archival security that, should the climate apocalypse destroy the electrical grid, one will still be able to spin LPs with modified Victrola-like turntable-and-megaphone contraption, perhaps hooked up to a bicycle, Gilligan's Island style.

I haven't had to barter none since I learned to turn the crank at exactly 33.3rpm

yeah theres definitely digital equivalents of the physical organizing/forgetting/discovering experience, but at this point I cant train my mind to function the same way in a digital realm, its like trying to learn to read backwards or something.

Yeah, that's it. I'm honestly not that much of a detail-oriented person so significant gifts are usually a headache for me but most people definitely appreciate a 'personalized' gift rather than a convenient one. I used to give gifts that friends would actually use in their homes and I noticed that they were missing like say: good quality kitchen knives, blenders, air dryers - things like that - and I was often given the weirdest looks. I started giving more customized gifts and people appreciate more if you remember their interests or as TH puts it - a meaningful gift of how you perceive their identity and your relationship - it's usually cheaper too! The thing is, not all of my friends/family seem to have explicit interests. The good thing is, most of my acquaintances like drinking on weekends so giving them a mid-range bottle of whiskey or tequila seems to do the job just fine too!

While I'm here deviating the conversation from vinyl allow me to keep exposing private tidbits of my life when it comes to gifts. I hate giving gifts to one of my brothers, he's very posh and lives somewhat minimal - he doesn't buy any sort of decor or collects anything, he hates having things around without purpose - so the only thing he cares about is watching Soccer and designer clothes, but clothes are a headache to choose as a gift, specially if I'm buying something like freaking $300 dollar Burberry shirt and it doesn't fit well or he doesn't really like it.

Love that story, Moka.

I kind of regret giving my friend my copy of Tusk for their birthday like 15 years ago... finding nice copies for 1-5 bucks was no big deal back then

I felt really bad this past Christmas when all my parents got me was a nice button down as well as some fancy mall kiosk chocolates that came in novelty shapes like wrist watches and pens etc. Sure, that's cute but it's a gift you get for a family member you never see or a co-worker or something. The fact that they didn't really invest much energy into thinking about me and what I like or am into... it felt bad and was hard to navigate cause I didn't want to seem entitled.

So anyway, personalized gifts are indeed really meaningful, and vinyl is very gift-able. The story above about the ecstatic Rolling Stones guy- I mean his attitude towards vinyl as this sacred object is one that most people completely unengaged with vinyl have. So even if they can't/won't/would rarely play it, they're going to be really charmed if the artist is one they have some emotional connection to. It's also why people would bring in used vinyl to sell to a record store and expect to make hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Beautiful story Moka, but what I'd really like to know now: did you gifting him Exile lead to him being a turntable? :)

I've heard some copies of Exile are cursed like that.

Hahaha now that you mention it I haven’t seen him ever since, I should call my friend to see if everything is ok

4000 albums boxed up--this is why.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/albums.JPG

Are you moving?

Trotsky Icepick! Loved bits of them.

ahh man, love those classic sugarhill sleeves!

(xpost) I am. The album paradox: 1) they're much easier to pack than books, but 2) are much harder to find boxes for. I swear that most liquor companies make sure their boxes are either an inch too short in either width or height--it's a big conspiracy.

2) are much harder to find boxes for. I swear that most liquor companies make sure their boxes are either an inch too short in either width or height--it's a big conspiracy.

U-Haul's "small moving box" has always been my go-to box for moving records. There's a Discogs discussion thread that gets into other options, but the U-Haul ones have been great.

agree with elvis. u-haul’s small box are what i’ve used. i recently moved cross country and those boxes did the trick

i think the vinyl market continues to prop up that specific box and also the Ikea Kallax shelf.

Thanks--all the albums are packed now, though. I'm on to DVDs, which are a breeze; they fit most liquor store boxes perfectly.

I'll be looking for new shelving when I get there; that Kallax shelf looks nice and not too pricey. How many albums would one hold?

Each cube of the Ikea shelves holds around 45 records.

If you get the really big one (5x5), you might consider reinforcing the back with something for structural support. I stack 2x4 units and reinforce them so they have a proper back which cuts down on dust.

So that's 350 per shelf (the one I'm looking at for $99 has 8 cubicles), meaning I'd need 12--$1,200 for 4000 albums. I have no idea how that would compare to, say, hiring someone to build shelving.

gonna have to disagree with that calculation, though i did question myself for a second. i did a recount and mine (the Expedit, but it has the same shelf size) holds 75-80 per cube, depending on the thickness of the LPs. Got a couple of the 2x4 ones. I have a bunch of overflow but that's all for discogs and eBay anyway.

I do also recommend reinforcing the back. I had considered particle board, measured out to the exact side of the back (approx 31x59) but i went for a few pieces of strong wood 4 inches wide, cut to proper length, and nailed them across the back side, which allowed for access to the outlets.

If you're right, and they each hold 600 records, then I'd only need 7--I'd definitely go that route.

you will need enough room to flip them surely

Yes--and extra room for whatever I buy in the next decade or two (which won't be much...I buy maybe 50 albums a year now). So eight, maybe nine.

Totally depends on thickness of records. 80 seems tight though!

I love the feeling when I get a new shelving unit and all the records that had gotten a little too snug suddenly expand and have space to breathe. The only direction I have left to expand is up at this point. Eventually I'll have two columns side by side, each stacked with three 2x4 cube units yielding a 6x8 behemoth. Slightly worried about the foundation of the house.

I've seen the 5x5 buckle and collapse under the weight of records, total disaster

I moved over 3000 records today, I hurt all over. But the end result is good, I've sold a bunch and now have room for the ones that were all in boxes. The collection almost fits on the three large shelves with only three boxes of overflow. Now I need to find a bookshelf for all the books I took off of the unit that now has albums (again).

I've seen the 5x5 buckle and collapse under the weight of records,

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe

Another question--there's probably a better thread, but I'll use this one.

I'm going to have to put all these boxes (photo above) into storage for a couple of months. The guy handling my house sale doesn't want them in there while showing the house. I'm trying to find something close to where I'm moving and temperature-controlled--no luck yet on the latter. What is the acceptable temperature range for storing records? I don't expect any really hot days for the next couple of months; wondering more about the lower end.

I knew a guy who had a second floor apartment with a massive collection and when the property management incidentally saw it one day they made him move to a ground floor unit... he had around 8,000 albums on a big floor-to-ceiling custom-built shelf IIRC. So I guess there are worse things than just the shelf collapsing!

xp I've heard that vinyl can get brittle at subzero temps, but I think cold shouldn't really be an issue as long as they stay above freezing.

I've got about 800 in a hanging case bolted to the wall. before putting it in we took the sheet rock down and added a thick sheet of plywood to the studs, then put the sheetrock on that. it's very solid and helpfully cantilevered due to the placement of the (very thick) bolts.

Good article on the Apollo Masters fire: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-02-14/apollo-masters-fire-vinyl-lacquer

Damn, that sounds ominous.