Do you still buy vinyl?

But I like vinyl and will start buying it again soon I'm sure.

I really love vinyl as a format: there's something so nice about seeing a nice big album cover and an illustrated picture sleeve. I guess I enjoy the graphics aspect of it. The sound quality isn't that much different, imho, though I do know certain vinyl purists who will tell you how much warmer vinyl sounds compared to sterile cds. I just don't hear that.

I don't buy much vinyl anymore mainly because it isn't portable, and I like to have cds take to work to listen to and also have in my car, etc. etc. etc.

I actually own a lot of vinyl but I left it in Arizona with my dad because he had a turntable at the time. But his broke and now he has no use for them either. I keep asking him to stay his hand on selling them because I want them back one day.

I went to Camelot the other day and almost fainted at the sight of a $18.95 CD. Time to dust off the turntable.

However, I do have to ask something: maybe I've only been looking into rarer vinyl these days, though I don't reckon I'm looking for things particularly obscure, but everything I try to buy on vinyl LATELY is unreasonably more expensive than a CD, or than I remember it being when I was younger. Granted, since I'm only buying them for the artwork right now, I justify the expense in my mind by pointing out to myself that buying the French ads that I"m so fond of set me back way more than an expensive vinyl. But everything's like $30 or more. Which I can understand for things like the Motown Junk vinyl, but for beaten up madonna albums?

I'm still pretty astounded by the *hostility* which new-converts-to- CDs started exhibiting towards vinyl, the minute CDs started getting big... I understand record companies wanting buyers to pay 5-10 extra dollars for the same damn thing, but why music fans started getting this attitude of "now that CDs are out there, vinyl shouldn't be available to anyone at all ever", I'll never know. Spending 20-25 $ for every record you buy is just nuts

Also, that old scratching thing is just not true. Once a CD is scratched it's utterly fucked, whereas a jump on a record can be remedied by the judicious use of a 2p piece. I have exactly one record that's unplayable (out of a few hundred) and three cds (out of a similar number) that jump like buggery.

But with new vinyl -- I remember seeing that double vinyl of Kid A for about $28 maybe? That's just ridiculous. At least you can usually find cds much cheaper than that, especially when there's sales.

I suppose this is another thread but why doesn't anyone take decent care of their CDs? They're not meant to be tossed around or thrown shiny-side-down on a desktop or anything like that. I almost came to blows with the IT guy at my workplace for taking my copy of THB out of my computer at work and hurling it, VIOLENTLY, face-down on the desk (he apparently does this to everyone, and I was left unwarned that you're meant to clean out all disks from your computer if you know he's coming because he tries to break things). I told him that if I took it home and it skipped, I'd hunt him down, and I would.

My CDs are all in fantastic condition, so I'm wondering what everyone does to make their CDs skip so much :)

I suppose I was always careful with them because I couldn't really afford them and had to pay with my own cash, etc, so I was like, oh, don't want to screw this up and have to shell out another $15, let's be nice to this one.

Whoever mentioned the Rice Krispies crack is onto something -- by the time I got that player, I had been into music long enough to be utterly frustrated by skips and crackles and stuck grooves and the like. Bah. I want to hear the music, not the mistakes of the medium, thanks.

The cover art deal...*shrug*...eh. Again, music, not the artwork. As for expense, this is why I shop used.

Like Ally, I've had no problems with CDs, except in my portable player, which skips sometimes. My 'best' stereo is starting to skip very occasionally on CDs, but it's always OK after cleaning the CD. In other words the laser seems to be getting more sensitive to small amounts of dust.

The only CD I've bought which skipped horribly on each one of my 4 CD players was the Lemon Jelly album. I got a replacement and, guess what, the same thing happened. However the the reason for the skipping had NOTHING to do with the surface of the CD or the tracking. Each time I loaded it into the player I heard a tiny scraping sound as it spun the CD around. It turned out that the hole in the middle had a sort of slightly raised "lip" on the underside which was "catching" on something and physically moving the CD out of alignment. Once I filed it off it worked fine.

The reason for boring you all stupid with the details of this is that it might be something to check for if you've got a skipping CD.

Last year I considered buying a copy of _Surf's Up_ on vinyl used, but they were going for $20 because it was out of print. Now that it has been reissued on CD, I just picked up a perfect copy for $2. Interesesting how vinyl used to be sequenced; the title track of this record would have never been the last track on a CD if it had come out on that format originally. As it ends, it ends the album on the perfect note.

I presume yr refering to the "Long Box" format, where the CD case would be at the bottom of a 12" x 5" cardboard sleeve. This AFAIK only happened in the USA (over here, "Long Boxes" were quite prized among CD import fetishist types. I didn't go for it that much, but I still have a couple of blue oyser cult boxes from when these LPs were unavailable over here in the attic somewhere. Anyway, the reason for this was that when the CD format started to take off, US recors stores concerted their 12" vinyl racks into CD racks by putting dividers down the middle. The long boxes were so you could browse more easily.

I don't buy vinyl anymore, mainly due to lack of space, and partly due to having a 2-year old wandering aruond, looking for stuff to put jammy fingerprints all over. Personally, I prefer CD sound. A lot of the complaints RE the sound of early CD reissues was down to cheap ass & stupid rekord kompanies using master tapes EQ'd for cutting to vinyl to do their CDs from. What converted me to CD was hearing a disc of Dvorak's "Hymnus". Before the choir came in, you could hear them drawing breath. I know it's a bit wanky, but it was really spooky, & sent shivers up me spine. Also, I got a CD of "Leige & Leif", and it just sounded so....good

x0x0x

I don't mind CD's. But I've always wondered why don't they package CD's in a vinyl album sized sleeve - with the CD positioned in a thin card tray or something? Best of both worlds.

Vinyl artwork is superior of course. I recently purchased Air's 'Playground Love' 12" single. Aside from the fact that I love the song and it only cost 99p, the real clincher was the artwork. I have one wall in my bedroom covered in choice album sleeves - cuts down on the decorating, I can tell you.

The only time I buy vinyl now is if it's used, new at a good price, or if it's something rare that I can't find in any other format.

I've found many vinyl delights in charity shops and car boot sales recently... Stevie Wonder, Chic, Donna Summer, Astrud Gilberto. I do find vinyl more *engaging* than CDs, though the surface noise is still a big pain in the arse.

It took me a long, long, time to disengage from vinyl and go to CD. Mainly because I didn't own a CD player until about 1997. I still haven't made up my mind which I prefer. Obviously, I like the "not having to get up to turn it over" and the programability of the CD, but I do admit that it misses something, both sonically and in terms of packaging.

It's probably something I learned at home- my dad was a sound engineer at a folk cafe, and utterly loathed *any* form of digital sound- be it CDs, digital effects, or even digital direct boxes. He was the one who pointed out the frequences that "you can't hear, but you can feel" and I think that's why I notice it.

I still own loads of CDs, in fact, at this point, I think I have more CDs than records (sigh, especially in the UK) but some things just sound ridiculous on CD - have you ever tried listening to the first JAMC album on CD? It's like watching a home movie on widescreen, it just misses the point.

I think that's also part of it- when and *how* recordings were made. I suspect a good engineer or masterer will compensate (maybe subconsciously) for frequency loss on music which is digitally generated, digitally recorded, and created for CD, and will compensate with certain tonal ranges that actually sound good on CD. While it's much harder to get music which was created and recorded on analogue to sound "right" on CD.

I also remember in music lectures at college, my soundgeek proff talking about how the recording techiniques have changed because of digital- not just the problems of recording totally digital instruments, but the problems of recording completely acoustic instruments to digital media. Especially with orchestras and things where you can't have absolute sound isolation. Multiple mic-ing becomes a problem because of differences of phase cancellation which are much worse in digital than analogue. (Ironically, the way this proff recommended recording was a return to sensitive single-mic-ing as used in the days before the invention of multi-tracking!)

So, yeah, maybe it takes a soundgeek to notice it, but there are differences in sound, and differences in recording technique.

And I just like the packaging of vinyl so much better. And skipping? Schmipping! Invariably, the people who complain most about skipping records are the ones who lose their inner sleeves and never have dust jackets.

Luckily, Paul has no less than FOUR turntables, and if he had his choice, would probably own nothing but vinyl, as it's "better for DJ- ing with", so I'm slowly being pulled back into my bad old habits.

However, it's annoying, knowing that vinyl is cheaper to produce, why the heck are records still more expensive? Or is this just cause of the ridiculous "ten inch, coloured vinyl" formatting type of them or what?

But most of all, vinyl just feels nicer. Don't know what it is about it. I love the warmth of it, and the crackles when you play something you've played to death. I love the noise you get when the record ends and gets stuck in the last bit of the groove. I have a copy of Add N To (X)'s 'Metal Fingers In My Body' which I play almost every time I DJ, to the point that it skips in the same place every time. And if I hear that track without the crackles and the skips, it just doesn't feel right.

In fact, I'm such a flipping vinyl fan that even when I get sent free records on CD, if I like them, I'll go and buy the vinyl version...!

An album that sounds fantastic on CD is the Mojave 3 ('out of time' I think). It sounds warm even in digital.

Digital recording actually cuts off sounds above and below certain frequencies, the argument being that the human ear cannot hear them.

However, due to harmonic overtones and undertones, those frequencies which the ear cannot hear, can still combine harmonically with audible frequencies to produce a certain "warmth". A good engineer or a good mastering process can compensate for those lacks by adding EQ in certain frequency ranges, so good EQ will produce the illusion of warmth.

However, this does not account for modern records which were recorded digitally which were then transfered to vinyl- the missing frequencies were never recording in the first place, so mastering them to vinyl will do nothing, as they cannot be replaced.

Good god, I'm starting to sound like a Sound On Sound reader, help me, please.

About record care. I understand that it is important to be able to listen to the song without it stopping in the middle, but I still can't completely identify with caring for objects that much. It almost seems like an *affront* to the content, to me, when the superficial manifestation of it is cared for so deeply. I feel suspicious when I see bookshelves filled with glacially clean books. On the other hand, the people I know who take good care of their records are generally very good themselves.

also these days knowing i could d/l and be listening to something like that leon ware in like, 4 minutes tops kills everything really. fucking great album tho. and can it really be that no g-funk dude ever sampled 'share your love'?!?! easiest money ever.

I never liked looking through huge amounts of LPs to find something good for too long. The web has made it even more boring though, because now many used records stores often look up the value of stuff online, so there are even less big surprise bargains to be found.

Also, my neighborhood store wants twice as much for their ratty copy of "The Kick Inside" than the CD costs new. Bah!

Oh, I sometimes buy vinyl. I feel more odd these days for still buying a lot of CDs. Vinyl is a sort of fetish thing a lot of people "get", while buying CDs is seen as old-fashioned and stupid.

There are 2x4 Expedits? This is the solution that I've been looking for [Also my wife, who is tired of my small, but annoying collection of LPs cluttering up the guestroom.]

Yes indeed fukasaku tollbooth as seen in Scott's picture above and here on the US IKEA website: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70103085

My question is did folks actually anchor their shelves to the wall and how much of a pain was it? And is it necessary?

Oh, I sometimes buy vinyl. I feel more odd these days for still buying a lot of CDs. Vinyl is a sort of fetish thing a lot of people "get", while buying CDs is seen as old-fashioned and stupid.

Yea, I'm the only person I know of among my friends who still buys CDs regularly. It's not bad though, as the market for used cds is becoming somewhat similar to that of vinyl maybe 10 or 15 years ago (maybe not that great, but still). I've found a ton of great used cds in past couple years, even a lot of recent, well-reviewed stuff, in used bins for less than $6. But I still buy tons of new cds.

Vinyl is still, for the most part, a great deal. There are still plenty of places that charge no more than a $1 per record. And you can often find good deals on used vinyl on Discogs, etc., other online places.

What does suck, though, as was mentioned above, is that a lot of the better-curated shops are now realizing that vinyl is seen more as this fetish sort of thing, that they'll charge $15 for a used LP (in many cases a lot more). Here in DC, a couple new vinyl shops have opened in the past year or so. They often have a lot of decent stock, but the prices keep going up.

I hardly ever download stuff, but I think I probably will in the future. So long as vinyl prices don't get too exorbitant, I might just start buying vinyl for the product/home listening, and then downloading the mp3s for the convenience. I'm sure I'll still buy cds here and there, though, especially since used cds are just going to get cheaper and cheaper.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2092/1564484353_04181c21fb.jpg?v=0

i guess i should have explained that the 2nd picture i posted is of two smaller black ikea shelves on their sides. one on top of the other. but people probably figured that out. they fit really nicely like that in the corner.

-- scott seward, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 02:33 (11 hours ago) Link

this pic made me doubletake, i have long bookshelves and a 2x4 expedit in a corner, which is slightly too small to add another. the wife is going to get me another 2x4 for my birthday, she thought of fitting 2 by putting them on their side and stacking much like you did. does this work? any undue stress? i'm pretty sure they're built to lie any way you choose.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/212/518440591_877a9bdbe7.jpg

Except those shelves are all full now, and there is a fourth box of 45s now. plus a big stack of free 45s that should be sitting next to the turntable. i dunno what i'm gonna do. maybe sell some stuff. i'm moving the table outta the room though, to move my stereo under the window, so if i really need to i can maybe fit some more shelves in the corner.

i like vinyl, it's cool.
i just bought two replacement stylii from J&R, via amazon actually. my turntable is nothin special, but i was noticing how warn down and slightly bent my needle was the other day, and i knew my records deserved better.

also these days knowing i could d/l and be listening to something like that leon ware in like, 4 minutes tops kills everything really. fucking great album tho. and can it really be that no g-funk dude ever sampled 'share your love'?!?! easiest money ever.

-- r|t|c, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 6:25 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Link

hah i had this thought too re: 'share your love'

to me there is an element of lifestyle accoutrement to my record purchases. i'm definitely not a 'collector' in the soulstrut sense either ... the prizing of rarity is pretty minimal to me. I like all the albums i own on vinyl but the albums i own on vinyl dont really represent my music taste anywhere near 100%, or even 60%; its mostly disco + some quiet storm/sexytime R&B shit, a few rap singles, dj quik lps and random one-off things i enjoy that i come across for cheap. i've dj'd a couple parties and at small clubs a couple times around town and that x bachelor pad music is pretty much the extent of my interest. Plus i love the album art (see: the ware record upthread)

all you dudes are a bunch of slobs ;)

I need a better way to store my 7"s. I have 4 or so boxes from Boxes Unlimited that sit on top of one of my record shelves (an expensive custom job I had made in the days prior to the Expedit) and then I just have piles of 7"s everywhere. I need shelves for them. Any ideas?

Dan, I snap up old beat-up antique boxes, which fit 7"s perfectly. I then store them on my shelving unit.

buying vinyl for the product/home listening, and then downloading the mp3s for the convenience.

This is what I do... I still buy CDs though, mostly new releases that aren't on vinyl/are too expensive on vinyl.

New Balance shoe boxes fit 45's pretty well but the tops of the 45's will stick out the top so you cant stack them. its easy for going through them though.

As many have pointed out, it looks like vinyl will outlive CD. I'd like our next release to be vinyl-only with a code to download for a DRM-free digital download included in the price. A good idea? Too soon?

united record pressing is running a deal on this right now, complete with hosting and tokens of some sort. i don't know if its a good deal though.

Vinyl only is always a good idea!

URP's download voucher + vinyl service looks interesting. Anyone know of anything similar in the UK/Europe?

My Electrelane LP came with a download voucher, but I had err ... already downloaded it.

I just bought the Metal Box reissue. It's soooo hot. and not a bad deal for $40.

There's this grim looking record shop near my house that I drove by countless times. I was always curious but finally stopped by last weekend. The place is a mess (as I expected) but is a veritable gold mine for old vinyl. I found a Stranglers Live record (X-Cert) that I have been hunting for for years. Also got the "Miles in the Sky" LP. Thee appears to be tons of old psych. records as well but I am going to need at least a few hours to dig around.

I had no idea places like this still existed.

Yes...vinyl lives.

"I just bought the Metal Box reissue. It's soooo hot. and not a bad deal for $40."

you shouldve got an original from ebay for that real analogue to analogue experience ;)

haha yeah, they actually had one at the store but it was 100 bucks!

to be a real vinyl a-hole though, i've had metal box on mp3/cd and a friend brought the reissue over and i kinda had to have it...it's really like a totally different record on vinyl, at least compared to the shitty mastered cheapie CD version (they should do some kinda nice deluxe one someday) that i have...i never really got the deep bass like a reggae record before, it doesn't sound brittle or tinny at all like i thought before.

thats odd - i like it on cd too. i have the cd that came in a metal cd case which im guessing was made in the 90s/80s (avoiding cd reissues/remasters that came out in the last ten years is my new passion) and it sounds pretty good. the vinyl just of course sounds fuller and richer though, and if i didnt find the packaging so fiddly i would probably get it out more often.

@caek:

Our new album </spam> is only available as vinyl (with free mp3 download coupon) or as digital files (on Amazon, iTunes, etc.). Not sure if it will be a "success," but it wasn't too hard to do (one of our band members is a database coder), and the vinyl definitely sounds better than the CDRs I've burned.

i have the cd that came in a metal cd case which im guessing was made in the 90s/80s

mine isn't in a metal case, it's just a really bad blurry picture of (i think) lydon and there's really no liner notes or anything, it says "second edition" not metal box, so maybe yours is a newer, better version

i mean i liked it on CD, until i heard the vinyl, and it was pretty different sounding to me.

my cd is in a metal box. i got it sometime in the 90s when it came out.

hmm i must have some shitty jewelcase version. it sounds more like an 80s cd, mastering and soundwise

yeah second edition cd sounds like crap, i think the metal tin one is a large improvement

schwantz, that's exactly what I have in mind. Do you know if your authentication system for the download codes is totally home-brewed by your bandmate, or are you using something off the shelf? How many shots are you giving people at downloads? One, three, as many as they like?

Answers:

"1) Totally homebrewed.

2) All the tokens sent out with records have a max of 5 download attempts."

thanks

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/06/vinyl-sales-to-hit-another-high-point-in-2009.html

Vinyl sales to hit another high point in 2009
01:40 PM PT, Jun 11 2009

The resurgent vinyl market isn't showing any signs of slowing down. In fact, recent figures released by Nielsen SoundScan indicate that overall U.S. vinyl sales will once again set a benchmark in 2009, with sales up 50% through the first five months of the year. SoundScan predicts vinyl sales will reach 2.8 million units in 2009, up from 1.9 million in 2008, a record since SoundScan began tracking sales data in 1991. Already in 2009, vinyl sales have topped 1 million. At this point last year, vinyl sales stood at 701,000 copies. To be fair, the number is still tiny compared to overall album sales.

Vinyl, SoundScan points out, accounts for less than 1% of overall album sales. In other words, vinyl sales represent about six months in the life of Taylor Swift, whose late 2008 release, "Fearless," has already sold more than 3.3 million copies. To date in 2009, 121.8 million CDs have been sold, versus 33.2 million digital albums, compared to 151.01 million CDs and 27.52 digital albums for the same period last year.

Yet vinyl appears to be a niche market that's here to stay, and one that's showing signs of expansion. Rock albums account for 70% of all vinyl sold, but country vinyl is enjoying a growth spurt. Year-to-date country vinyl sales are already at 15,000 copies, compared with 5,000 for the comparable period in 2008.

Of course, if someone wants to rain on the vinyl good news, there's this stat: Vinyl sales were up 90% in 2008 over 2007, and the rate of growth has certainly slowed.

-- Todd Martens

i had a great day selling vinyl!

the store going well skot? : )

Haha the pic in that article was taken in a store just down the street from my apartment!

I left all my vinyl in the UK and have only bought CDs for the last five years (and downloaded a ton), but recently got a turntable and am now sort of selling them all off in favor of rebuilding my collection around records (VINYL records) I really love. So now I really do get to buy my favorite records a second time around, which I always wanted to do anyway. This probably has as much to do with me as the format, but CDs seem oddly throwaway and records tend to encourage me to listen a bit deeper. Also yes it's nice that LA suddenly has a couple of new vinyl-only stores even if their selections are frustratingly "vanilla" (vinylla?). Also I'm just getting old.

Ian and Scott are my heroes on this thread.

i went to amoeba in LA for the first time. it was too overwhelming.

plus i thought the prices on used vinyl were kinda spendy overall.

i ended up buying an arvo part CD they had a great used classical cd collection

yeah I kind of forgot that records are pretty expensive. Atomic in Burbank is pretty reasonable though

i think i might just be spoiled a little in mpls as compared to west coast prices maybe

though the most evil fucks in the entire ebay vinyl industry now opened a store here

i sold a lot of used tapes today too!

i really need to find a cassette deck

what kinda cassettes you got (not to derail a vinyl thread). I've got a tapedeck in my car (and it hates those CD/ipod adapters for some reason) so I'm always on the hunt for cheap tapes to crank while driving.

oh mostly rap and metal. some kid bought, like, 12 tapes today and he got music of the andes, a dead kennedys bootleg, a dri album, a kool moe dee album, a couple of sonic youth albums, and some other stuff.

Interesting profile of a historic L.A. pressing plant that’s shutting down: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-01-27/rainbo-records-vinyl-pressing-plant-closes

Black Flag’s “TV Party” 7-inch single? Richard Pryor’s first comedy album for Laff Records? Both pressed by Rainbo, as was “Panic Zone,” N.W.A’s 1987 debut 12-inch, Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic,” Hüsker Dü’s “Zen Arcade” and the Minutemen’s “Double Nickels on the Dime” albums for SST and 2Pac’s “California Love.” (...)

One imposing 300-page book from the mid-1990s tracks orders from punk labels including Epitaph, SST, Touch and Go, Frontier and In the Red; rap imprints Death Row, Priority, Delicious Vinyl, Cold Chillin’ and Sugar Hill; early dance labels Moonshine, Mushroom and Thump; and Concord Jazz, Rhino, Scotti Bros. and American.

I started buying vinyl again. The ex gave me of his technics. So hooked it up. It’s great. Immediately went out and bought a few recs (nas, soulwax,...)

My mate has been transitioning from decades of CDs back to vinyl, and taking the opportunity to thin out his library and really focus on stuff he loves. I admire his restraint!

yes, I just wrote a blog post about it

https://critterjams.wordpress.com/2020/01/24/on-becoming-an-insufferable-vinyl-dude-again/

back when this was a big hobby for me (say, 2004-2006) there were a ton of albums I could only dream of ever getting on vinyl that are now getting repressed. so that's cool. whats not cool (as I mentioned on the other thread) is that you can't just get a stack of Devo & XTC records for $20 anymore

was just thinking yesterday "man I've got a lot of stuff still in the post"

today:

https://i.imgur.com/eFunVSE.jpg

happy Friday y'all

I've never bought vinyl because I've never owned a record player and because shit's expensive. It's an evergreen hip habit I wouldn't mind cultivating some day, though.

yea I used to be concerned that I was spending too much when I'd buy 5-6 LPs every week for 20-30 bucks, now there's a ton of shit I regret not picking up for a few bucks when I had the chance. most recently No. 1 in Heaven by Sparks