I bumped into an interesting article, just wanted to share it with you:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/money/...m7?ocid=HPCDHP
I bumped into an interesting article, just wanted to share it with you:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/money/...m7?ocid=HPCDHP
It seems that for about the last ten years people have been talking about how "vinyl is making a comeback".
I was talking to a guy who works at a stereo store a few months ago and he told me that vinyl albums are selling better than cds these days. If that is true I suspect that most of those sales are coming from the internet since most physical stores still sell mostly cds. I have noticed larger vinyl sections in those stores though. For the longest time stores like best buy or whoever had no vinyl section. I remember when I worked in a music department briefly in a store back in late 1994 the only vinyl album I remember seeing on the shelves in any significant was Pearl Jam's "Vitalogy" and that was a special order kind of thing. It was mostly cds and cassettes.
I think it's safe to say though that the majority of vinyl buyers are young hipster types(most of whom are mostly into only indie rock). Hipsters have always been into anything that is not considered mainstream. However, if vinyl does become more mainstream(which it seems to be doing)then what will the hipsters do?
Last edited by Digital_Man; 12-12-2014 at 01:59 AM.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
Making a comeback: talking about vinyl making a comebacik.Originally Posted by bob_32_116
It went away...AND NOW IT'S BACK!
rcarlberg: Is there anything sadder than a song that has never been played?
Plasmatopia: Maybe a song in D minor that has never been played?
bob_32_116: That would be a terrific triple bill: Cyan, Magenta and Yello.
trurl: The Odyssey: "He's trying to get home."
Around here, the "big name" record stores such as outlets of Virgin or HMV seem to rarely stock vinyl. However there are fewer and fewer of those stores around. On the other hand the independent stores, the ones that don't make a big feature of the current Top 20, tend to have vinyl sections that, while being smaller than the CD selection, are at least comparable in size.
There is probably a very good reason why physical stores sell vinyl. Vinyl LPs, unlike CDs, do not travel well. Or at least, if they are to travel well, they need lots of care in the packaging.
I don't care who is buying it. The fact it was never completely dead and is now coming back is cool!
It means album art is not dead yet either
"Alienated-so alien I go!"
We have a media chain called Hastings here, and they had a sale on, and I saw a guy buying vinyl. He was an older gentleman, buying older vinyl. The vinyl was the pricier audio vinyl, but still stores still carry it and people still buy it. http://www.yelp.com/biz/hastings-boo...o-russellville
Oh the irony. The two most popular formats may turn out to be crappy MP3s and even crappier LPs. The industry thought we'd want noiseless, 90dB dynamic range, 20-20kHz Compact Discs which replicate the master tapes exactly.
But no -- people want clicks and pops and rumble and limited DR and distortion and clipping. Take THAT Sony!!
I went record shopping yesterday -- real "record shopping" in a store that has moved back into LPs in a big way -- and looked around at what they had. It was a lot of fun flipping albums -- you can't really do that with CDs. There were a lot of old vinyls resurrected from the glory days of the album, which I was glad to see. I want my collection to be worth something. Kids these days should get as much enjoyment out of records as I did at their age. There were also a lot of new issues, all horribly (criminally) overpriced, some of old bands and a lot more of new bands playing to the hipster market. As is often the case if you attach a high price to something the hipsters will assume it's worth more money, or maybe the reverse, the hipsters are willing to pay $40 for "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" so that's what they charge. Is this a big fuck you to the record companies, who sell Piper for ten bucks in pristine digital? Who knows. It's a bona fide trend though that's for sure.
Of course people will also pay more per gallon for bottled water than gasoline. Go figure.
Last edited by rcarlberg; 12-12-2014 at 06:04 PM.
The prices on new vinyl are often overpriced, I agree but anybody here that thinks this is a fad that's going away should think again. Not only are LP's back, the numbers increase every year. We now have about 3000 LP's back in stock, over 2000 new, with more and more coming all the time.
Also, I don't know why you guys who obviously have a problem with vinyl keep referring to the "hipster" thing, not that I even get what the hell you mean, but our clientele for vinyl ranges from 16-70. Kids are getting into it, teens and early 20's who are discovering that there's more to music than on a stupid rectangular box in your pocket, adults are getting into it of varying ages, varying tastes right up to older guys coming back in who never stopped listening to LP's.
We are now coming close to 50/50 in sales and I've been in this business for 35 years now. I don't care who listens to what on what format, it's just really cool to see everybody appreciating the whole package of a vinyl record, including the artwork etc.
Just sayin'......
We are the grandchildren of apes, not angels
But only we are gifted with the eyes to see
On days without FEAR, when our heads are clear
That angels, we could be
(Marillion 2016)
Somehow I doubt those 70-year old returning vinylheads are paying $40 for new LPs.
Most of the vinyl albums at the FYE in the mall not far from me were going from around 20-35 and possibly more. The only prog there was Pink Floyd. Not even any Genesis or Yes. I don't think any Rush either.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
Well, you can't drink gasoline. or you can, but it's not recommended.
More to the point, people will willingly pay thousands of times the price for bottled water as for water out of the tap, despite study after study showing that in most cities in the developed world the almost-free tap water is just as healthy. Bottled water is the most successful scam in history.
Is it really a "scam" if consumers willingly pay the price and are aware that most of it comes right out of the tap at the bottling plant? I would term it a "marketing genius" rather than a scam - people were comfortable with the idea of drinking soda pop out of bottles so drinking water (at the same price!) wasn't much of a leap.
In the case of the LP I'm not going to compare it to bottled water. There's nothing WRONG with LPs, I loved them for years and they still have the artwork advantage. People obviously want them so manufacturers are filling the need. I think the prices are 90% profit, but that's what the market will bear.
Nonsense
I'd vote Blondie as the comeback of the year for 2014
Ghost of Download has some fun tunes on it, some as good as their mid 70's songs
BG
"When Yes appeared on stage, it was like, the gods appearing from the heavens, deigning to play in front of the people."
Pricewise that's pretty accurate. As far as a store in a mall, I'm not sure if I'd go by that. ALL the Genesis LP's are back in print(we carry them all) up to 1981, including the Spot The Pigeon EP on cool blue vinyl. Pretty much all the YES are also back in print. There are many many other prog titles if you look at some retailers that carry a deeper selection.
We are the grandchildren of apes, not angels
But only we are gifted with the eyes to see
On days without FEAR, when our heads are clear
That angels, we could be
(Marillion 2016)
Where did you gather data to make this large assumption?
$40 is a bit high for a lot of buyers, admittedly. Most of our vinyl caps at around 29.99 but a lot of jazz is in the $20-$30
range and sells very well.
We are the grandchildren of apes, not angels
But only we are gifted with the eyes to see
On days without FEAR, when our heads are clear
That angels, we could be
(Marillion 2016)
Yeah, I don't think it's "hipsters" that are buying pricey audiophile vinyl. All you have to do is go to the Steve Hoffman forum and see scads of threads dedicated to vinyl (and hi-rez) titles for classic rock and jazz releases. Most of those guys are over 40 and many of them have been collectors for years. Any time I go to a record store, most of the customers are older, although a few of them look like they might have been to Greenwich Village. It seems like "hipster' is a catch-all now for people who say or do things that others don't approve of? Heavy sigh. I guess I'm just an old fuddy-duddy and I'll never get it.
You know, it's like it always has been. Supply, demand, affordability etc. Look at classical CD's from the big record companies like Deutsche Grammophon, Philipps etc. For many many years they sold at a premium because that market had the $$$ to afford it. The indie labels know quite well that if they put out an audiophile jazz LP of Stan Getz at $45, they will likely get it but a label like Sub Pop putting out a vinyl by the Shins which caters to the 20-30 year olds ain't gonna sell at anywhere near those prices. Same as it ever was.
We are the grandchildren of apes, not angels
But only we are gifted with the eyes to see
On days without FEAR, when our heads are clear
That angels, we could be
(Marillion 2016)
It's the exact opposite anywhere I go. LPs are HUGELY outselling CDs in brick and mortar record stores in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. More and more record stores are devoting more and more shelf space to vinyl, stores which ONLY sell vinyl are commonplace, and CDs are becoming such a niche market that you pretty much have to go to the Internet to find anything but the most mainstream releases.
I still call them 'records.'
Fascinating. There must really be a market for vinyl out there.
I wonder if online sales are showing similar shifts? Maybe it's only the brick&mortar stores moving vinyl -- although we certainly bought our share of vinyl mail-order back in the day. Wouldn't it be wonderful if both formats continued to be displayed everywhere? That would really be the best of both worlds.
Here in New England, we have a chain of music stores called Newbury Comics. I actually hadn't visited one in quite a while, but a few months ago, I stopped into my local store and I was *shocked* at how much they had cut their CD stock down. They sell lots of music related swag like posters, bumper stickers and T-shirts and I'm guessing they make a lot of their money on that sort of stuff. Meanwhile, their vinyl bins had nearly quadrupled. Not only were they selling new vinyl by indie and metal bands, but they had a decent selection of used LPs too.
Used vinyl ought to be pretty easy to come by, there were a ton of us that bought a ton of it back in the day. At the used record store I visited the other day, prices ranged from $2.50 to about $8.99 per disc, which is about what they used to be, thirty years ago.
I would guess that vinyl mail order doesn't do nearly as well because of the prohibitive cost of shipping, especially if ordering only one or a few items at a time. A $12 shipping fee on an $18 record is fairly typical. (Plus us Canucks run the additional risk of getting hit with another $12-$15 in customs fees on that $18 record.)
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