Slashdot Mirror
Inside One Of the Last Vinyl Record Manufacturers
jonerik writes "The Nashville Tennessean has this look at Nashville's United Record Pressing, one of the last vinyl record manufacturers left in the U.S. Although LPs and 12" and 7" singles make up a tiny portion of the American music market at this point, the article reports that United's business is booming, thanks to consolidation within Nashville's record pressing business community, steady orders for the jukebox market, techno, dance, reggae, and rap orders, and this year's 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. 'Elvis has been good to us. I can't complain,' says Cris Ashworth, the company's owner."
There doesn't have to be a huge market to support a business when there isn't much competition.
The Demand for vinyl from the DJ industry (techno, trip hop, rap, and the like) shouldn't be slowing down too much, Especially with new prime time hits buy groups like the Gorillias (Produced by Dan the Automator).
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
I used to love when a _Mad Magazine_ or _National Geographic_ came with an Evatone Soundsheet. It would be great to see those again.
Best Buy can have you arrested
i clearly came too late to suggest this to you, but there's plenty of ways of making your turntables not skip. mass is your friend. my fav is to bring 2 large empty plastic trays, fill them with sand, stack a couple cinder blocks in each tray full of sand, and lay a table surface across the top. you can dance yourself silly on stage with this setup and it won't miss a beat...
I wonder how much breakage they have in the production line for vinyl records.
After all, the RIAA subtracts an 11% 'laquer breakage' allowance from artists' royalties. They don't do laquer any more, but I wonder what the breakage is for vinyl, or even for CDs.
I know, pointless barb, but I'd like to see a lawyer go after this one. No doubt the padding would appear somewhere else.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Now most people just go out and buy a bookshelf system for a couple hundred dollars, or a few hundred if it has a DVD player, and let it go at that. The speakers suck so the reproduction is probably far below cassette tape. We might buy a decent set of speakers, but that doubles the price of the system. People get used to that low quality sound, so just download the songs from the net and listen to music on the computer, thus bypassing all music related sales.
Perhaps not as bad as I say, but I get a better sound out of my computer and my amplified speaker system than any bookshelf system I have seen.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
BEcause the DJ scene is so important in europe there has recently been shortages in vinyl manufacturing capacity. I hear a lot of UK companies are having to outsource their vinyl pressing to the Czech Republic to make their release dates.
Personally I'm a vinyl junkie, I spend over $5000 a year on hard to find vinyl, and I DJ a few weekly events. Of course all this is funded by my day job as a software developer (I was working at napster until recently). I wrote a digital mixing application for linux about 6 years ago, back then mp3 wtill wasn't really standardised so I used Raw CDR audio, or Mpeg Layer 2. The UI on any digital mixing application sucks compared to vinyl, Final scratch is close but has too many shortcomings (where's the vorbis support?).
The other somewhat dubious advantage of vinyl is that the music industry's lawyers see to be more tolerant of short run vinyl bootlegs of tracks which could never get released legally - Usually mashups of Britney Spears vs Nirvana over a 4 to the floor beat. If that was put out as an mp3 or CD they'd probably be more aggressive, but vinly tends to only go to DJ's who can make a decent argument about promoting music. I'm not saying litigation is uneard of, but It's very rare.
I can hear the difference between vinyl and CD.
I was actually suprised when I first realized it, listening to both the vinyl and cd versions of a friend's band's new release. The vinyl version sounded remarkably better. Neither sounded as good as the 2" analog tape master, of course.
All of the above have problems though for any DJ who plays house, pop, any form of techno/dnb/IDM/trance etc. I'd say my experience here in Toronto is that a small minority of DJ's use CD decks like the pioneer CDJ-1000. Those who do complain about their inability to get new records. You have to understand that in dance music most remixes come on vinyl and the underground releases "white labels" which often contain tracks with uncleared samples or bootleg remixes. The sorta stuff trendy clubbers and raves go nuts for.
Absolutely 0 (zero) scratch artists use digital machines. Their haptic interfaces aren't nearly as robust as vinyl. The basis of urban/electronic music is sampling. The catalog of vinyl records out there is huge and most of all they're cheap! To this day most hip-hop is produce like so: Sample a record into an Akai MPC, re-arrange and have an MC rap on top of it. Sure you could get your hot James Brown beat on a CD in some greatest hits or remastered disc but this is music from the ghetto. "Real" hip-hoppers are poor and even when they make their millions and are dripping with ice and fat chains they still use records. Vinyl is cultural. All of these new digital products definitely have their creative niches though. Ming & Fs use CDJ-1000's exclusively so they don't have to get acetate pressings of their records while they do extensive touring. Lots of people use traktor and final scratch to play their own new material that they aren't yet ready to commit to a a short run of records.
I guess my point is that even though CD/MP3/OGG/Whatever units are more economically and technologically advanced vinyl is cultural. An analogy would be between a string section in an orchestra and some of the more advanced MIDI keyboards we have today. To the untrained ear a synthesized string pad sounds the same as a performed one. But classical music is an instituition. There are professionals who've trained for decades to play their instruments. Telling them to replace their Strad with a Korg Trinton keyboard would be laughable. DJ's are no different, scratching and mixing is no less challenging. I have the unique position of being both a classical viola player AND somebody who likes to play a few records. I dunno what DJ Scene you're from but here in Toronto which is home of a very vibrant urban/electronic/dance music scene a large majority of DJs use vinyl.
_nfotxn
Audiogalaxy was the place to get MP3s though, they'd have the latest acid techno tracks ripped within a day of release. None of the other music services come close in terms of content.
I still have the same phonograph I bought as a kid (30 years ago), and needed to replace the cartridge (the device that holds the stylus and converts vibrations to electricity). Not only was it inexpensive, but it fit into the old spot perfectly.
Meanwhile... I can't just upgrade the motherboard in my 3-year old case, because the case is an AT, and all the new MB's are ATX. Want to bet that as soon as I buy an ATX case, the manufacturers will move to a new "improved" standard?
Spending $300 (so years ago) on a direct drive turntable+needle to get good sound
If you want good sound quality, get rid of the direct drive. Good for DJing, crap for listening. Plus it'll cost you a fair bit more than $300 for the turntable and cartridge.
Yes, it does cost more to get decent sound quality from LPs than CDs. But I can also say that a $50 CD player will sound truly awful!!
And I even keep buying new albums on vinyl. The reason is very simple: No copy prevention.