Analog Revival Means Vinyl Will Outlive CD

An anonymous reader writes "In the age of the iPod, an unlikely revival is taking place — kids are turning to 7" vinyl to get their kicks. Sales of 7" singles are apparently through the roof. Bands like the White Stripes are releasing thousands of new singles on the format, and record purchases have risen by over a million units in the last year — back to 1998 levels. NME told CNET: "it's very possible that the CD might become obsolete in an age of download music but the vinyl record will survive,". The article explains how indie kids are drawn to vinyl because "the tactile joy of owning a physical object that represents your attachment to a band is infinitely more enjoyable than entering a credit card number into iTunes.""

Comments

Re:Bah! Vinyl will never replace

[CRCulver]

The band His Name Is Alive, around the time of their 1995 album Stars on E.S.P , actually did produce a number of wax cylinders due to frontman Warren Defever's interest in retro recording technology. Too bad the average joe doesn't have a player for them.

long live the 7"

[gEvil (beta)]

As someone who has about 600 7"s, I can completely understand the reasoning behind this (although it's a bit hard to explain). For one thing, a 7" can typically only hold 2-4 songs, which means that the band putting it out usually needs to ensure that the songs that are committed to vinyl are their better ones (this usually excludes major acts releasing 7" singles for the "cred" that comes with it). Also, they usually only cost about 3 or 4 bucks (it's gone up in recent years though), which means that it's a very small investment to make to find out about new bands. Finally, as others have mentioned, there's the tactile aspect to the whole thing. A 7" has a decent sized sleeve that can contain a fair bit of information. It can easily be a 7"x14" folded double-sided cardstock with tons of notes, scribbles, drawings, etc, and it can easily include any number of inserts. I really don't think the 7" is going anywhere among certain types of fans.

Re:Over-romanticised rubbish.

[kamapuaa]

I apologize in advance for linking to an Alan Parsons Project album, but currently released LPs often will make a point of having thicker, higher quality LPs than what you'd find on 60s or 70s releases, perhaps bragging on having 180 or 200 grams of vinyl. Really, "abysmal", with little starts on both sides? The only *abysmal* quality vinyl I ever saw was old punk releases, yuck.

Additionally, over the last 15 years, longer albums will be released as double LPs, rather than trying to stretch longer albums into an LP format.

Bad bass? I'm not a huge vinyl fan, but sometimes it's cheaper than the CDs, so when I used to buy albums (instead of just downloading the bittorrents) I would opt for the LP instead. I thought the bass was fine. I'd compare it against the CDs, it sounded approximately the same. I hear what you're saying with bass making the needle jump, but that problem was pretty much fixed around 1965. I can't help but suspect you have no idea what you're talking about.