Slashdot Mirror
CD Sales Continue To Plummet, Vinyl Records Soar
Lucas123 writes "Over the past four years, vinyl record sales have been soaring, jumping almost 300% from 858,000 in 2006 to 2.5 million in 2009, and sales this year are on track to reach new peaks, according to Nielsen Entertainment. Meanwhile, as digital music sales are also continuing a steady rise, CD sales have been on a fast downward slope over the same period of time. In the first half of this year alone, CD album sales were down about 18% over the same period last year. David Bakula, senior vice president of analytics at Nielsen Entertainment, said it's not just audiophiles expanding their collections that is driving vinyl record sales but a whole new generation of young music aficionados who are digging the album art, liner notes and other features that records bring to the table. 'The trend sure does seem sustainable. And the record industry is really doing a lot of cool things to not only make the format come alive but to make it more exciting for consumers,' Bakula said."
People start making rips from the records :(
Nice lossy format to prevent clean ripping, too.
damn those hipsters and their love for ironic nostalgia.
Smell is the sense that is tied to memory the strongest. I remember the smells of those records as much as I remember the sounds and the artwork. :)
A 12" CD could hold about a dozen regular ones. Not only could you have big album art, but the spinning patterns would complement the bong quite nicely.
I wonder if Birmingham Sound Reproducers is still around making their crappy turntables
Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continues... Aaay!
I just bought a CD the other day while on vacation. As I was walking back to my hotel all I could think was "Now how the hell am I going to listen to this..." Of course I have a CD player in my laptop but that thought didn't occur to me as a way to actually listen to the CD, just as a way to rip it into a digital format so I could listen to it in a more convenient manner. Hell the only reason I even bought the CD was because it was a regional exclusive release... [/anecdote]
I don't care what you say, all I need is my Wumpabet soup.
What I'd personally love to see (or hear) is: multi-track audio... so that songs can be remixed more easily... I mean wouldn't it be cool if it were possible to mute a say trumpet track, and replace it by something else (human voice for example), or the other way around?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
CD sales are still roughly 100 times vinyl album sales; 110 million units for the first half of 2010.
Have you read my blog lately?
thats it this place truly is dead now.....
I read an article in the past year or two saying the last one was manufactured in Russia around 1984.
When I bought a used Telefunken lathe... It cost almost as much as the lathe to get a boom truck to lift it up to 3rd floor condo. Got some guff from the association for taking the windows out but the hell with them! Thank God for renovated warehouses and their massive concrete floors!
Next thing you know they'll be listening to tube equipment. Horrors!
If we say those numbers are for the US, and consider that the US population is on the order of 300 million, that makes for around 1 record sold for every 333 people (or 3 for every 1,000 people). They then roughly tripled these numbers, to around 1 per 110 people, or maybe 10 per 1,000 people.
That still isn't really a ton of albums. I don't really know 110 people personally, so it is not statistically likely that I know someone in this country who bought a new album on vinyl this year.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
# Must check drywall.
No more second law of themodynamics.
Meanwhile, I'll just wait here for the mess on my kitchen floor to tidy itself up.
This just further proves it's piracy as the cause. Every audiophile knows that vinyl records are far higher quality than CDs. Pirates can only make inferior digital recordings of vinyl, so they don't bother. Thus, they are forced to buy the vinyl records. Since we see many-fold increase in vinyl sales, we have a glimpse of what CD sales would be like without piracy. So, vinyl is literally a natural DRM that both protects the artists and ensures superior sound quality. Now, would you like to buy some Monster USB cables? Guaranteed to improve your typing and mouse speed.
How did the industery react when cassette sales started to slip and CDs soared? Or when 8-track started to slip and cassette soared? Or, or, what ever came before whatever and the older format started slipping to the new format? Oh no, the old way to buy and listen to music is being replaced by the new was to buy and listen to music. I'm sure in 10-15 years they will be complaining because online sales are slipping to, something. *Gets my tin foil hat ready.*
I have CD's that i picked up less than 15 years ago that are unplayable, I had heard of laserdisc rot but didnt know it would happen to prerecorded cd's. On the other hand, I have vinyl that belonged to my father that still sounds great. I baby my collection but in a noticeable portion of my collection it seems that simply handling with care didnt matter.
The reasons are many for this. One reason is that though the CD cost of production has fallen the cost to the consumer has stayed the same or even risen. I for one refuse to pay that much for a CD when the majority of it goes to the record company and not the artist. Considering that DVDs are going for around $5-10 US and the cost of producing a movie is orders of magnitude greater I find the difference in prices hard to fathom. A second reason, Vinyl just plain sounds better most of the time. Save your technical BS for those that have not listened to the same track on both using good equipment. This is fact. SHUT IT! Third, downloaded digital music is fine but the quality sucks and the cost is even higher than that for the CD if you want the whole album/CD. Add in that some DL sites are using DRM and the smart people don't buy. DRM is a pain in the ass and only hurts the larger segment of the populace that just wants to listen to the music they have legally purchased. Very few share with others. Hay assholes, did you ever think that if you were not trying to RAPE the customer at every turn of their heads and sell the content at a reasonable price that more would be willing to pay for it? When the cost is less than the effort to steal the content then you will have a license to print money wholesale. Until then, people will work hard to circumvent any mechanisms you put in place if for nothing more than pure spite.
The minor technical, but a real consideration, is space. Say you have a pretty simple recording, just a jazz quartet. That is a minimum of 5 tracks, one for each instrument2 for the drums (stereo track). In reality if you wanted full control like at the studio, the drums would probably be anywhere between 6 and 15 tracks. This of course only increases with larger ensembles, and with the more fine grained control you want. You could easily have a song that is 32 mono and 32 stereo tracks. That would take 450MB per minute of audio. Storing all the data in a cheap format could be a real issue.
A more major technical problem is all the processing needed. Mixes aren't just a bunch of tracks summed together. They have extensive processing done. While some of it is things done per track, and thus things that could be committed to the tracks on the medium, some of it is things done to the whole song. All of that would have to be done by the playback device. So in addition to heavy mixing hardware, it'd have to have a wide battery of effects that could be called on. OF course various musicians/producers wouldn't like it, because it would limit options. You'd have only the included effects as options and it wouldn't be upgraded.
However the most major is that the industry doesn't want it. They don't want you able to easily remix their music. Such a thing would make it so much easier for someone to use parts of existing material for new uses, and they wouldn't want that, at least not without you contacting them for permission.
Neat idea but never happen.
Wonderful news!
I just installed the 12-disc record changer in the trunk, which connects to the 8-track head unit!
And it's cool to wear sideburns, boot-cut jeans and long, ratty hair again! What could possibly go wrong?
I buy the vast majority of my albums on vinyl, even at a 5 or 10 dollar premium mainly because I love having a permanent physical copy, but the switch to almost a vinyl-only collection was when the record companies got wise to offering a digital download with the record. With the alternative usually being to just pirate it online and get the CD later and transcode, selling a vinyl with a digital download solves all my problems and the band usually gets a great deal more with record sales than CD sales. So it's a no brainer really, along with the other swag that goes along with it.
And we didn't go to jail or risk losing our livelyhoods because of it, either.
And dubbing was a one-to-one transaction not a one-to-many transaction like ripping.
And dubbing was a lossy process that limited multi-generation copying unlike ripping.
Ripping and dubbing are not really comparable. Dubbing was like a subset of ripping where one person rips a cd, puts the file on a USB drive, lets a friend copy the files, and it ends there. Ripping cases like this are not what seems to be winding up in court. What seems to be ending up in court is where someone makes the rips available on the internet. If you want to use the dubbing comparison you would have to have one person make many dubs and start providing them to many people. When people did this the record companies and the law did get involved. Now there is an important distinction for these people who made many dubs, they tended to be involved in commercial piracy and were out to make a profit unlike the person who person who runs the website (or is seeking fame or approval equivalent to seeking a profit?). Again, we have a poor comparison between dubbing and ripping. Its probably best not to compare physical and digital goods.
Geeez... so what's the next technological wonder to come??? Grammophone with iron stylus?? What surprises me the most is that many so called 'audiophiles' really believe this ridiculous thing about vynils being better than digital recordings... They believe so strongly in this that the vynil ends up playing better to their ears... It's true... believing is power. I played some vynil when I was a kid and even then they sounded awful. I can't believe they can sound better than a CD even with superior hi-fi components. The funny thing about it is that when the CD first came out audiophiles said that the vynil couldn't even compare to it, and they would go on listing all the phonic properties which made the CD superior. Now the CD has being fully exploited the so called audiophiles have changed their minds... 'sounds' like a fashion thing to me... nothing to take seriously anyway...
If you're going to purchase a physical artifact, a record is far more satisfying than a CD. If you just want the music for your MP3 player, why bother ripping it yourself when you can download it (legally or illegally)?
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
...vinyl records to CDs - compare vinyl vs. digital downloads thru i.e. iTunes. I recently mail-ordered Wilderness Heart by Black mountain (as an aside, GREAT record), which came with an immediate digital download of the record. I couldn't wait for the vinyl to arrive because I expected it to sound superior to the high-bitrate mp3s. It does. It's noticeable even to my far-from-audiophile wife.
I'm admittedly a fetishist for packaging - double LPs with great gatefold art, colored / clear / marbled vinyl, large-format insert books, all the way to crazy triple and quadruple LPs with all of the above (i.e. Altar, by Boris and Sunn O))) ).
If I can help it I buy nothing but vinyl now. And yes, I do have a USB turntable so (admittedly quite a bit more labor than with a CD) I can make properly tagged copies for listening to on my iPhone.
RIAA claims vinyl killing music industry!
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
It would be hipsters. Retro is "ironically cool" these days. Fixed gear bikes, fedoras, records, all that kind of shit. You will in fact find hipsters that have a large record collection but no record player. Owning the records is the cool part, they don't want to actually bother to use them.
I really doubt DRM is the reason.
"The law" couldnt even get involved then! Apparently you weren't around back in the late 70's and early 80's when radio stations across the country were thumbing their noses at the RIAA by hosting "album parties." Always late in the evening, they would proudly boast they were playing so-and-so album "in its entirety" and would even tell listeners to "get your tape decks ready." We'd get side one without interruption, a brief interlude for the dj to switch sides (and for us to do the same) then we'd get side two.
One-to-many. This is exactly what the radio stations were doing. And guess what? The law could not stop them.
For us dj's we are combining record and digital technology with products such as serato, traktor and virtualdj. It allows us to manipulate digital music with vinyl records. Serato is the superior product but traktor has it's advantages with integration of midi controllers.
Oh and yes we still do buy vinyl but digital has extreme advantages of portability
I think we have here a case where one format does not replace another. It disrupts the time scheme LP -> tape -> CD -> mp3 -> ??
Let's face it, the LP is not exactly the most practical format around. The main advantages of tapes and CDs over LPs were mainly portability (the sound quality is a point that can be debated but I don't think it is really the point) and ease of sharing. MP3s are also portable, easy to share, and they have the further advantage of being stored in one place (the HD on my computer or portable music player.
If I play all my MP3 music library, I will have ~4 weeks of music nonstop. It's great when I don't know what to listen to, I play it in random mode, and I sometimes (re-)discover some tunes. It's also a great excuse when I have friends at home and they don't like the music. "Yes, I also have shitty music, but I didn't chose to play it now, it's this random function, you know".
But sometimes I want to listen to a particular album, and then I really appreciate that I can have it as an LP. It may be some kind of fetishism, but I appreciate to have to go to the shelves, look for the vinyl, look at the picture, take it out, put it on the turntable, play it, and after 20min getting up from the couch to turn it. It may sound strange, but because it is unpractical, it actually helps me to concentrate on the music.
No wondering if the other songs are going to be good. Sometimes you have to pay about 15-30 bucks for a really killer album, and a lot of times just 5 or so. So i've found myself buying ones that you know one song from and discover - "Holy ...! I can't believe I've missed out on this kind of music for so long."
Not to mention how cool the liner notes, gatefolds, and art all used to be. Take for instance Led Zeppelin's In through the Out Door. It has a liner you can get wet and the colors change.
FTA
many new vinyl albums come with digital download cards that have a code that customers can redeem online to get the digital version of a record at no additional cost
and btw, here are the last LPs I bought Songs from Matt Elliott
Viewable with Tor installed, Search
Engine DuckDuckGo has erected a hidden service for secure, encrypted searches through the Tor network. While past attempts at hidden service search engines failed due to uptime or quality issues, DuckDuckGo marks the first time a real company operating a public search engine has offered a solid search engine as a hidden service for Tor users. Tor users may find DuckDuckGo's hidden service here.
The real reason behind the spike in sales is that every man and his grandpa thinks he's a DJ.
If vinyl sounds better than a digital copy, you're doing it wrong.
Fact is, if you record at a nice high 96/24 digitally, and even if you dither down to a 44/16 CD level, it sounds pretty damned accurate.
How you choose to rip into a data-compressed format is up to you.
As for vinyl, the format is reliant on analog-touch playback. It has inherent white noise, and will eventually degrade. Shitty compact discs from shitty replicators aside, digital is still "forever". But if you want to claim vinyl sounds better than 128k mp3, go ahead. You're right.
Just don't tell me that an m4a at a variable in the 300k range is anything but transparent.
If you like a little white noise with your audio, that's your flavor. Fly your freak flag. I'll take purity myself, dry as you might think that is.
God damned hipsters.
Vinyl sales are 2.27% of CD sales - a tiny part of the physical media market. The resurgence is partly because of nostalgia and partly because vinyl has a dramatically different sound - music has to be EQ'd differently to ensure the needle doesn't hop grooves, and there's a gradual rolloff of the high end after repeated playings. It's a different beast, and one that appeals to listeners who appreciate the simplicity, timelessness and elegance of old tech.
I'm a mobile jock who's getting into vinyl a bit. I still do my parties digital, but got a copy of Torq (and later Serato), and the occasional vinyl record inevitably followed.
The last couple vinyl releases I've gotten seemed to be a win-win-win situation. Last one I paid for cost $20 shipped. That includes a yellow-colored vinyl copy of the planned radio singles with instrumentals on the back, a ripped/encoded/tagged digital MP3 copy of the full album, and MP3s of every acapella and instrumental for every track on the full album. The one before that cost $35, but included all of that, plus a CD copy of the album, a T-shirt, and a pair of really nice slipmats.
Ultimately, that seems to be the best way for the record industry to get consumers to pay for things from the artists they like. I paid twice the price for the album that would be paid on iTunes, but got plenty of value for it. I try to get sets like this whenever I can. Some are just too expensive (Kaskade did a similar bundle that, while it included the full album on wax, didn't include acapellas or instrumentals, but cost $60), but if it's a sane price, vinyl + MP3 album/acapella/instrumental download is worth the retail cost of a CD to procure.
Infrasonics a digital format can handle much better. Digital can go straight down to DC if you want it to. Most of the time you high pass the signal for various reasons (so you don't record things like A/C vibrations and such) but digital can handle it. Movies sometimes have infrasonics, bass down to the 10Hz region. I can generate sinewaves that are 0.01Hz for a CD if you like. Records can't handle that. Lows are a big weak point because of how they work. You aren't going to get a solid 20Hz signal like you do out of CD or DVD.
Ultrasonics, well, not so much. First off, instruments really don't produce much up there. I've looked at spectra plots of high frequency recordings, there is just not much up there other than noise. You can see a chart that gives you a good idea of the range of instruments (http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display.htm).
Then you have to prove that we can perceive it. I've never seen any valid study that shows it.
Not sure of the original link, but here's a copy:
http://dribibu.xs4all.nl/dilbert20091117.html
This would reminds anyone who have prepared for GRE's analytic writing's argument part. Slashdot's really often post stories as flawed as these arguments that you need to contradict in your composition.
Vinyl records are not encoded with anti piracy encryption. Kids are getting wise with the added benefit that vinyl records sound far better than compressed digi-downloads.
Back in 2002, Slashdot linked to a guy who experimented with scanning a record and reconstructing the audio.
I wonder if this would work even better using structured light, or maybe illumination with different wavelengths from different directions.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
I have a collection of about 700 CDs and about 100 vinyl records of different sizes and speeds. I honestly can't tell you the last time I put any of them in a CD player or on a turntable. I, like many, have my entire music collection digitized. If I buy a CD, it gets ripped to my computer and then it sits on a shelf. If I buy vinyl, I go online and find the MP3s and then the vinyl sits on a shelf. I still buy music (instead of just downloading it) because I think it's the right thing to do, and I still buy music on physical formats because I'd rather have an actual physical copy to collect AND audio files on my computer than just audio files on my computer (especially if the audio files I buy are going to be DRMed and won't play on all my devices anyway). So if I'm going to buy a physical copy "just to have it," and I'm not actually going to play it on anything... why not buy vinyl with bigger artwork and better packaging? I think that is the decision that a lot of people are making when they go to (what is left of) record stores.
By the way, it's of utmost importance that you have a good digital to analog converter. You cannot use 99% of those "HD" and Soundblaster sound cards out there. Their frequency response is rather uneven, and will not send a full and even range of frequencies to your Hifi. Should you own a real pair of speakers (sorry your bose surround system probably doesn't qualify), I'd strongly suggest trying one out. I was surprised myself when a friend demonstrated this for me. My system's bass went far deeper, and the treble extended higher yet somehow was lighter. Worth a try if you're a serious music listener.
I wonder if there will be folks in a few years talking about how their analog TV really captures to true nature of pre-digital TV broadcasts.
What's the point of buying it on vinyl for great quality and ripping it to digital? You'll certainly get better quality by directly downloading FLACs from the internet.
Vinyl is less likely to have its levels compressed to the clipping point than digital.
Someone plays some rap record with a dixie cup and a thumbtack.
I store each album on in a thin 12" tin hat. Half speed and original master recordings get special treatment, heavy duty foil, to protect them.
This has nothing to do with audiofiles. I pirate all my music... but I own a record player and a lot of records. Why? Because it's fun to have a party and pull out records... or sit with my wife and listen to old comedy LPs. When I go to see a band live and they have an LP on sale, I buy it. I have no problem with supporting artists but selling me a digital copy of their song isn't going to work. Come to town, have a show, sell me a Tshirt and record. Work for my God damn money and you'll make a lot more than you ever did off the CDs. Musicians that suck live are a thing of the past.
Dj's and electronic music are the major increase of vinyl sales, there's a whole new generation with different music tastes. Nothing to do with the quality of sound, more of a generally accepted standard where DJ's come to clubs spinning records, and there's many youth that want to be the next big DJ (just as rock was back in the 60s, disco in the 70s, etc). On the other hand this article says nothing about the total quantity of vinyl/CD sold. I'm sure over all CD outsell vinyl by multiples. There's no doubt that CD is on the same path as cassettes, but the next format is digital... not records or CD.
www.newviewmedia.com
For a while, records were basically gone. Then some canny people started marketing them again, creating displays for them, and so on. So record sales just went from pretty close to zero, because you had to go to special places to buy them, to not-zero. And whaddya know! RECORD-BREAKING GROWTH! This just in, one of my friends had twins, their family is growing ONE HUNDRED PERCENT PER YEAR!!!
It's almost never useful to look at percentage growth on things like this, because the famously rapid growth of small things is, in general, not particularly sustainable.
In this particular case, it's easy to see an initial market for records, but frankly, I switched to CDs because they were better, and nothing has changed since.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
one of the local coffee shops has one of the main walls covered in a grid of LP cases. Some random albums, but also some goodstuff such as Abbey Road and Houses of the Holy.
one of the local music clubs has a smaller-scale version of this concept at work: a few of them, and plaques bearing reproductions of the case art rather than the case itself.
The array looks really cool.
My version of music wall art, however, consists of various musicians' logos built as a LEGO mosaic.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I rip my CDs (to FLAC) as soon as I get them, so they aren't worn out by use before they get put on the computer. And with the convenient stockpile of music on the computer, I don't play the physical discs often, keeping them safer that way.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I get the Disco Stu quote, but here's what a classic American humorist (Mark Twain) had to say about absurd extrapolation:
“In the space of one hundred and seventy six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over a mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-pole. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo [Illinois] and New Orleans will have joined their streets together and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I'd like stem tracks (hell, even just a cappella / instrumental splits) more readily available, but a standard audio CD isn't the way to do it due to space concerns.
Data CDs with the stems in FLAC form, maybe. Stems seem to compress somewhat better than whole tracks do, evne though the sum of stems takes up more space overall.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
whether professionally released or amateur, yes, some remixes seem to add nothing to the song besides random sound effects.
while few make me think "omg! better than the original", many take the song in an interesting new direction.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I have the feeling that the same thing will happen to film and analog photography in 40-50 years.
While this may not apply to every record out there, and often flat out goes against some sales:
CD: Cold Play - Viva la Vida $29AU Includes a booklet with micro sized font that makes lyrics very hard to read.
Vinyl: Cold Play - Viva la Vida $35AU Includes a large easily readable booklet, centrefold art, a separate book of artwork, AND THE FRIGGING CD!
I know people who don't have a turntable who still bought this one on vinyl.
You have to halve the Nyquist limit because that limit only barely renders the sound FREQUENCY. It doesn't mean you can get the sound AMPLITUDE right. CDs are generally able to get musical notes (e.g. voice or classical where there's not a lot of cacophany) up to about 12kHz.
There is also the problem that CDs generally use compression on the recording to sound louder (cf loudness war) which reduces the 120dB dynamic range (which blows Vinyl out of the water) down to 40dB tops, pretty much the same as Vinyl, with the added problem that the mix is all fucked up.
I suspect that a lot of the rise in sales are people who are REALLY pissed off at this loudness compression.
And it's much easier to mix LP/singles than CDs when DJing and that's getting a resurgence.
Release less crap
Vinyl used by DJ's has died since Pioneer released CD turntables. Makes your argument invalid.
The advent of the walkman made music portable, so record companies started phasing out albums. They SAID at the time it was because album sales were in decline in comparison to record sales, but my best friend at the time owned a record store and what we saw was something a bit different - it was increasingly hard to find new LP releases, which of course led the way for declining album sales.
So in that five year period they managed to wean everyone off the higher quality LP. Now a new generation of young folks who had pretty much only heard music via the tinny, hissy, screechy format known as factory cassette were chomping at the bit to replace all their horrid sounding Thompson Twins cassettes with pristine CDs...
The main thing that's putting me off buying CDs is the amount of over-comression they put on them. It makes them really tiring to listen to for amy period of more than a few minnutes. I have several CDs that I have only listened to the first two or three songe before thinking I really can't stand listening to any more. So any time I think about buying a CD, it's in the back of my mind that it might turn out un-listenable.
I gather that's why the audiophiles are turning back to vinyl - you can't torture music that much on vinyl.
Nope. The CDJ series has changed the musical scene for most of the house, trance, dance progressive and minimal genre. But outside of these specific styles, the DJs (Hip-Hop, Techno, Breakbeat, Nu-dance, etc..) mostly prefer to use vinyl based solutions, plus some AKAI sampler. Such setup is still more pratical and gives more freedom for on-the-fly mixing. Or they jump directly to Ableton Live or, in some cases, even Apple Logic.
...vinyl is the medium that Drum & Bass/Jungle/Tekno/Hardcore/Dub/Reggae/Hip Hop/Ska/Punk is recorded on, and that is what the kids really want to hear - not JLS or 50 Cent or any other lame pop star on CD. Give me a dubplate!!!
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
I have thought for a while now that they should just sell vinyls and if you own the vinyl then you should be entitled to download the music. CDs are a waste of time.
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
Look past the Vinyl vs. CD quality debate and think about the music. The upswing in vinyl sales has much to do with back catalog. Older folks are probably more likely to look for a Hendrix LP re-issue than many of the newer artists. The indie scene's attraction to vinyl is another thing. Great music with great packaging. I imagine the new pop music coming out is less attractive than it once was, which is why the poor CD sales (for pop music). Back catalog (Black Sabbath, Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin) is great music which is really attractive with deluxe LP packaging.
If you do not only buy music because it's new but because you like it, then you can save a lot of money with records when buying used and waiting for the right moment. Of course there are records that have collector's prices, but then you often get great records for a few Euros (some of my most beloved records cost me less than 2 Euros, sometimes less than 1). When I see a record in a store that I already own on CD I always think about buying the record, getting rid of the CD and just keeping the record and the CD audio imported into iTunes.
I'd like to know how much of that declining CD sales is the crappy major label stuff, and how much is indie. It seems to me that doing GOOD CDs would still work for indie music, if you made it an appealing package- I like the jacket/sleeve type, like a miniature record rather than a plastic case. If you can do replication runs the per-disc cost is not super high at this point, and it's as 'permanent' as CDs ever were, and can be made to sound pretty much as good as records.
Case in point: if you record a record to the computer, and burn a CD out of it using decent practices like dithering to 16 bit etc, it still sounds like the record. It IS possible to make CDs sound good, people just DON'T for the most part because it's not obvious.
CD, MP3, or vinyl? As soon as it is filtered through the brain, it's subjective. But I will tell you that a record like Interview 'Snakes and Lovers' or Husker Du ' Candy Apple Grey' or anything by Tom Waits does sound a hell of a lot better on vinyl...
I wouldn't say vinyl albums "soar." While they can reach great heights when flung, they basically slice the wind. However, lacking the brim that a frisbee has prevents them from soaring very well.
the underground music culture responsible for the rise in vinyl have also created a large subculture of tape enthusiasts. the main proponent being cheap old 4track recorders that lo-fi bands use to record their albums
found in many audio programs.
You zoom in to where the pop is, then draw in your approximation of what the wave would look like without the pop.
You will be close enough to get many of the frequencies right, and that preserves the time component. Arguably it's small, but it's still there.
Blogging because I can...
But, what about the cost of producing the music? The engineers, the studio, the artists? How about the artwork? That's not free. The mechanical royalties legislated by Congress are over 80 cents - almost as much as the cost of the CD. What about the musicians? The producer? The distributor, retailer and shipping companies? Should we advertise this music? How does that get paid for?
If you're thinking a CD should cost maybe $1 plus a dime or so of profit, you totally have your head up your ass.
Well, you lose.
Technically, digital is better. In terms of "sounds better", that's arguable, and completely dependent on the tastes of the listener.
There is often a nice distortion that happens on vinyl, and people crave it. Sounds better to them, and where music is concerned, perception is reality.
Blogging because I can...
CDs are for entertainment.
LPs are for entertainment.
MP3 downloads are for entertainment.
Why freak out over people spending $$ for entertainment?
Music consumers either want physical media or they don't. Those who want convenience will favor files over CDs and those who prefer physical media are rediscovering LPs. Many people have also discovered that the original LP mixes are superior to the more processed digital releases. This isn't the fault of "digital" but it makes a turntable a valuable component for a music lover to have.
There's great digital equipment out there and if you don't want to learn the intricacies of setting up and caring for an analog system, then just ignore those of us who enjoy spinnin' some wax.
By the way, if you do want to get into vinyl, here are the things you should educate yourself on:
Performance advantages of different tables and tonearms (if purchased separately):
Remember that the playing records is a mechanical process and it is possible to combine components that will resonate or otherwise distort the sound. Also remember that the cartridge will pick up any mechanical vibration that makes its way to the record. Different setups do sound different, but well executed ones are very neutral.
Cartridge performance and arm matching
Different cartridges will perform differently in terms of frequency response (how consistent the output is over the audio band), tracking ability (how well the cartridge can play excessively loud passages without distortion-- partially or fully losing contact with the groove wall), and the springiness of the cantilever (shaft that the diamond is mounted on) which is called compliance. Compliance determines what tonearms (according to their mass) will work best with the cartridge.
Record and Turntable care
Records need to be cleaned. Wet cleaning is far, far better than any other method and can transform a noisy record into a dead silent one. Systems which forcibly remove the soiled fluid work the best (such as vacuum cleaners) but are expensive. Placing records in clean high-quality sleeves will help keep them cleaner in the long run. A record brush should be kept handy for periodically removing dust before play (vinyl tends to attract dust in the atmosphere). The stylus should also be regularly cleaned and the platter bearing should be oiled every few years with the manufacturer's suggested lubricant.
Selecting a Phono Preamp
The output from a cartridge requires boosting and equalizing before it can be passed into a normal line-input. Different grades of phono preamp offer different features and levels of performance. Some offer adjustable cartridge loading which can help you tweak the sound a bit (cartridges have internal impedance and inductance, which means their performance will change somewhat depending on the impedance and capacitance of what they're connected to).
Stylus Replacement
Vinyl wear is distributed over a huge amount of groove area, but diamond wear is concentrated on two points. When everything is kept clean, styli can last well over 500 play-hours. A stylus can also fail unexpectedly. Upon hearing any noticeable change in distortion, be prepared to replace the stylus if no other maintenance effort corrects the situation. Never play LPs with a suspect stylus.
Other than that, join a vinyl forum where they're happy to answer questions and enjoy!
Crimeny! See the above post about treating LPS as consumables. Using a tracking force of 3 grams reminds me of what you sometimes did with one of those crap portable turntables with the built-in speakers that were popular in the '60s: place a dime or a penny on top of the tonearm so your scuffed up 45s would play.
Nowadays I use either 1.0 or 1.25 grams and have no problems. The stylus might not track very well at that weight on a badly worn record but that description doesn't fit with the vast majority of my collection.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I'm a fairly regular purchaser of both vinyl and compact disc, and I can testify that's it's been more records lately than CDs. Part of this really is the album art and cetera that you get with vinyl. If I buy a CD, I rip it and put it away, and will probably never touch it again. My record collection I turn to again and again, partially for the tactile enjoyment that I derive from it. It's kinda like smoking cigarettes, it's as much the ritual of doing the thing as it is the thing itself.
For the record, I am under 30. When I was really young it was cassette tapes, by the time I was old enough to have my own money it was CDs. I have no personal nostalgia for "the good ol' days of vinyl" or anything like that. I just like them better, I feel like I get more for my money.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Actually, I would love to have digital copies of my vinyl. But I don't want my digitizations made from my merely excellent Rega turntable and Sumiko Blue Point Special cartridge. I want a digital copy made by someone with a $400,000 half-ton fetishistic engineering turntable bolted to a 5-ton marble slab in an underground vault with a cartridge handmade by the nearly blind Japanese master, running through the discontinued $25,000 Boulder phono pre-amp and then to the latest hand-built by a cranky ex-recording engineer professional ADC converted and stored in some future-proof format like DSD or DXD. And after a team of vestal virgins has lovingly cleaned the record using a record cleaner that costs more than my turntable.
I'm serious, all this stuff exists. I read a review of a $75,000 Sirius System III turntable and the reviewer said the CD-R copies he made from it sounded better than playing the same vinyl on a mere $9,000 Simon Yorke turntable. I'd rather get his digitizations than make my own.
Which raises (not begs) the question, why don't the record companies do this and sell me their even-better digitizations from the original master tapes? There is a small market for better-than-CD digital files, but it requires broad consensus that "This is the closest to the original gold master there will ever be", unlike the f***ed -up debacle that was SACD and DVD-Audio.
=S
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33158682@N06/4993236927/
you had me at #!
This is the only cable you should ever use to cable your ethernet-enabled turntable to your McIntosh amp...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
3.5 million LP's is less than some single artist's numbers 30 years ago. So not really new peaks for vinyl. And it's less than a month's worth of iPods.
Going forward, expect there to be only one physical media version of everything for collecting. So we will likely see hard cover books and even leather bound books as well as LP's for collecting, but people will read the digital book on an iPad or listen to the digital music on an iPod most of the time.
Yes, this is partly true. But - most re-pressings are going to sound crap. There's only so many mothers that can be stamped from the original master tape. I've got a hi fi mag somewhere that talks about this whole process, I should scan it. It's very interesting reading.
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
I have my vinyl collection from the 60-70's giving away my age here, and my fathers 78's from the 40's and 50's (the nat king cole set he gave my mom as a wedding gift) All of the albums still play well on $100 turntable, some have more pops than others but overall the albums play well 50-60 yrs later and one could argue the pops and crackles add character and history to the songs. What's old becomes new again. I like this trend. I always loved the art on the vinyl records and liner notes, missed them when they went away and glad they are coming back
while vinyl may be better for older stuff, don't any and all auditory benefits become null once any part of the process (recording, mixing, mastering) is digitized? even with the best DA converters, the digital jaggies will never really become the true analog roundness that everyone fawns over, right? i'll also ponder that the obverse is true.
...
'nuff said. They are worse than zombies!
Is it possible that this is just to say the cd sales have plummeted so much due to digital format over the internet (whether legal or not) that now the cd sales have gone down so low, that it is below the die hard vinyl fans that are out there and will never relinquish their vinyl playing ways? Not to say the vinyl sales have gone up, but more so the cd sales have gone way down....
I can't remember the last time I actually bought a cd, yet I am current with all releases of all artists out now.
Vinyl players like the vinyl sound and feel, and would never be able to download from internet vinyl....sort a not really
a big deal when you think of it.
"Piracy is driving people to vinyl," industry experts concluded.
How is this modded down to off topic? Again, for the reading challenged who can't read the moderating guidelines:
Offtopic -- A comment which has nothing to do with the story it's linked to (song lyrics, obscene ascii art, comments about another topic entirely) is Offtopic.
Quality of vinyl re-releases is most certainly on topic. It's a major issue to be honest, with most re-pressings being quite bad. That's why collectors pay top money for first pressings.
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
jesus dave give it a fucking rest
u whining about moderation is just begging to get down-modded more. thats how these children bothering u work as does daring them to continue ur petty bickering. little kids on power trips wont bother u when u stop painting this big fucking target on ur posts.
heres another idea- just dont be a raging asshole to anybody u disagree with. i doubt u were picked at random and this bitchfest aint helping u. just shut the fuck up and live with the fact that ur lousy +0 posts drop to -1 big fucking deal get a life.
fucking crybaby.