'Record Store Day' Creates Vinyl Logjam (newyorker.com) 120
An anonymous reader writes: Today is Record Store Day, an event which includes exclusive vinyl releases distributed only through record stores. But besides complaints about scalpers hoarding the limited-edition releases, musicians and labels say the event monopolizes all of the available production capacity for pressing vinyl records, creating delays as long as six months and inflating vinyl record prices as high as $30. "The bottleneck persists even though plants work around the clock for months to accommodate the surge in orders leading up to Record Store Day," writes the New Yorker, noting that the demand for vinyl records has now increased six-fold over the last eight years.
Part of the problem appears to be big labels. (One insisted on printing 2,100 copies of their 1974 novelty hit "Kung Fu Fighting" for the independent record store event, the New Yorker notes, "meaning that an up-and-coming band's new album could, in theory, be delayed.") Meanwhile, with current techniques, one production plant still has to scrap up to 20% of the records it presses due to quality issues -- although in the last four months, two companies have introduced new faster technologies for pressing vinyl records.
This year's records include a Dr. Who track called "Genesis of the Daleks" and a track from the "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" soundtrack on a vinyl picture disc, as well as releases from Anthrax, David Bowie, Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, the Flaming Lips, and even Devo members Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale. Metallica -- this year's "ambassador" for the event -- plans to stream a live performance at Rasputin Records in Berkeley California.
Part of the problem appears to be big labels. (One insisted on printing 2,100 copies of their 1974 novelty hit "Kung Fu Fighting" for the independent record store event, the New Yorker notes, "meaning that an up-and-coming band's new album could, in theory, be delayed.") Meanwhile, with current techniques, one production plant still has to scrap up to 20% of the records it presses due to quality issues -- although in the last four months, two companies have introduced new faster technologies for pressing vinyl records.
This year's records include a Dr. Who track called "Genesis of the Daleks" and a track from the "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" soundtrack on a vinyl picture disc, as well as releases from Anthrax, David Bowie, Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, the Flaming Lips, and even Devo members Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale. Metallica -- this year's "ambassador" for the event -- plans to stream a live performance at Rasputin Records in Berkeley California.
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Nice try, though.
Fetishization (Score:2, Insightful)
The fetishization of vinyl is for posers. The same kind of posers who fetishize $10,000 audio ethernet cables. [arstechnica.com]
What matters most is mastering. A poorly mastered vinyl release will sound like shit compared to a quality mastering on CD or even an MP3. And then there is degradation and convenience, digital never degrades and is easily copied, shared, backed-up and stored. Given an identical mastering, the only reason to prefer vinyl is if you care about something other than audio quality.
Re:Fetishization (Score:4, Funny)
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"You get more milage from a cheap set of speakers"
In any case, it is better to spend money on a high end turntable, arm, needle, preamp and power amp than the best speakers as they will only faithfully reproduce the crap signal they receive.
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Just because something 'sounds better' doesn't mean it's higher quality. Take a listen to some vinyl, and I think you'll at least be able to agree that it sounds different. If it does sound different, some people might think that it might sound better..
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I had a CD player and record player at one point. CDs sounded better. (Less scratch/pop/hiss.)
And much more convenient.
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Except it costs nothing. Are you claiming that cooking your own food is the same as microwaving frozen dinners?
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Re:Fetishization (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of vinyl has been mastered 'better' than CDs. Basically anything in the 'loudness war' that was released on both vinyl and CD will sound better on vinyl, because it won't constantly be clipping (Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication is an album I can't stand to listen to on CD).
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Virtual +5 million informative.
Re:Fetishization (Score:5, Insightful)
True but that is the fault of the sound engineers who mixed it, the artists who approved it.
It is possible to make a digital version of that vinyl that sounds better. It required talent and care. Two things the music industry greatly lacks.
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True but that is the fault of the sound engineers who mixed it, the artists who approved it.
You are accusing the two very people who are most outspoke and out of control of such a situation.
The record industries are the one who demand their album be louder than the competition because it sounds "better". The artist rarely has a voice when it comes to how the final master is prepared, and the sound engineers.... well they are dime-a-dozen and the answer is typically either you mix it the way we want or someone else does.
This is one of the reasons that they love working on vinyl masters, as they are
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" A poorly mastered vinyl release will sound like shit compared to a quality mastering on CD or even an MP3."
And a perfectly-mastered vinyl release will degrade a little every time you play it. Welcome back to the world of dusty needles and space-hogging turntables you thought you had left behind forever. So the hipster faddists are going to "rip" their vinyl to MP3, saving the actual vinyl until some hoped for re-re-revival of the format in their grandchildren's time.
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Non-issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
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ritual, waiting, and inconvenience.
What makes you say that given that most people can throw a record on a turntable faster than they can boot a computer, look for and start playing digital media?
Re:Non-issue? (Score:5, Funny)
You obviously have zero clue how to play a record.
you do NOT throw it on the turntable.
You put on a cotton glove, carefully remove the record from the sleeve, then carefully place it on a dampening mat on the turntable, you now zero stat it with a static dissipation device and then hit it lightly with a dust removal super soft brush. then you can spin up the turntable wait for it to get to speed, then carefully lower the needle on the record once it hit speed.
My computer boots from OFF in less than 15 seconds. it takes at LEAST 15 seconds to get the record safely on the turntable and the static dissipation applied.
Unless you love the experience of buttloads of pops and clicks as well as damaging a $580 cartridge on your technics turntable... you do it right.
Why is this modded "Funny"? (Score:3, Informative)
I grew up in the '70s - if you considered yourself anything other than a loser that didn't know anything about audio, this is what you did.
That and worry about:
- Your turntable (always wanted a direct drive for providing the most accurate 33 RPM)
- Arm (had to be balanced to minimized forces on the cartridge, needle and record)
- Cartridge
- Needle
I have a Technics turntable with a Shure cartridge and needle that probably cost the equivalent of $2,000 today. I couldn't find needles for the cartridges for year
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NO! You have to zero stat AFTER using the brush!
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This is how you play multiple vinyl records: You use a record-changing turntable.
1. Stack a bunch of records on top of one another on the spindle.
2. When a record finishes, the next record will drop down on top of the record(s) already on the turntable.
3. This is good for 80-100 minutes of music depending on the number of stacked records supported by the device.
No need for expensive cleaning cloths or solutions as long as you are able to buy more copies of your records.
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faster than they can boot a computer
You mean one can do this manually? ...
Seriously, I haven't rebooted any of my computers in years. For windows usually MS Update does that every month or so, and outside of that they are always on. For my Linux boxes they reboot with every major new Ubuntu distro release, again every few months.
Re:Non-issue? (Score:4, Funny)
Not all of us live in countries where we can happily piss 100watts of power continuously into the wind. Admittedly the parent's basement dwellers may not realise electricity has a cost.
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That's pretty sad. It's 2016. It's time for a certain base load to be available and all-but-free almost anywhere in the world on demand. Some basic infrastructure is essential to basic industry, and that essential infrastructure includes enough electricity for 100 watts per person on an ongoing basis to be overshadowed. If a region doesn't have that it doesn't have the electricity to support and repair hea
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Oh I didn't say the power wasn't available. It just results in me actually parting with money for literally no good reason to run a device that is doing zero useful work. This is actually why I "upgraded" my Xeon based home server to an Intel Avoton based server. That paid for itself already even with 2 additional drives in the new server.
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Ahhh yes the ever practical but you can get things low power enough to keep them always on and don't consider any of the actual performance or use cases involved with a computer.
I sure as heck won't be replacing my video editing machine with an ultra-low power laptop, and I'm sure you agree buying an entire laptop for the soul purpose of making sure your music is available 15 seconds faster is not really a great use for money, or a laptop.
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I leave my computer always on.
I have a power bill to pay.
However, my audiophile friend needs to wait 15 minutes for his tube amp to warm up every time he listens to music... now THAT'S convenient! He has several thousand vinyl albums, but mostly listens to CDs these days.
No he doesn't. He just claims he does because it makes his penis bigger.
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Tough shit for you.
Based on your other comment about penis size, I'm sure you're just a joy to be around. I leave MULTIPLE computers on at all times, and my power bill is lower where I live now than it has ever been.
If you can't afford to do that, it's not really relevant to the discussion.
Nobody Cares.
Congratulations you live in a world where there's cheap power. More power to you ... errr literally?
As for my comment on penis size, you don't think your audiophile friend is actually able to hear the difference in his tube amp between running when first powered on and 15 minutes later do you? Or does that only work with monster cables. The difference in distortion between a tube that has been on for only a few seconds vs a tube that has been on for 15 minutes it borderline immeasurable. But mind you the sa
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I'm the furthest thing from an audiophile but... Umm... Err... I'm also old. I also play a variety of musical instruments. I also have some tubed amps.
You can absolutely tell the difference between a warmed up tube-driven system and one just started. It's not just a little different, it's a lot different.
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What makes you say that given that most people can throw a record on a turntable faster than they can ...
stick a CD in a CD player?
Stupidity says you can get a record playing faster than you can get a CD playing.
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Yeah and I suppose I could fart faster too, but what has that got to do with digital downloads an records?
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It has everything that I said it did. Which is nothing.
But people seem to forget that there is a different way to play digital music other than booting up a computer.
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most people can throw a record on a turntable faster than they can boot a computer, look for and start playing digital media?
I can plug my headphones into my phone, launch the MP3 player, search for the song I want from a collection of about 150 albums and be listening in a matter of seconds. And I can do that anywhere, anytime.
I'd love hear an explanation of how you can do the same thing even faster with 40 lbs of vinyl records.
Re:Non-issue? (Score:4, Funny)
Well... (Score:2)
...hipsters gotta hip. Or is the verb "to hipst"?
This year's records include a D[octo]r Who track called "Genesis of the Daleks"
It's not so much a track as audio from a 1970s TV story.
Digital streaming from a record store? (Score:2)
Metallica -- this year's "ambassador" for the event -- plans to stream a live performance at Rasputin Records in Berkeley California.
I wonder if that performance would sound better on vinyl? Maybe we should just wait for it.
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But... but... but... vinyl is dead (Score:2)
Karate Kung Fu (Score:2)
What is attraction for under 30 crowd? (Score:3)
What do millennial and younger crowd love about vinyl? why do think it is regaining in popularity? Please post.
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None whatsoever for the most part. By and large, most people nowadays listen to music using their computers and/or phones.
LPs are liked mostly by people who do it because they can then tell other people they ‘prefer vinyl’. This hasn't got anything to do with music, it's a fashion statement, like how they drink $8 cups of coffee (but only if they can be seen drinking them) and they have to wear glasses with thick black frames and chequered berets.
There's also a tiny professional segment of DJs w
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What do millennial and younger crowd love about vinyl? why do think it is regaining in popularity? Please post.
The physical aspect of it. Large cover art, booklets and the like. I see it as a reaction to MP3 and similar digital formats which exist purely electronically. MP3s and such are way more convenient to listen to, but they just don't look as good on the shelf.
Many trends act like a pendulum. Mobile phones were large, became unusably tiny and are now in their 'large' phase again. Centrally managed computers gave way to PCs so the users were in control and now things are heading into the cloud and back to
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It doesn't much matter. Albums used to be something that went together, often times. You had an album and you could listen to it - entirely. It often told a story. It meant something. It was a singular body of work. Even singles released from an album were part of that story, they were (perhaps) the introduction or preface to the story.
Today, in the world of digital releases and streaming music, the concept of the album seems to have gone away. The concept of the album being a piece of work, a statement, a
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What do millennial and younger crowd love about vinyl? why do think it is regaining in popularity? Please post.
Hipsters buy them so they can take photos of them with their Polaroid cameras which they then take a photo of with their phones to upload on Instagram with an old cross-processing filter applied.
Seriously though I know someone who buys it as art for his bookshelf then goes and downloads some MP3s to load on his HiFi. The dead giveaway is how much dust is on the record player despite having a relatively recent and new looking vinyl collection.
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I've asked this about... (Score:2)
- The "new" VW Bug
- Button fly jeans
I don't consider my self an old fart, but I don't understand the fascination with things that we moved away from because the products/technology that replaced them was so much better.
Growing up, I had a ton of records that, to preserve sound quality and make more convenient, put on audio tapes: when CDs came out, it was like a godsend as I could save a laborious and costly step.
Maybe celluloid collars and cathode ray computer monitors are next to make a come back.
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A certain subset of users still use (expensive, even) CRT displays. My understanding is that the color reproduction is more faithful and that they're more realistically calibrated with the prints. On the other hand, I can't speak to the reality of that - I'm progressively colorblind but not dangerously so. I just can't tell the difference between tones and shades all the time. I might mistake yellow or red for orange, greens for blue, blue for purple, black for blue, etc...
I actually thought everybody was f
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Wow! I used to annoy the other people in their dorm rooms at college with this album every Saturday. There are probably a couple of people who, to this day, hate Supertramp because of the way I played it obnoxiously loudly every Saturday morning.
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I'm over 50 and I hate vinyl. Well, I don't hate it. I prefer digital audio. You can pump digital out over a tubed amp anyhow.
That said, my favorite vinyl was, of course, the White Album. There was a Jame's Taylor's Greatest Hits on vinyl that was pretty good too. Thick as a Brick and Aqualung were pretty good. Man, I got laid with those albums playing in the background so often... Stupid 80s and the AIDS scare. Ah well... I lived through it, I guess. Somehow, I never ended up with AIDS or Hep or any of tha
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Easy - digital is easy, but is' somewhat... isolating and abstracted away. You have a CD and it's a silver disc filled with 1s and 0s that mysteriously turns into music. Or it's a file on the hard drive. It's a pretty abstract thing.
Vinyl however, is not abstract. You can feel it, you can look at the grooves and "see" the music within. It's a more tangible medium to experience the music. Effects li
Limo (Score:2)
Lars is going to drive his gold plated limo the 20 miles from his palatial palace to grace the event? I'm tempted to go just to spit at him.
Printing 2,100 records helps create a logjam??? (Score:2)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Production capacity must be pretty damned low.
Sooo..... (Score:2)
I got my vinyl album, a nail, and a hammer. I guess I'll just mount it on the wall here next to my CD, LaserDisk, Betamax, VHS, 8Track, and Compact Cassette tape.
I rate the most viable technologies by the level of damage the nail does to the technology in question. Right now the LaserDisk, CD, Compact Cassette, and vinyl record are leading, as the nail did a real number on the others.
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I rate the most viable technologies by the level of damage the nail does to the technology in question. Right now the LaserDisk, CD, Compact Cassette, and vinyl record are leading, as the nail did a real number on the others.
I'm a little confused. Are you saying a technology is most viable if it comes with a hole in it?
Because I would imagine hammering that nail through the data part of a LaserDisk, CD, cassette, or vinyl would do a pretty bad number on those too :P
I'll just mount it on the wall here next to my CD, LaserDisk, Betamax, VHS, 8Track, and Compact Cassette tape.
For the VHS and betamax, there is a small protruding tab attached to a lever that when pressed in will allow the opening of the tape cover. Once opened you could then hang those by the cover itself on a nail without much if any damage too.
I admit 8 tracks are a fe
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The 8 track was a continuous loop - you can see a great picture of the inner workings at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] It used a pinch roller system to drive the tape - it was pulled from the center of the spool, and fed back onto the outside of the spool. Of course that means you couldn't rewind the tape - only go forward - so if you wanted to hear the last track you just heard, you had to fast forward all the way around until you got back to the original track.
My dad's stereo system only played
Vinyl CDs of Digital Music... (Score:1)
Kung Fu Fighting (Score:2)
Wanna buy my vinyl? (Score:1)
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Re: Sheep (Score:1)
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You have to admit, they do put out quite a bit of heat.