Vinyl Is Selling So Well That It's Getting Hard To Sell Vinyl (nytimes.com) 89
"Vinyl was nearly at death's door not that long ago. After CDs came out, the predictions of vinyl's demise were an every day occurrence," writes Slashdot reader smooth wombat. "And for a time it looked like the vinyl record, something which had been around since the 1930s, would meet its end as so many other yesteryear products have. Except the COVID-19 pandemic changed all that. Now, with the sudden resurgence and demand for vinyl records, the few remaining manufacturers are struggling to meet the growing demand." The New York Times reports: In the first six months of this year, 17 million vinyl records were sold in the United States, generating $467 million in retail revenue (PDF), nearly double the amount from the same period in 2020, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Sixteen million CDs were also sold in the first half of 2021, worth just $205 million. Physical recordings are now just a sliver of the overall music business -- streaming is 84 percent of domestic revenue -- but they can be a strong indication of fan loyalty, and stars like Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo make vinyl an important part of their marketing.
Yet there are worrying signs that the vinyl bonanza has exceeded the industrial capacity needed to sustain it. Production logjams and a reliance on balky, decades-old pressing machines have led to what executives say are unprecedented delays. A couple of years ago, a new record could be turned around in a few months; now it can take up to a year, wreaking havoc on artists' release plans.
Music and manufacturing experts cite a variety of factors behind the holdup. The pandemic shut down many plants for a time, and problems in the global supply chain have slowed the movement of everything from cardboard and polyvinyl chloride -- the "vinyl" that records (and plumbing pipes) are made from -- to finished albums. In early 2020, a fire destroyed one of only two plants in the world that made lacquer discs, an essential part of the record-making process. But the bigger issue may be simple supply and demand. Consumption of vinyl LPs has grown much faster than the industry's ability to make records. The business relies on an aging infrastructure of pressing machines, most of which date to the 1970s or earlier and can be costly to maintain. New machines came along only in recent years, and can cost up to $300,000 each. There's a backlog of orders for those, too.
Yet there are worrying signs that the vinyl bonanza has exceeded the industrial capacity needed to sustain it. Production logjams and a reliance on balky, decades-old pressing machines have led to what executives say are unprecedented delays. A couple of years ago, a new record could be turned around in a few months; now it can take up to a year, wreaking havoc on artists' release plans.
Music and manufacturing experts cite a variety of factors behind the holdup. The pandemic shut down many plants for a time, and problems in the global supply chain have slowed the movement of everything from cardboard and polyvinyl chloride -- the "vinyl" that records (and plumbing pipes) are made from -- to finished albums. In early 2020, a fire destroyed one of only two plants in the world that made lacquer discs, an essential part of the record-making process. But the bigger issue may be simple supply and demand. Consumption of vinyl LPs has grown much faster than the industry's ability to make records. The business relies on an aging infrastructure of pressing machines, most of which date to the 1970s or earlier and can be costly to maintain. New machines came along only in recent years, and can cost up to $300,000 each. There's a backlog of orders for those, too.
Vinyl and tables (Score:3)
Much as I appreciate vinyl, I wonder how many new records never come out of their sleeves. They just look good on the shelf. Or maybe someone thinks of them as an investment.
As an aside...
I recently spoke to the owner of a local HiFi shop. He mentioned that a couple months ago, he had placed an order with a turntable manufacturer (I think it was Pro-ject) for the holiday season. He was told that his order would be delivered in July of 2022. Their supply chain is backed up too.
Re:Vinyl and tables (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Vinyl and tables (Score:4, Informative)
I can now hear all the imperfections in vinyl. Vinyl is just overrated.
Most of the people buying modern records aren't doing so because they think it sounds better. It's mostly about the large cover art and the collectability aspects. That being said, a decent home stereo playing a vinyl record still holds up well against some of the modern ways people listen to music (such as horribly overcompressed satellite radio, and through tinny cell phone speakers/Apple earpods).
Also I'd imagine some of us older dogs remember records from our youth and are becoming nostalgic for simpler times in our advancing years.
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such as horribly overcompressed satellite radio
That has driven me nuts. Normally I'm not very much of an audiophile (I never balked at CD audio or 128 kbps mp3, and generally didn't even mind the 64kpbs streams that some streaming services provided, given the right codec), but once I got a car that came with satellite radio and just hated the compression artifacts. I mention to other people who have listened to satellite radio and they all just accused me of being an audiophile imagining flaws.
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I can now hear all the imperfections in vinyl. Vinyl is just overrated.
Most of the people buying modern records aren't doing so because they think it sounds better.
I had a similar experience many years ago when I inherited my dad's old vinyl system. "Most of the people"? Not sure I agree. I have come across many who genuinely think it does sound better than digital. Then again maybe they are just a very vocal minority.
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I felt the same way until I made my own pre-amp and fixed the sound.
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When CDs first came out they were properly mastered. The original CD release of Brothers In Arms is legendary, there is exactly one sample on the entire disc that hits the maximum +32765 and the minimum -32768 16 bit limits. It sounds great.
Later CDs are clipped and distorted to hell. The vinyl release is usually much better mastered because that kind of clipping can't be done on the vinyl format. So yeah you get some clicks and pops, but you also get much more dynamic range and less fatigue from all the sq
Re:Vinyl and tables (Score:4, Insightful)
That's exactly what it's all about. CDs are a perfect medium, but due to abuse of limiters to make them sound louder, especially when mastering tracks, the quality of sound deteriorated greatly, so in a way records do sound better, because you can't go that loud when mastering for a record. ;)
However, loads of the people won't even understand what we're talking about here. Limiters? Louder? How about clippers that cut the transients, especially drum/percussion transients? I've been a musician, mixing and mastering engineer for 20+ years. I know what I'm talking about. I never got into "loudness wars" and those CDs mastered in the late 80s and early 90s were generally mastered properly, so there wasn't any clipped transients and distortion.
CDs released in late 2000s started to sound increasingly annoying because of these "loudness wars", with dynamics ranging to about only measly 6dB! What this means is that a ballade song that starts quietly, but has a loud chorus, chorus will be only 6dB louder than the verses. Awful. Classical music can have a huge dynamic range and that's why the golden standard for classical music is -20dB RMS. Also, dB units are not linear, but logarithmic. The difference between 6dB and 20dB is huge in loudness.
Thankfully, streaming services like Youtube, iTunes, and Spotify, turn down the loudness of songs that get posted these days, so if you want your song to sound properly, you better master it not louder than -12dB short term LUFS. Even that is still a bit too loud IMO. The golden standard should be -14dB LUFS or even -18dB short term LUFS because of the classical music, jazz, R&B - music that simply loves dynamic range because dynamic range is a great part of the emotional musical experience. ;)
Cheers!
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I forgot to include a link to a video about "loudness wars" made by Ian Shepherd whom I respect greatly, for those who'd like to know more about our perception of loudness and what digital limiters do to the songs that get released on CDs. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Vinyl and tables (Score:2)
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Every time you play it, it degrades the quality slightly.
No, it gains "warmth".
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I don't know what it would cost you, but there is a way to listen to vinal without a needle.
Right at the end of vinal, you could get turntables that used lasers to read out the track. I don't know if they are still available.
Re: Vinyl and tables (Score:2)
"The" reason? One of several. Smaller format that was easier to carry, more efficient to store. Less sensitive to scratches and dirt. Easy to make portable. I think that last one was quite important, possibly the most important. Wasn't recordable at first, that came later and was just icing on the cake.
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I listened to my Paris Hilton record at least once!
I mostly bought it to take a selfie with it.
Re:Vinyl and tables (Score:4, Insightful)
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One the audio signal is put through a converter to digital, you might as well have a CD
And even if the signal is end-to-end analog, you might still as well run it through a quality ADC and encoder, and listen to the resulting digital file on a decent* set. No, you can't tell the difference. Old vinyl mostly sounds good because it predates the loudness war.
*) "Decent" can be had for low 4 figures ($/€), less if you listen on headphones.
Re: Vinyl and tables (Score:2)
Re:Vinyl and tables (Score:5, Interesting)
Vinyl is a scam
WTF is it with people calling things they're simply not interested in or dint like "a scam"?
The fact is that [... blah blah blah]
So? None of those things make it a scam.
you might as well have a CD
No, you might as well have an MP3 or Opus file. WTF are you pissing around with a plastic disc for?
I like vinyl and I have a record player. I use it. I like the big (and medium sized) discs. I like the cover art. I like perusing a physical collection and selecting something, freed from the paradox of choice. I like the anticipatory click and crackle you get when the needle touches down and before the music starts. I like track skipping being hard (even harder on my player) so you have to listen to an album as an album and dedicate a chunk of time to listening. I like chatting to the postman when a new record arrives, because it's obvious from the shape.
So, I like records, I occasionally buy them and I listen to them.
It's astonishing that your ego is so vast that you seem to think that the only possible reason someone can value things that you don't is because they have been scammed.
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Hey, buddy?
It's not about the sound quality. It never was. No-one with an ounce of nouse would argue otherwise. Yes there are many who don't have an ounce of nouse, and they populate the audiophile forums.
It's about the experience. A gatefold LP album with artwork and lyrics that you can enjoy as you listen to the music.
I listen to a digital version of Dark Side of the Moon while I enjoy the art from the LP I bought many years ago - that print of the pyramids, and the close-ups of the band.
Anyway, I won't b
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Then think of it technically... You can play the drums record, master, re master, play the recordings. Or you can play a drum machine record and play.... There is a difference as our whole existence is possible due to analog frequencies of matter. It just depends on what you are going for as far as recording a sound.
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"Vinyl is a scam based on creating a noble class who knows better than the rest of us."
Like the 8-track users.
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Vinyl is a scam based on creating a noble class who knows better than the rest of us. The fact is that if the original recording was not analog, any perceived warmness is an illusion.
huh? Analogue? Digital? What are you talking about. The reason people buy vinyl is for the joy of playing with an old record, for the massively oversized album artwork and the inclusions that come with it (which often include a digital copy as well), and the amazing colours and patterns much of modern vinyl is actually pressed in.
Very few people buy vinyl for any semblance of sound quality.
You don't want the things it offers, then don't buy it. But there's nothing "scam" about it.
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The squished plastic storage medium will be happy to distort your data regardless of what cutter that cut the die that squished it was attached to.
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Do you remember the Denon audiophile ethernet cable? Now, that was a scam if I've ever seen one, especially coming from an otherwise respectable company. Denon was, quite rightly, slammed by the press for that one.
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I don't appreciate vinyl at all. The listening experience is full of pops and hisses.
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"hisses"?
Try cleaning your records or get a new stylus.
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Yeap, I wrote that without thinking.
Vinyl overtake CD sales ? (Score:2)
Will Vinyl finally overtake CD sales ?
The race is on.
Grabbing some popcorn.
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Ah, vinyl. And tubes! (Score:2)
In other news, buggy whips have entered a consumer-driven resurgence, with fans asserting things such as this science-based remark by industry watcher Osgood J. Thunderlips:
Another Example of a Negative Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another Example of a Negative Headline (Score:4, Insightful)
The really positive message here is that people care about good mixing and dynamic range, so support a format which offers that.
Since the late 80s recordings have been getting louder. The Loudness Wars started when producers started boosting the volume level of everything on the recording to create a "wall of sound" effect that grabs your attention. Unfortunately that means almost everything recorded since then has been distorted and flat sounding. Drum hits have no depth, bass is just a binary on/off fart noise, there's no separation between instruments.
That was only possible because of CDs and digital recording. On vinyl you simply can't do it, the groove would become too wide and the needle would jump out. So the vinyl release has to be properly mastered, and despite the crackles and pops the overall sound is much nicer.
Some people rip the vinyl to MP3 for listening, so they don't wear out the record and get all the benefits of a digital format like skipping tracks at will.
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Sadly, that is no longer true. Vinyl releases aren't premium - they're for the people who buy a Crosley Cruiser (you know, those suitcase players). So the vinyl master is often the same as the CD master with all the loss of dynamic range.
In the 90s this would be true, but the retro revival of vinyl means people are buying because it's trendy, not because it sounds better.
This is not always the case; there are some albums (albeit they are the exception, not the rule) where a modern day 'reissue' played side-by-side against an earlier release does in fact sound better.
As well, there are a number of companies out there re-mastering from original recordings (where available) specifically for vinyl.
Sites like Discogs have a large database of the quality of individual releases, and if you're looking for good quality sound, always check your issue against them before you buy.
Case
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The really positive message here is that people care about good mixing and dynamic range, so support a format which offers that.
I'm trying hard to imagine a format that doesn't support good mixing.
Dynamic range? 16-bit digital has way more dynamic range than vinyl.
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CD does have much more dynamic range than vinyl, the problem is people aren't using it. Because there is nothing to stop you recording a massively clipped 1 bit square wave onto a CD they just crank up the loudness.
By the way, bog standard audio tape might be the example you seek.
Re: Another Example of a Negative Headline (Score:2)
However, this isn't true for all music. Classical and other high dynamic range music can't be mixed like that. Think of classical rock and progressive metal. But even rock ballads need dynamic range. Pop, you can just listen to it on the radio.
OK (Score:1)
I have a stack of vinyl behind me. Does anybody want it? You pay shipping.
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If you’re serious, you could put them on Discogs. Some records actually go for quite a bit of money (assuming they’re not the same stuff you can buy repressings of at Walmart/Target/Barnes and Noble)
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What songs and bands? The Beatles? :P
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I have a stack of vinyl behind me. Does anybody want it? You pay shipping.
Depends what you you have. I tend to buy from discogs and ebay for second hand. I assume what I pay covers shipping. Chances are you're in the USA so that's unlikely to b competitive for me in the UK, but there's a good chance you'll find buyers.
The future is quartzite! (Score:3)
Vinyl is too easily damaged. Gimme quartzite, etched by laser. Play it back with a laser pickup, but keep an old school phonograph on standby.
That record will last as long as the planet does, which is actually pretty cool if you're thinking about accurately preserving sound for future generations without fear of digital data loss as formats and storage media come and go.
And if that's not tough enough, give up the disk format and go with a cylinder.
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Maybe use some other material than polyvinyl chloride.
Maybe have people resin print the records so we can now say, "you never would download a record".
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I think the best way to preserve a music collection is to put it on a P2P network and let other people mirror it. For some reason, the RIAA has a huge problem with that backup method.
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Doesn't work very well when there's only one seed and that is intermittent.* Better to just set up a FTP share.
*Hence why it's called the Popularity Protocol.
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Play it back with a laser pickup
Why? There are several laser based playback systems for vinyl. They all share something in common: They suck and are easily and objectively bested by a cartridge a fraction of their cost.
Changing the underlying medium while keeping the design of the analogue groove unchanged won't change the fact that using lasers is a stupid idea that belongs in the 80s.
This was bound to happen. (Score:2)
Really, the moment bit-for-bit extraction from media became a reality, the media itself became inconsequential. The CD was guaranteed to fall away. It's window of opportunity was in between the move to digital, and the ability to transfer it quickly. With vinyl, the media matters. It is a part of the sonic delivery. Couple that with the canvas wrapping it, and it makes perfect sense to me that it's experiencing the boom.
Hell, I'm currently shopping for a turntable. I'm at the age where it's time to start ha
Likely deliberate. (Score:1)
Be cool (Score:2)
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Your friends won't think you're cool unless you have a turntable and a shitload of records.
Nonsense.
I've got a shitload of records and nobody thinks I'm cool.
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In mathematics they call that "necessary but not sufficient".
For some reason no one things I'm cool either.
And then I was thinking... (Score:2)
... that 'the market', by itself, was supposed to fix everything related to demand and supply.
That said, every now and then over the last few years I've heard there would be new companies emerging which would manufacture new vinyl record production equipment again, like German Newbilt Machinery [newbilt-machinery.com], for prices starting at $100,000 (as of 2015, according to vice.com [vice.com] [German]).
Personally, I've returned to vinyl after having exclusively bought music on CDs or digital without a physical medium for a long time, than
Can we go a day without reminding me? (Score:2)
I know people are idiots, but do you have to keep proving it?
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If you have a passion for outdated crap knowing it is outdated crap, that's fine, although it probably means you live in the past. This is not that. If you buy vinyl because you think it's somehow better than digital audio, you're an idiot, factually speaking. It's not a matter of sharing anyone's passion or not.
A mouse in a maze (Score:2)
Progress in modern life consists of making the getting of things as efficient as a well written computer program. Nothing but a button click (and ideally even less than that) should stand between you and what you want to consume. What could be better? The trouble with this, is that while it (vastly) benefits online mega-retailers, it ends up feeling rather empty. The consumer begins to get a sneaking sense that they are just a mouse in Netflix / Amazon / Instagram's maze. Clicking and getting rewarded, whi
Don't buy vinyl then (Score:5, Funny)
Good Old Days fallacy (Score:1)
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The majority of my vinyl records pre-date digital audio, so, no, you are wrong.
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If you go into a store and buy a new record, it has almost certainly been digitally mastered and then transferred to vinyl, even if the original recording was on analog tape. The only exceptions are releases from some audiophile labels.
If somebody has a collection of old records, as you do, that won't be true.
Anti-Science Nyquist-Shannon Deniers! (Score:2)
I'm afraid unless you buy Vinyl for the experience or the artwork it just pure anti-science to think it sounds better than digital music. People may have a point about the loudness wars, but for best quality play your vinyl once and digitize it and never play again.
16 bit audio easily exceeds anything vinyl can do without all the pops and clicks.
All the ultrasonic frequency stuff is just BS and never shown to be audible or even genuine sounds that you might want to hear.
I'm afraid it's just part of a modern
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This. I am (or was) a member of various audiophile groups, some still on traditional forums, many have migrated to fakebook groups. Many of the groups on FB have been overrun with anti-science vinyl zealots who swear that high end vinyl systems (5 or 6 figure turntables) will provide better quality sound than 4-figure digital system.
Of course it does, the salesman told them so, so it must be true.
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I'm afraid it's just part of a modern trend of I don't care what your facts/measurements
This is audio we're talking about. Facts and measurements have never been relevant and there's nothing modern about it.
Now can I interest you in a $1000 Ethernet cable to make the sound from Spotify streamer better?
to me it... (Score:2)
...is proof that we have at least a segment of people with a lot of money to burn.
The sounding better is just that same audiophile bullshit infamously behind $500 wooden stereo knobs and $100 cable lifters.
No, mostly it's about gullibility, trend following and not least, conspicuous consumption.
Ah memories... (Score:2)
So, today, you can do this. You can plunge yourself into delicate error prone vinyl recordings. But it's a costly thing to be "retro cool".
Even during the vinyl era (not now), I did not like paying more than $10 fo
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A turntable that costs hundreds of dollars now is a hi-fi model, not at all comparable to a cheap toy. Go on Amazon and you'll see dozens of options in the $50-$100 range, often with bluetooth output and internal speakers. They're actually pretty good, from what I understand.
And after inflation, $10 in 1980 is the equivalent of $33 today [in2013dollars.com]. So vinyl is cheaper. Rock records from the 1960s sold at the equivalent of $60 today.
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Interesting note, the other day somebody was talking (seriously) about using VHS tape as a storage medium for his network. I kid you not.
Assuming 350 x 240 resolution x 29.97 frames / sec (NTSC specs; the roughly 60 frames / second figure, widely quoted, is interlaced), assuming 1 bit / pixel (just to be safe), that's about 309 KB / sec. A T-120 video tape (7,200 seconds) would hold about 2 GB. You MIGHT be able to get 4 bits / pixel, bumping that up to 8 GB. Maybe.
Extended play would turn a T-120 tape into 6 hours, but at the cost of reduced resolution. Not worth it.
It would take you 2 hours to back up, or restore, that quantity of dat
So Much Horseshit in the Thread (Score:2)
Every last thing involved in recording colours the sound. The wood on the floor in the studio. The model of the microphones, amps, preamps, and even the analog circuits in the mixing board. The results are then modified again, as needed. The ghost of what was "originally played" is long gone - and if you could go back and get it, you'd be sorely disappointed. The very last stage - the pressing - produces something that was mixed, mastered, and prepared specifically with that target in mind.
So now the CD com
It's all missing the boat (Score:2)
its a tangible, analogue 'record' of sound. (Score:1)
You buy vinyl to get a 'record' of a song that you love and want to keep. It will stay for as long as it keeps meaning something to you.
No other media replaces it. The CD gets scratched and its useless. There's no sound on that foil layer, just 1's and zeros.
Vinyl, even warped, dusty, worn out, (ok maybe not melted) will still reproduce a recognisable song of the original version you remembered. Its there in the vinyl, you can see and feel the grooves. You can hear the needle begin its journey from outer to