I still have all my old vinyls,LP's, EP's and singles from the early 1960's onwards.
From the first Beatles and Rolling Stones albums to musicals like "Hair", "Jesus Christ Superstar" - both the British and Australian versions - to Cole Porter's "Can Can" which I saw on Amazon years ago for $140. Virtually impossible to get now.
From all the music-related posts on my blog you would never guess how much I enjoy them/sarc off!!
I could never bring myself to get rid of them, notwithstanding the fact that they take up a lot of space.
I salvaged all my late sister's LP's years ago when she was moving house, and now I even have two copies of some.
I am really glad I never threw them out as some are now impossible to get in any format and I have recently bought several online that were missing from my collection also.
Having said that I have converted a few to MP3 format on my computer, just to make it somewhat more convenient to listen to at times, and also to be able to share the impossible-to-get ones, and there are quite a few of those!
Although I use my computer for most of my listening experience there is nothing quite like owning the LP with the larger pictures, the cover notes and a few other things you don't get on a CD much less a download.
I admit I even bought some vinyl LP's and EP's because I liked the album art. I have never done that with a CD.
I cannot comment on the technical aspect - that's not my area of expertise. I am quite happy to listen to vinyl or MP3 files: headphones or no headphones.
I just wish my late father hadn't bought all those Reader's Digest collections. I am pretty sure no music-loving person on the planet would want them. To me they are the musical equivalent to plain-wrap food!
And I will never regret buying this vinyl picture disc LP of Marilyn Monroe! There can't be too many of these around.
On any given Tuesday in the 90s, I would hustle to the record store after school to gawk at the new releases. Occasionally, I would take a CD home, greedily tear it open, pop it into my boombox, and listen while I pretended to do my homework. This wonderful experience has no value any more. It’s obsolete.
Listening to music is still amazing today, it’s just that you’d be crazy to buy a CD. That’s not me saying that: That’s what the whole world is saying. CD sales have been declining every year for more than a decade because CDs are effectively useless in a world where digital music files are so easy to play and transfer, legally or otherwise.
That doesn’t mean there’s no worthwhile way to buy a real-world physical album. Even as the recording industry flails, vinyl is seeing a comeback. Maybe you’ve noticed this resurgence in the living rooms of pretentious friends who keep a crate full of ragged record jackets next to an old Technics turntable. At the very least, you’ve probably stumbled upon a small selection of shrink-wrapped records in trendy big city boutiques, and if not, maybe while Googling the meanings of Taylor Swift lyrics, you stumbled upon an Amazon listing for her latest record, Red, cut on 140 gram vinyl.
The renaissance of the long play record isn’t just an anecdotal trend. Even as physical record sales decline, people are buying more vinyl than they have in decades. In 2013, sales increased 31-per cent to about 6 million units year-over-year. It’s not a single-year bump either, either. Sales have climbed to 6 million from after having been at about a million in 2007.
I’m not the first person to point out that vinyl is on the rise after having been considered dead. The “why” behind it, though, is a little more elusive. People don’t have to buy vinyl, and yet, they’re increasingly choosing to do so. It seems that in a world where CDs are obsolete, and digital files are intangible, the vinyl record still has a physical value that gives you your money’s worth. If the music industry wants to survive, it better pay attention to why people are buying records.
Why buy music at all?
In 2014, there is no good reason for most people to buy music. There’s a moral argument about how we should support the artists, blah blah blah, they have families to feed, yadda, yadda, but the reality is that you’re never going to force people to spend money if they don’t have to. Today, there’s just no practical way to force people to buy music — not unless you’re Beyonce .I’m not just talking about piracy. For a few years people were buying digital music because for some, the convenience of online stores like iTunes outweighed the inconvenience and legal risk of file sharing. But subscription music services like Spotify, Rdio, Beats Music, et al, are so easy and affordable to sign up for, that “owning music” is more complicated than just listening to whatever you want wherever you are on whatever device you happen to be using.
Yes, Spotify doesn’t have everything, but it does have pretty damn close to everything, and for most people, it’s a single, small, monthly expenditure that will satisfy the entirety of their music listening desires. And, of course, there are people out there who like buying things, especially from smaller artists. For them buying a CD means putting money in the artists’ pocket. But even these magnanimous souls will admit that in the best-case scenario, the CD gets ripped to digital storage of some kind. Or worse, it’s never played, and you just listen to the thing on Spotify anyway until it ends up in a landfill.
Convenience over audio quality
An overwhelming percentage of digital music files provide much worse sound quality than CDs, and people are choosing crappy digital anyway. It’s possible to rip and uncompressed version of the music stored on a CD, but when most people rip their discs into iTunes, they choose to use one of many “lossy” compression formats because CD quality rips take up 7.5 times more space than a high-quality MP3. (Subscription music services offer roughly equivalent audio quality to a good MP3.) Most people don’t care about the difference enough to trump the fact that scaling back audio quality lets you carry around 7.5 times more music and listen to it conveniently.For those people who do care about these things, online stores like HD tracks offer audiophile quality downloads. And yet, last year digital music sales took a dip for the first time since iTunes started selling tracks a decade ago. It shouldn’t surprise you that in 2013 streaming music consumption increased by 32 per cent, and now accounts for 16 per cent of recording industry revenue. This would seem to confirm evidence that people who want to go digital really don’t care about audio quality.
To turn to vinyl, then, I don’t buy the argument that the format is seeing a resurgence because people think it sounds better. There’s an ongoing debate amongst audiophiles and scientists regarding the audio quality of digital vs analogue music playback. Audiophiles claim that analogue playback sounds better, even though this is scientifically untrue. According to science, a CD and a vinyl record being pulled from the same original material are mathematically identical. Without going to far into it, suffice it to say that the 44.1 kHz/16-bit CD-quality spec isn’t random — it’s based on sampling theory, which proves that given that the highest frequency you can here is 20,000 Hz, using a higher sampling rate or resolution is mathematically inconsequential.
Some people choose to dispute science and instead trust their easily deluded senses, or maybe they just like the sound of a record scratching on the surface of a record. These fans only help prove my point: People are turning to vinyl because they enjoy it more.
The case for vinyl
The people who actually care about the experience of ownership are increasingly turning back to vinyl because it gives you a physical experience that’s more fulfilling than a simple CD purchase. There are a few reasons this might be the case, but it all boils down to experience: a warm and fuzzy happy feeling you get from buying and playing LPs that you just can’t get from any other source.Vinyl has always offered a more intimate experience. The large format feels more substantial and turns the design of the cover and the inserts into satisfying artworks in their own right in a way that a CD never could. There’s something wonderfully interactive about putting on a record, listening to a side, and then flipping it over to hear the other side. It makes the listening experience something in which you are constantly physically and emotionally involved. It’s social, and fun, a far cry from the passive aural experience of CDs or digital.
As for the sound of vinyl, let’s return to the sound of the scratching record. I remember my father, a lifelong music collector, was puzzled when I first got into vinyl in high school. He’d been an early adopter of CDs because they did away with the interference of scratch. But scratch isn’t a negative; it adds texture and warmth. Some musicians go so far as to add it to digital recordings to give them “character.”
Vinyl can be fragile, yes, among other imperfections. But those end up being part of its charm. Older records warp, needles wobble on their surface and skip over scratches. This is also turns records into nostalgia factories. I love the hand-me-down first pressing of Sticky Fingers my godfather gave me. What am I gonna give my kids? A flash drive? The password to my Dropbox?
Vinyl’s fatal flaw, and the reason that the format lost to cassettes and later CDs, is that you can’t take it with you. It’s impractical.
But today, you don’t have to have it just one way. Vinyl record purchases come with codes which allow you to download digital versions of the music on-board. I’ve bought about a dozen new release vinyls in the last two years, and every single one came with a free download. A survey of a few different record labels confirm that vinyls all seem to come with a free digital version. What’s more, thanks to Amazon’s Autorip service, you’ll get an MP3 with your vinyl through that store as well. You really can take it with you.
The future of music is selling an experience
Music executives hate digital. Once upon a time, they could sell you a piece of plastic at an exorbitant markup, and people paid. Of course they did! People can’t live without music. People fall in love with songs and want to listen to them over and over again, and the most convenient way to do that for a long time was to buy the music. Sure, you could copy tapes, and later CDs, but nothing ever really cut into music sales until the MP3 and broadband internet connections made it so that people didn’t have to.Now that buying music is a choice, the people in every part of the music industry need to pay attention to the people who are choosing to buy, even when they don’t have to. How can they create a product that people want to spend money on? It’s not enough to say that the musicians “deserve” to make money. You have to make a compelling argument. Vinyl does this to a certain extent, but even if vinyl sales keep growing they’re never going to be enough.
I’m not claiming to have the answer, but it seems clear that if the business of recording and selling music is going to survive it’s going to have to figure out how to encourage people to pay because they love it and it makes them happy — which is why people care about music in the first place.
Vinyl isn’t just music. It’s an experience. And one that’s worth paying for.
by Mario Aguilar
More details there.With many thanks to GizmodoSee also: Spinning Vinyl Records with Peter Goldmark
More:
July 2014: Needle to the record as vinyl back in vogue - From The Australian
FOR 17-year-old Gigi Cook,above, listening to vinyl is a pastime firmly established in her family.
“While most kids grew up listening to children’s music, I grew up singing along to Stevie Wonder,” Cook said as she browsed through the vinyl at Red Eye Records in Sydney.
“There’s a lot of music that I like, but that I can’t actually get on CD or online, anyway.”
Cook is just one of a growing number of Australians who are turning to vinyl as their preferred way of listening to music. The phenomenon is being embraced by artists, too. Most mainstream and independent acts around the world are releasing on vinyl as well as digitally and on CD.
Latest figures from the Australian Recording Industry Association show that vinyl is by far the biggest growth area in the Australian music business, although it represents less than 1 per cent of the overall album market.
Sales of vinyl in Australia rose by 77 per cent last year compared with the previous year. That’s 137,658 in 2013 compared with 77,934 in 201 2, ringing in revenue of almost $3 million.
CD sales, while bringing in revenue of $142m from sales of more than 14 million albums, dropped 27 per cent. Digital album sales rose 6 per cent, raising revenue of $67m from 7.4 million sales.
“The increase in vinyl sales, admittedly from a low base, has been an interesting phenomenon over the last couple of years,” said ARIA chief executive Dan Rosen.
“It is an exciting time, as Australian music fans are consuming more music than ever before with an expanding range of options to access music — whether through streaming services, digital downloads or visiting the local record store to buy vinyl.”
Australian siblings Angus and Julia Stone, who will release a new album in August, are offering a two-record set on vinyl while international artists such as Lily Allen and Beck have released products that way this year.
“There is a great romance about putting a vinyl record on a turntable and dropping down the needle to hear the little crackles and squeaks before the music starts,” said Rosen.
“It seems that a lot more artists are using vinyl as a way to give their fans a tangible way of showing their fandom, while also providing a digital download so that their music can also be consumed on the go.”
By Iain Shedden
Music’s greatest comeback — vinyl
NEARLY eight million
old-fashioned vinyl records have been sold this year, up 49% from the same
period last year, US industry data show. Younger people, especially indie-rock
fans, are buying records in greater numbers, attracted to the perceived superior
sound quality of vinyl and the ritual of putting needle to groove.
But while new LPs hit stores each
week, the creaky machines that make them haven’t been manufactured for decades,
and just one company supplies an estimated 90% of the raw vinyl that the
industry needs. As such, America’s 15 or so still-running factories that press
records face daily challenges with breakdowns and supply shortages.Their efforts point to a problem now bedevilling a curious corner of the music industry. The record-making business is stirring to life — but it’s still on its last legs.
Robert Roczynski ’s dozen employees work overtime at a small factory in Hamden, Connecticut, to make parts for US record makers struggling to keep abreast of the revived interest in LPs. Mr. Roczynski’s firm says orders for steel moulds, which give records their flat, round shape, have tripled since 2008.
“They’re trying to bring the industry back, but the era has gone by,” says Mr. Roczynski, 67 years old, president of Record Products of America Inc., one of the country’s few suppliers of parts for the industry.
Many producers, including the largest, United Record Pressing in Nashville, Tennessee, are adding presses, but there has yet to be a big move by entrepreneurs to inject capital and confidence into this largely artisanal industry. Investors aren’t interested in sinking serious cash into an industry that represents 2% of U.S. music sales.
Record labels are waiting months for orders that used to get filled in weeks. That is because pressing machines spit out only around 125 records an hour. To boost production, record factories are running their machines so hard — sometimes around the clock — they have to shell out increasing sums for maintenance and repairs.
Large orders from superstars create bottlenecks, while music fans search the bins in vain for new releases by The War on Drugs, a Philadelphia indie group, or French electronic duo Daft Punk. More requests for novelty LPs — multicoloured, scented, glow-in-the-dark — gum things up further.
Nick Blandford, managing director of Secretly Group, a family of independent labels, in Bloomington, Indiana, is putting in orders now to make sure his artists’ LPs are in stores for next year’s “Record Store Day” in April.
To get more machines, record-plant owners have been scouring the globe for mothballed presses, snapping them up for $15,000 to $30,000, and plunking down even more to refurbish them.
Ryan Raffaelli, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who studies what he calls “technology re-emergence,” is familiar with this industrial netherworld.
Swiss mechanical watches, fountain pens and independent bookstores all re-emerged from the doldrums by reinventing themselves for consumers and then attracting investment from entrepreneurs, he says.
“The question is whether there’s enough demand for vinyl to make this jump. And it’s too soon to tell,” Mr. Raffaelli says.
There are lots of hurdles in the way of any such reinvention.
Just one company, Thai Plastic & Chemicals, which has a three-person shop in Long Beach, California, supplies the vast majority — as much as 90%, the firm says — of the raw polyvinyl chloride compound needed to make records across the country.
Jack Cicerello, TPC manager for North America, says after his old company, Keyser Century, closed in the mid-2000s, there were no suppliers of raw vinyl left in the US.
Thai Plastic & Chemicals, a Thai maker of plastic products, tapped Mr. Cicerello to expand its presence in North America, and he and some colleagues proposed launching a side business of shuttling Thai-made raw vinyl to American record-pressing plants.
But things can easily go awry. In October, a truck carrying raw vinyl to Quality Record Pressings, a plant in Salina, Kansas, broke down just as the plant was ramping up production for Black Friday. “We almost ran out of vinyl,” says Gary Salstrom, QRP’s general manager.
Another step early in the record-making process — making the “master” record from which copies are made — is even more archaic.
Len Horowitz, 62, is one of a handful of people who know how to fix sensitive electronic components involved in record mastering. In September, one mastering firm’s cutting lathe — used to engrave music from an analog tape or digital file onto a blank disc that becomes the master — broke down. It took weeks to come back online.
“It’s one thing to be short presses, or short capacity,” Mr. Horowitz says. “If you can’t cut anything, everything stops — a real panic begins.”
The actual process of pressing records is surprisingly labour-intensive. During a visit to Brooklynphono, a smaller plant in New York City, the pressing machines required constant monitoring. Minor things kept going wrong, requiring workers to make adjustments.
“Things fall apart,” says Thomas Bernich, who runs the plant with his wife Fern. “I get lots of butterflies.” He could make a new machine, but that would cost him upwards of $250,000, which is prohibitively expensive.
Once the equipment is in place, technicians are needed to train younger staff. But maintaining the industry’s human capital as veterans like Mr. Roczynski retire is another big challenge.
Mr. Roczynski has been in the business since age 16, when he began working at his father’s company. In 1946, Mr. Roczynski’s father, Stanley, was tapped by CBS Records, which pressed records at America’s first LP plant in Bridgeport, Conn., to design equipment. The elder Mr. Roczynski eventually made record equipment the main focus at his factory.
Some 50 years later, Mr. Roczynski is acting as an equipment broker to connect people seeking old machines to those unloading them, for a fee — though it is getting harder to find anything usable. Since Mr. Roczynski has no one to pass Record Products to, he’ll probably sell when he retires — but he says he wants to stay on as a consultant for a while.
“We’ve done all the work,” he says. “Why throw it away?
With thanks to The Australian – December 19th
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Vinyl record maker reaching for a new zenith - June 2014
Millennials Are Buying More Vinyl Records
New Laser Turntable Plays Your Records Without Even Touching Them
