One thing that bothers me with the new popularity of vinyl
I know in 2009 the sales started to climb and ever since then it's went higher and higher and it's the same worldwide which is a good thing obviously. I think physical music, expecially on a record is something worth owning.
The one thing that bothers me, especially people who maybe just got into buying records or the people you hear about that are obsessive, they impulse buy everything and they must have everything is where were they prior to 2009?
I remember in 2003, clear as day, going into HMV and there was literally a wall full of singles and on that wall were CD and cassette tapes of the top 40 and I would say a good 90% of those singles were also available on 7" and 12" vinyl. You would then go to the record department. Guess what there was? More 7" and 12" UK singles that were no longer in the charts or were new but never charted, never made the top 40. Then there are rows and rows of USA 12" singles. Techno music was HUGE. Techno had it's own section. Rap Music had its own section. White labels had their own section and then there was the albums section. No one batted an eyelid back then.
I wont sit and talk about this all night because I could and I know Tower Records and Virgin were still around back then but i'll keep it to HMV. In 2005 I couldn't wait for a particular single to come out. I was on Ebay and seen that the vinyl promos had been sent out to DJS and of course there were DJS who sold them for profit, now i knew within the next 4 weeks the retail versions will be out, sure enough the release date crops up on HMV. Friday was the day for imports. UK singles came out on a Monday, imports came out on a Friday. I went on the Friday morning, bought 2it and went home. Not a big deal. Just amusic fan buying music. Same in 2007. One particular instance seen me buy Rihanna's Shut Up and Drive 12" picture disc for £5.99 and Akon's Blame It on Me 12" for £6.99. I got Beyonce's singles in 2009 and 2010.
It seems like this big deal has been made of the popularity and music being released on vinyl again when people like me have been buying it for years. And that's chart music i'm talking about. I've not even touched anything else. I know that's when sales started to pick up but it's not what it's made out to be and the one thing that disappoints me is the fact that singles are no longer sold. I was always a big singles guy, don't get me wrong i bought tons and tons of albums too, lost count on the number of things i've bought but now it's all albums. Why can't i buy the songs i want on 7" for £1.99 or 99p in the clearance? Why can't i buy the imports on a Friday? If vinyl is doing so good wouldn't that ENCOURAGE THE LABELS to maybe START releasing singles AGAIN!? Stick 5 or 6 songs on them and price them at £3.99 I bet you'll sell them along with your £15.99 albums. I just miss the fact that before this popularity i could buy the music i wanted on the format i wanted all the time and then it becomes popular and now there's hardly any singles and it's all albums albums albums.
The one thing that bothers me, especially people who maybe just got into buying records or the people you hear about that are obsessive, they impulse buy everything and they must have everything is where were they prior to 2009?
I remember in 2003, clear as day, going into HMV and there was literally a wall full of singles and on that wall were CD and cassette tapes of the top 40 and I would say a good 90% of those singles were also available on 7" and 12" vinyl. You would then go to the record department. Guess what there was? More 7" and 12" UK singles that were no longer in the charts or were new but never charted, never made the top 40. Then there are rows and rows of USA 12" singles. Techno music was HUGE. Techno had it's own section. Rap Music had its own section. White labels had their own section and then there was the albums section. No one batted an eyelid back then.
I wont sit and talk about this all night because I could and I know Tower Records and Virgin were still around back then but i'll keep it to HMV. In 2005 I couldn't wait for a particular single to come out. I was on Ebay and seen that the vinyl promos had been sent out to DJS and of course there were DJS who sold them for profit, now i knew within the next 4 weeks the retail versions will be out, sure enough the release date crops up on HMV. Friday was the day for imports. UK singles came out on a Monday, imports came out on a Friday. I went on the Friday morning, bought 2it and went home. Not a big deal. Just amusic fan buying music. Same in 2007. One particular instance seen me buy Rihanna's Shut Up and Drive 12" picture disc for £5.99 and Akon's Blame It on Me 12" for £6.99. I got Beyonce's singles in 2009 and 2010.
It seems like this big deal has been made of the popularity and music being released on vinyl again when people like me have been buying it for years. And that's chart music i'm talking about. I've not even touched anything else. I know that's when sales started to pick up but it's not what it's made out to be and the one thing that disappoints me is the fact that singles are no longer sold. I was always a big singles guy, don't get me wrong i bought tons and tons of albums too, lost count on the number of things i've bought but now it's all albums. Why can't i buy the songs i want on 7" for £1.99 or 99p in the clearance? Why can't i buy the imports on a Friday? If vinyl is doing so good wouldn't that ENCOURAGE THE LABELS to maybe START releasing singles AGAIN!? Stick 5 or 6 songs on them and price them at £3.99 I bet you'll sell them along with your £15.99 albums. I just miss the fact that before this popularity i could buy the music i wanted on the format i wanted all the time and then it becomes popular and now there's hardly any singles and it's all albums albums albums.
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Of course many people say the real number is more than double what is being reported because many artists release them on vinyl throgh their webstores which many do not have barcodes. The only numbers being reported are those with barcodes, i know many records i buy might only have a run of 3000 or 5000 but they don't come with barcodes so a lot is flying under the radar.
I remember reading an article from 2006 and it says there was a total of 500,000 7" singles sold that year! In 2006!
We'll never go back to the days of vinyl being a mass-market format, so we'll never go back to the days of cheap vinyl. It's now a premium product. The exception being the European labels that sell cheap vinyl pressed from public domain digital files, which collectors won't touch with a blunt stylus.
Vinyl is a crap reproductive format, as it's easily damaged. The aficionados like to have really sophisticated equipment like valve amps to get the best out of it.
But on a USA audio message board to which I contribute, some of the systems costing thousands of dollars of which people upload photos, you can see they also have and therefore must play CDs.
I haven't bought any vinyl in thirty years. Most of my classic jazz albums, I still have, but I have bought and play the equivalent CDs.
To be honest I rarely play those. Older people like me do tend to lose the ends of the frequency range of sounds, but not enough to spoil the enjoyment, regardless of what equipment or format you use. So I don't think it really matters that much.
With a bit of old and new technology, I can get the "nostalgia experience" with any recording I like. You wouldn't be able to tell if it was a track from one of my CDs or a YouTube download.
My wife thinks I'm a bit mad to bother, but I enjoy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bHPbhBrIXg
Here is my response, my own personal response. I'm not some old person talking about 20,30,40 years ago. Come on. I'm talking about 2010 at the very latest. Hardly 5 years ago. That's the bit that bugs me. I'm not talking about nostalgia and how good things used to be. I'm talking 5 years ago and the more you go back the better it was.
I'm a big singles person, always was. OK i accept that physical singles might never be popular again and I know a big reason for that was a certain big turntable manufactuer stopped making their version of turntables in 2008 and many DJs pretty much switched to CDJs.......then quickly scrapped them for digital files and therefore aroun 2010 the vinyl single was pretty much stopped and labels stopped sending promo copies out. I think in 2010 only certain artists had vinyl promos sent out by labels. Akon and Black Eyed Peas were the big ones I remember but I guess their client lists showed more people wanted CDs or digital files rather than records so it wasnt worth the money making them.
Again the singles thing annoys me and I just hate the nostalgia thing. I wish I could take all these people that started buying records in the last few years and take them back 5 years, just 5 years ago and let them see all the chart music that was available on vinyl, or even 10 years and let them see what HMV USED TO BE. Virgin Records. Tower Records. Shelves and shelves of UK, USA, white labels, albums, you name it. That is what a music store NEEDS to look like.
And it did annoy me with reissues. I felt like 2011-2014 was bad. I just felt like everthing was Bob Marley and ACDC and The Beatles and IRon Maiden. I was like...........where's my music? I would spend at least £10 a week buying the latest music now where is it? Now it's different. You go to HMV and you see Ed Sheeran and Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, Meghan Trainor, One Direction is on vinyl too! I just don't like the stigma attached. It's a very new thing with the collecting. I don't like it. I just want to listen to music that I like and when the big labels throw me a bone no........i don't want to pay £6.99 for a 7" single or if it's David Bowie £9.99. No i'm not paying £9.99 for a 7" single 5 years after you were selling them for £1.99. Don't rip me off and insult me. It's not going on my wall, it's getting played to be enjoyed. The sound is getting turned up loud. I don't like it at all now. I sound very bitter don't i. Must be my Scottishness coming out. And you know I've said things like this before online on a few other boards, specially to do with indie stores or smaller record labels and they either delete it or block me cause you know what? They don't want me in their stores. They don't want me buying Eminem on vinyl or Ed Sheeran, they're quite happy to sit in their bubble and live for eternity on the back of reissues from Abba and everyone else that was popular 35 years ago. They don't want my money. They look down on people that buy or listen to popular music. That's sad too.
With vinyl, "it's whole old ball game."
First of all there's the turntable. Lot's of choices there, including sophisticated suspension systems. All sorts of prices there, some several thousand.
Then there's the tone arm, all sorts, with a SME you can pay nearly two grand.
Then there's the cartridge, magnetic or ceramic? Affects what comes after.
A Dynavector will set you back £600 (free postage)..
The stylus is probably the cheapest item, but that could cost you as much as a whole cheap record player.
Of course the "big money" comes after that with the amp and speakers.
It's no good spending all this, if there's no new vinyl for you to experience the "real sound."
But the market for it isn't going to be that great.
Me ? I'm still using a bog standard forty-year-old Philips 308 turntable with an old Shure M75 EJ cartridge. It'll do for me, for the times I play vinyl.
My tuner/amp is a second-hand 1980 Leak 2000, I bought on eBay for around thirty quid five years ago, (no bugger wants these fantastic bits of kit these days). It replaced a Philips 790 which blew an output transformer after 38 years. The Goodmans speakers I bought at the same time are still in perfect condition. (that was when "Goodmans" were still "Goodmans" if you know what I mean).so it didn't owe me a thing.
i still have 3 turntables and still buy vinly, but mainly for collectable reasons, and partly because some of the new reissues aren't coming out on cd. the most annoying is soul mining boxset which has no cd and the download with the boxset is bloody mp3 and it's sourced from a copy of the vinly played on the artists dads old record player that he had when the album first came out. not even record to flac or wav, and certainly no master tape to cd. why even no HD audio. if i do have something on record thats not out on cd i rip it to digital and play that instead. the rumbles, pop, hiss, clicks and crap on records are not there on the master tapers. the artist didn't stick that there so why would someone want to hear it
In my teenage years, "Dansettes" were considered a girls recordplayer (I had a Trio amp with a turntable and separate speaker.
Dansettes are very collectable now., you can pick one up on eBay for a couple of hundred quid, with no doubt leaking paper capacitors and you'll get a few hours use out of it until it goes U/S.
For me the "nostalgia" element of vinyl is my two vinyl jukeboxes.
Selecting the side, pressing the buttons, hearing the big solenoid click into action, the whir of the record carousel, the gripper arm picking up the record and placing it on the turntable, the amp mute coming off and the sound of the stylus hitting the track-in groove and the anticipation before the record starts. Then the sound belted out from the two 12" bass and two 8" treble speakers.
Sheer bliss for us and annoyance for the neighbours (just kidding).
I bought 7" singles as a kid in the late seventies and they were 75p at full retail. I also bought American Marvel comics at the same time and they were 12p each. Needless to say I didn't have huge collections of either despite all of my pocket money going on these two diversions.
Now, I think, a US comic is around £2.50 - £3.00 typically - a more than 20 fold increase. When I buy a seven inch now they seem to be random prices, usually between £5 and £9 which doesn't represent as large a jump as with the comics but in 1978 I seem to recall an LP being around £3.79 or £3.99 i.e. about the price of five 7".
So, vinyl singles are now significantly poorer value (compared to LPs) than they used to be.
I buy a lot of music and most comes through the mail. Although I still buy vinyl, it is mostly 7", 12" and 10" singles. I'll only buy a vinyl LP if there is no CD issue. CDs work out cheaper for me, easier to ship without damage to the artwork and often extra tracks over the vinyl copies. I have thousand of records but I'm not going to buy on a format due to its collectibility when I can spend less and get far more titles.
if they don't have their own money then looking on sites like freecycle is a good idea as you can often get stuff like that for free. likewise on certain forums stuff like that can go for free or next to nothing
for someone of that age wanting to buy records i would explain they are out dated technology replaced by cd and other forms of music playing which is both more convenient and better quality and state some analogies about some other old out dated things that have been replaced by better. perhaps play a recording of a cd rip of a track and then a vinyl rip of a track to show the decrease in sound quality with pops and clicks and hiss and rumble to demonstrate the point
with a 13 year old it's usually going to be the parent who would end up paying for equipement so as with anything else, it's the parents decision as what to buy for the child who will have likely asked for plenty of things over time to which the parent won't buy, so this would simply be another request they won't fill exactly as asked
This has been discussed at length on other forums and, if I remember correctly, the problem is that record players (i.e. a turntable in a box with a built-in amplifier and speaker) have to use a high tracking force to prevent the stylus jumping when the volume from the speakers makes the unit vibrate. However the high tracking force combined with a cheap cartridge can cause serious damage to the records.
So avoid all-in-one record players (e.g. those sold in places like Urban Outfitters, made by Crosley) and get a turntable with a separate amplifier and speakers. There are a lot of hi-fi separates on eBay, old turntables like the Dual CS505 are as good as modern ones costing several hundred pounds, but you need to buy an amp with a phono input or it won't be able to amplify the output from the record deck properly.
Or just put "hifi systems" into the eBay search facility. You might pick up a decent but unfashionable system for a lot less than a new vinyl-destroying hipster set-up.
I have a Technics system in my office. They run the gamut from ridiculously expensive to super cheap.
I picked up a Technics SL-BD22 for pretty cheap back in the mid 90s and it still works perfectly today. Here's a guy showing off his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORtZ7bfQJfg
So I'd recommend getting a cheap Technics table (they're built to last) and a receiver that has a phono input and ground terminal (which is probably a bit more difficult to find these days).
http://www.thevinylfactory.com/vinyl-factory-releases/the-8-best-budget-turntables-that-wont-ruin-your-records/ is a similar guide to new turntables. The Marantz (sold by Richer Sounds) is a good entry-level choice because it doesn't need a separate phono stage so you can plug it into any amplifier.
As we say in the jukebox world, "use is the best form of preventative maintenance," so unless it has been in constant use rather than stuck in a cupboard for a couple of decades, it would be worth considering. Drive belts also perish over time, but these are easily available. I've changed mine a couple of times and I keep a spare under the turntable in case they become made of "unobtainium."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RBqa99Ym0I
This is a well supported section on one of the audio message boards, to which I contribute.
They were popular with the rich and famous in the thirties and forties.
I think this whole issue (both the resurgence of vinyl and the lack of singles) is interlinked with the internet and the way it's changed music.
RE singles: Most of the bands i listen to don't release singles anymore, they'll promote an album with a youtube lyric video, they'll upload a song to soundcloud, or suchlike, but an actual physical single is less common these days. That said, Record Store Day has encouraged bands to release 7" singles, but these are often limited editions.
RE where the current crop of vinyl fanatics have appeared from: The internet, and more specifically blog and webzines (which have been gaining in popularity over the past decade), have broadened the range of people's tastes by making it so easy to be opened to a wide variety of music (new and old). I'd say it's uncommon now for an individual to be firmly into one form of music, rather there's a more fundamental characteristic that links people's favourite artists. If you take a look at the bestsellers on Insound, a website that specialises in vinyl records, you have the likes of War On Drugs, Flying Lotus, Caribou, Viet Cong, Run The Jewels, Grouper. All highly different in their styles, but all of whom will have a shared audience.
Vinyl has kind of become a physical expression of these subcultures. Perhaps in a sense it better represents the passion of the listener, it connects into a more authentic and traditional music history that the internet doesn't really represent. It's an odd thing to hear about bands online, listen to them online, talk to people about them online, and then have no actual physical expression of your passion.
The fact the packaging of a vinyl record is much nicer is also a key point!
Think about that. £1.99 was the price HMV charged for these online and I seen them instore at this price too. In 2010 how can you go from charging £1.99 for a picture disc, something which would usually be a selling point, that would be the excuse to charge more MONEY......how did we get from that in 2010 to 2011 and beyond £4.99 for a black vinyl 7" and now HMV want £9.99 for a David Bowie picture disc. I think everyone knows vinyl records are cheap to make. It's things like that which bother me. Especially with so many people buying vinyl albums now my argument is, why change, why not take 5 of the big selling artists right now, take their singles, press 5,000 copies of each, sell them for £1.99 like you used to and if the sales figures are true and people love vinyl then surely they're gonna snap those up at £1.99 each? If they're paying £20 for an album, what's £1.99 to them? Nothing. And not only that it services the fans of those artists who want to have something physical. It services people that might not have heard those songs before but for the sake of 2 quid they'll give it a go. Get your B side aswell and you can't beat it.
And i know people will hate on HMV but if HMV can sell them for £1.99 each they must have made a good proft on them in 2010 so right now they must be jumping for joy everytime they sell one of those 10 quid Bowie ones. Some of those picture discs that i bought were hand written numbered and some go into the 6000s. If labels aren't happy with selling 6000 physical copies of a single then i don't know what to say. Obviously it was good enough in 2010. I don't know how many copies of things are made now but 6000 sounds good to me. I bet that's a pretty good profit for them. I just miss going into shops and I've nothing against the independants, I use them too but I just miss buying music regularly. You could spend a tenner and come out with 3 or 4 things and now it's like i can't get anything for a tenner. I need at least 2 tenners and that rubs me up the wrong way too.
I'm not entirely sure why you think this would interest the people who are buying vinyl now. Firstly, we're not really interested in singles and secondly we're buying vinyl as part of a process described very well in Grim Fandango's post, where we use 21st century channels like social media, streaming services, online radio etc to discover music and then buy the music we've discovered on vinyl because we prefer the sound, look and feel of it.
What you're describing is more like the old idea that people will buy a single because they like the artist and want to own everything they release. Nowadays people are much more selective; they will cherry-pick what they buy and often buy an old album they've just discovered rather than feeling they must have the latest single.
Yeah, we get that you're disappointed that chart hits aren't regularly available on 7" vinyl these days, but that's not really anything to do with the people who are currently buying vinyl albums on a regular basis. It's more to do with the listening habits of those people who are into chart pop.
The vast majority of Lady Gaga fans are more than happy listening on spotify, youtube, itunes, or, if they buy the physical record, on CD.
It's fans of an artist like Arcade Fire who are more likely to want a vinyl copy of their record.
You could pick up a brand new copy on cd for roughly the same price. If the vinyl was old and in a decent condition it's more attractive to collectors, as you found out.
You've got me wanting to listen to Spanish Bombs now:)
Popular LPs are pretty much worthless. You need to be in possession of something, pretty "unpopular" (well at the time they were sold) for it to be worth more than just a few pounds. A trawl through "completed listings" on eBay will add testimony to that. Most popular records remain unsold, even when offered at low prices.