This has been advertised on TV, I saw it the other night.

https://www.deagostini.com/uk/collec...nyl/index.html

De Agostini attempting to revive the vinyl market for jazz in the UK. I believe it has already been promoted in Europe..


The first issue at £4.99 is good value for money.
A report on another message board, has praised the quality of the product. Further issues will include albums at a much higher price, more expensive than the equivalent available CDs which often have bonus tracks.
Then of course you can transfer just your favourite tracks to MP3 and play 'em on a stick, stuck in the side of your TV.

So is it just a bit of a gimmick?

Most of my classic jazz vinyl albums I've replaced with the CD where available and then to mp3.
Favourite vinyl albums tend to suffer wear over their long lifetime.

I saw this on TV this evening.

I suppose one potential problem is that not many people will have record players nowadays

I haven't got one.

As far as I'm concerned though the biggest problem is that all these albums are available on YouTube and Wiki has articles about them all going into the music in great detail

I really don't see any point in buying them

I agree, in my opinion it's just a gimmick. The site will also try to sell you a turntable or as we vintage audio equipment enthusiasts call them, "a crapaphone."

YouTube is a great source of vintage jazz recordings, if you pick the right download, as the quality does tend to vary.

My youngest brother - who loves vinyl - bought the first edition of "A Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis and he is really pleased with the pressing compared to his existing copy he has. He also listens to a lot of jazz music on YouTube; one such artist that comes to mind was Ornette Coleman. I remember one day I was listening to a 1979 album (can't remember the title ) with him. I do know that album is not available on streaming sites like Spotify and might very well prove to be difficult to find on vinyl not to mention being expensive.

Although, I know that there is a resurgence in vinyl, I wasn't too sure if this was too much of a specialist market not just for fans of vinyl but also for jazz which is not the most popular genre of music around - which in a way I find really sad. According to my brother, they had managed to get up to 100 in Italy when they released the collection there between 2011 and 2013; but Germany proved to be a really tough market to crack and didn't get anywhere close to that number; five editions in and it was brought to a close.

My brother is though going to stick with the collection and we will see how far it goes.

For some of those brought up with vinyl like myself, it no longer has that much appeal, although I've some treasured albums I bought in the late fifties and sixties.
Many of these became de-listed in the seventies, but were available again once CD versions became available.
I think it's more a "fashion," as the reproduction of any recording on whatever the medium, depends a lot on the audio equipment used to reproduce it.

The "fashion," is evident in one of my hobbies, vinyl jukeboxes. For many it's a "nostalgia experience."
Until the late sixties jukeboxes were made with "visible mechanisms," where you could see the records playing.
Then economies were made, to produce less expensive machines and the visible feature disappeared. This was then possible to make them much smaller.
The "dome glass," a term used since they once were that shape which was at the front of the machine through which you could see the records playing, was now used in the reduced sized machines, just to display the selection title cards. After all, "everyone had a record player," so the manufacturers correctly reasoned that it was no big deal not being able to see the record rotating.

Of course now, vintage jukeboxes with visible mechanisms are the most sought after and good restored examples command high prices. Conversely, more sophisticated second-hand CD jukeboxes are far less in demand, so even good examples are generally less expensive, than any vinyl jukebox in a similar condition.

As spotted by people on other forums (but visible on the DeAgostini web site), the first issue comes complete with a typo on the album cover. Pianist Wynton Kelly's name is misspelled "Winton", which raises the question, why? If this is a kosher licensed reissue of the album, why did they change the spelling on the front cover? Just checked my copy of Kind of Blue (recent official reissue on the Music on Vinyl label) and that one is correct.

Has anyone tracked down where these albums are being pressed, and who did the mastering?

I see that by the time you get to Issue 3 the price has gone up to £14.99

That seems a bit of a rip off.........

I've only recently discovered Jazz and I must have listened to 'A Kind of Blue' 50 times on YouTube for free..........I really don't see the point in owning it

I had something similar 30 years ago when I decided to learn about Classical Music and started buying one of the weekly part works that came with a cassette tape in those days. It just went on forever.........

The "rip off" is standard practice with magazine "collectables," whatever the collection. Issue one is always the "loss leader," to get you hooked on collecting. Especially the "Build the Titanic," or whatever type collections, with maybe up to 100 issues necessary to be purchased before you can complete the project. By the time you've finished you could probably have bough a real boat with the money you've spent.

It'd be worth checking the price of the CD equivalent of all these albums, they'll be cheaper and as I mentioned earlier, will often include "bonus tracks" not available on vinyl.

For those who like that kind of thing, it's worth considering legal downloads. A lot of Miles Davis's albums (and other jazz greats) are available in the Mastered for iTunes format which has strict controls on excessive "loudness", and thus can sound very good.

it's just opportunism. on the site they even list for sale a "jazz turntable" and don't even list the actual model number

you can get kind of blue and bluetrain in high definition audio formats that can sound miles better than what most people would be able to experience on vinly

it'll be mostly "bankers" with crappy suitcase turntables and sub £150 rubbish that would buy this stuff in an attempt to appear cool

you may as well buy the cd and a second hand copy of the record, so you can leave the record out and play the cd

instead of peopel wasting their money on budget turntables they would be better spending it on a decent amp and speaker setup. i'm sure ebay and freecycle have plenty great options for free or cheap that are pretty decent

i think what's happened is more people than ever have grown up with out a proper hifi system and home, and instead parents have had plastic boomboxes and all in one systems and then these crappy plastic speakers and docks for ipods and iphones etc and think the crap sound is due to mp3 instead of the crap speakers. unbelievably i see people posting videos online of some poor relation to a dansette that they've probably bought from a clothes store, ripping the hell out of a new piece of vinly and playing through tiny in built speakers and they are saying how great the sound is

Yes, Urban Outfitters has a lot to answer for. I think I read somewhere that they are one of the biggest bricks-and-mortar stores for vinyl sales now, which is bonkers. There's a gift shop near me that sells chocolates and greetings cards and takeaway coffee - and all-in-one record players! But then there's Richer Sounds nearby which sells quite decent separates and lets you audition the components, so all is not lost... yet.

Now is the time to buy some decent mid-range "unfashionable," hi-fi equipment on eBay, if you want to get away from "crapaphones" although I've noticed even that is starting to get more expensive.

To give you an idea. In my youth, in 1972 I bought a Philips 790 tuner/amp. at a reduced price in Comet. It cost me £90. That equates £1,152 at today's prices.

About six years ago, the tuner amp blew one of the output transformers. So I binned it and bought my 1980's Leak 2000 tuner/amp for less than forty quid on eBay. In fact I bought a second tuner/amp as a spare, they were so cheap.
The "deal breaker" was that the amp had a good original review and took "din" plugs as did the original Philips, so it took minutes to hook it up to my vintage Philips turntable and Sony cassette deck, (which with a bit of occasional maintenance, still work fine).
All the amp needed was a spray of Servisol on the pots as a couple were a bit "scratchy."


Richer Sounds are a good outlet. They've an excellent reputation.

For bits and pieces parts, like "slow blow" fuses, etc., I occasionally use Maplins, though they don't seem to have as much variety as did the now defunct Tandy.

the second hand market has generally reflected the vinly craze as stuff is going for higher prices now than a few years ago before it started. but once it dies down again prices will tumble. certain desirable and high end items have retained prices well so if you want a specific model you may need to fork out a few quid for it

i've just built my systems up over years and rarely if ever sold or given away items. i'd rather hold on to certain things thatn sell em for peanuts. i started saving my first wages to buy seperates so every few weeks or so my system grew until i had the whole setup, and then upgraditis kicked in and over a longer period i upgraded to newer and more expensive peices higher up the chain. my first setup was worth a grand or so easily, and that was a long time ago. i suppose it would be like buying a brand new top of the range apple computer

similarly my first 50" plasma tv was £3,000, having knocked £700 off by bargaining. it was pretty top of the range at the time but now you can buy one the same size for about £250. now with £3k i could get a 65+ size screen in 4k. but then some folk are happy watching tv and movies on phones and tablets

Technology moves on so rapidly, doesn't it?
Your story of the TV reminds me that in the late seventies I had for work, a portable battery operated calculator.
I wouldn't describe it as "pocket" as it was the size of half a brick.
It had only four functions, add, subtract, multiply, divide.
It didn't even have a memory and it cost (not me personally) nearly a hundred quid.
So about £500 in today's money.
It wasn't that long after that petrol stations were giving away far more sophisticated calculators when you bought 5 gallons of petrol.

For what's it's worth more vinyl albums were sold in the UK last year than in 20 years.

HMV also reported selling 1 turntable every minute in the lead up to Christmas. I'm sure someone can up just how many that is.

some may see a comment like that and think sales are high, but the reality is in the US only 12 million vinyl albums were sold. less than 5% of album sales. i think the UK sales were something like 2 million. basically in the preceeding period vinyl sales were extremely low, but whilst something may increase by a number of percentage points, a tiny number increased by a large number doesn't always add up to that large a number


i'm sure no-one can. you would need to know the starting period, plus if they are talking about during opening hours or 24/7/365 including online sales. the lead up to christmas may only be the week before christmas, or could be the 3 or 4 weeks before. it's uncountable without the rest of the data

the long and short is vinyl sales aren't particularly high really, but with a lack or operating vinly factories the trend has caused a number of issues and problems, leading to inflated prices and factories not being able to keep up with demand and indie labels not getting items pressed as factories are booked out by majors wanting to repress classic albums

Absolutely. There aren't enough factories making vinyl to cope with the demand and this is leading to a situation where people may abandon buying the format altogether if the prices rise to ridiculous levels. My youngest brother also feels that people who are interested in this vinyl revival are buying the wrong record players like ones made by Crossley where the very needle is made of plastic.

As I understand it, the all-in-one-box record player is a bad idea because t's impossible to isolate the pick-up from the vibration from the speakers. As a result if you turn up the volume the needle jumps. The only way round this is to make the tracking force (the weight pressing the stylus down into the groove) much higher, which then causes excessive wear on the record.

If you want to play vinyl you need a separate turntable and speakers.

The truth of the matter is there is a 4-6 month back order for everyone. That means any releases you see this year will have been planned far in advance. I think one label mentioned last year how in the past if they wanted 5000 copies of a 12" single they could literally put in the order on a Friday, have them made, have them back, have them sent out to stores and they would literally be on the shelves alongside the CD version and every other single and album. I think that's one of the reasons why very few big songs get a vinyl release now because by the time the song would make it out it would probably be out of the charts and for me that is always where vinyl played a big part, I always enjoyed buying singles rather than albums.

You're right about 12 million LPs being sold in America but what a lot of people also fail to look at is what is actually being sold. Those sales figures also include digital sales and for many people including myself, when we talk about album sales, we mean CDs and vinyl records, things you can hold. I don't see why something that i can Google for free should be included just because someone decides to pay money for it. You can't hold a digital file, can't even own it, so i think if you look at physical sales and you look at how many CDs are being sold and then how many LPs are being sold that gives a more realistic outlook. People paying 99p for mp3 files on their phones really isn't or shouldn't be considered as buying a single.


Unfortunately since 2007 many factories have closed just before the format took off again in 2009. What I am glad to see is that popular music and chart music is again being more popular on vinyl. The BBC's Live Lounge album on 4LPs sold out fairly quickly when it was released and is now on back order unless you buy it from marketplace sellers on Amazon and Ebay. Many singles and albums are being released exclusively from artists webstores which means labels can press what is needed. It's just a different way of delivering music now. The prices unfortunately do play a large part in it but marketplace sellers show how cheap albums can be sold. Amazon and HMV have both sold many albums over the last 6 months fairly cheap at £10 and £8.99. I do know what it costs to press albums independantly and that is if I did it, I can only imagine that when the big labels do it that it will be even cheaper, it literally costs a couple of quid for me to have an album pressed on 180 gram vinyl with full colour labels and full gatefold jacket with colour printing and high quality inserts. Obviously the catch is you need to order at least 500 copies and the more you order the less it becomes but for big labels that literally is small change. I remember back in 2008 looking into pressing plants in England and the price for a 7" single was 32p and 5p for a plain white cover or plain black cover and 12 for a cover with artwork on it and 65p for a 12" record with no more than 12 minutes of music on each side. Now the same rules applied then, minimum order was 500 copies but I think people don't really understand vinyl pricing and they don't realise that it still is very cheap to produce and there's no need, no need at all for any album to be priced more than £15. Anymore than that and it really is just being greedy.

It costs literally pennies to make records and you imagine if the prices were equal. It would cost Universal Records a couple of grand to get a decent number of singles made and then sell them online for £4-£6 each and make a nice tidy profit. Now imagine that with your average LPS today at £20-£30. They could sell literally 100 of them and make back every penny they paid out. Easy money for them. Prices should be lower.

As I mentioned earlier, there's been quite a few "crapaphones" advertised in the papers lately. Lots of them on eBay too.

There are two more vinyl series planned, based on the success of this series in the UK:

Pop on Vinyl
Blues on Vinyl

Jazz on Vinyl has a fixed price of £14.99 (cheaper than the RRP/high street prices of all the albums), but most of the time they will be cheaper than Amazon too, especially for the rare or obscure vinyl being reproduced specifically by the labels for the magazine. Also worth nothing each vinyl has a decent retrospective magazine too.

Personally I'm only interested in the pop one, which might be towards the end of the year.

I've signed up for it to be delivered direct to the house

Listened to the first one and have to say its amazing

that's just your opinion though, and many would disagree with that. a sale is a sale. people have the option of getting pretty much the same, or exactly the same for absolutely nothing, but instead opt to pay for a digital file, so it's a sale. HMRC would consider it a sale and want the relevant tax

remember with music, when you buy a cd or record you aren't buying the music, you are only buying a license to play the copy of music you get with the medium. the rights holder still owns the music. digital downloads perhaps demonstrate this more than physical formats



you aren't including the cost of making the music in your figures. an iphone may cost £32 or something to make, but they spend millions or billions in research and advertising etc that needs to be factored in, so what's why they sell at £600+

remember VAT is 20%, the retailer has the next biggest markup, you have the cost of making the record and cover and shipping and promotions by the record company, the cost of the artist of the sleeve, record company cut and money to the band

cd is cheaper to produce and ship, less manufacturing issues, so it can be sold cheaper. conversely records cost more to produce and ship, more manufacturing issues so it costs more. no-one is being forced to buy these new pressings. in most cases you can buy the cd instead. annoyingly sometimes stuff is only out on vinyl. sometimes theres a digital download so you don't need to play it, but sometimes it's not a lossless file, and sometimes there isn't even a download. in one case the download was an mp3 of a recording of the record being played on the artists dads turntable. not even a lossless file

I understand all that but those costs would be done before they even made it to the shelves. What i'm saying is, Amazon and HMV because other than WH Smith online, YES WH SMITH!!!!!!! THEY DO SELL VINYL lol. We don't have a lot of other ways to judge record prices in this country apart from the indies. They proved it can be done. They proved they can sell releases at £8.99 and £9.99 and £12.99. Amazon pre orders many times are in the £12.99 range for new releases before they start climbing up. What i'm saying is they aren't doing that to lose money. They must make something off of that so if they can do that and can afford to do it then why not do it more often?

I'm not saying Iphones shouldn't sell at £600 plus but that's because Apple sell them at that price and probably sell them wholesale somewhere close to that because they know shops can't really go higher than that because people wont spend more than that in mass numbers. With vinyl it's became a thing where people now expect to pay over £20 for a new pressing but with Universal and Warner Bros and Sony owning most of the catalogues and then like i say, on webstores and those times on HMV and Amazon prove they can sell the albums a hell of a lot cheaper, why are shops like the indies and HMV and Amazon selling at those prices? Surely if the money on advertising and promoting has to be made back it would be the labels charging a fortune on their end to make the money back but they prove time and time again that they can do it, they can sell albums cheap so in theory there should be no difference from a reissue of an album 30 years ago to the new One Direction album on vinyl because all those costs will have been factored in when the distributors sell them but i bet you that album will be cheaper than a new 180 gram pressing of an album that is 25 years old.

Vinyl sales are increasing so presumably there is a market for it.