Why vinyl is not going to save the music industry

[RedX]

http://trustmeimascientist.com/2013/...usic-industry/

[Headless mermaid]

What, so me buying Playgirls is not helping Grisch Batanoff score the next Bond movie?! Damn...

[Mang]

Don't know if it's related but I've noticed that "new" vinyl seems to be getting harder to shift. At my local fair I've recently picked up the new MBV album, the latest volume of "Fading Yellow", the Kendrick Lamar LP and a repress of Galliard's "Strange Pleasure" for 6 quid or less (3.50 in the case of MBV/Lamar). Regardless of what forum members think of those releases it strikes me that those records are quite niche things which would appeal to vinyl buyers, yet they're being knocked out at bargain-bin prices in an effort to get rid of 'em.

[Hayes]

Nice finds! I'm on the verge of stumping up 27€ for the Kendrick Lamar. Haven't seen it cheap in the flesh at all.

[RedX]

I found this quite alarming, if it's true?

Of the 75,000 CDs released in 2010, 60,000 of them sold an average of 13 copies each. On any format.

[d7bohs]

I found this quite alarming, if it's true?

Of the 75,000 CDs released in 2010, 60,000 of them sold an average of 13 copies each. On any format.

I would say 'sold' means 'sold in shops that have accounts with distributors' - any number of CDs get pressed up where the majority of the run will be sold at gigs/ direct from the bands website/ given away: they may put 10 in the local indie shop and they'll likely be the only ones recorded as 'sold'.

[RedX]

Back in 1982 I went to see Fun Boy Three at the Birmingham Odeon. Before playing their then current single "The Tunnel Of Love" Terry Hall said "if you were one of the fourteen people who bought this last Tuesday I'd like to say thank you very much."

[Milesago]

Don't know if it's related but I've noticed that "new" vinyl seems to be getting harder to shift. At my local fair I've recently picked up the new MBV album, the latest volume of "Fading Yellow", the Kendrick Lamar LP and a repress of Galliard's "Strange Pleasure" for 6 quid or less (3.50 in the case of MBV/Lamar). Regardless of what forum members think of those releases it strikes me that those records are quite niche things which would appeal to vinyl buyers, yet they're being knocked out at bargain-bin prices in an effort to get rid of 'em.

Those are great prices, but a lot of new vinyl sold at low prices at fairs is bootleg. I saw a boot of the new MBV. It looked just like the real thing, fully shrinkwrapped, but no sticker on the shrink and no CD copy inside. Some reissues are basically bootlegs, like Radioactive and Phoenix label reissues.

[Mang]

Those are great prices, but a lot of new vinyl sold at low prices at fairs is bootleg. I saw a boot of the new MBV. It looked just like the real thing, fully shrinkwrapped, but no sticker on the shrink and no CD copy inside. Some reissues are basically bootlegs, like Radioactive and Phoenix label reissues.

Wow -the mbv's been bootlegged! Fairly certain the records are not boots though - other things I got were the new Dutch Uncles and Gonzales albums and a Sundazed reissue of a surf album, which I reckon would not be high on a list of records to counterfeit and then flog off cheaply!

[babycart]

I think records should be called VYNILS.

On a personal level, I like vinyl. I own far more of it than most people do. I listen to it, I enjoy handling it, and I get the appeal.

The guy sounds like a plastics perv rubbing his naked body with raw pellets of polymer. VYNILS would remove any such ambiguity

[Milesago]

Wow -the mbv's been bootlegged! Fairly certain the records are not boots though - other things I got were the new Dutch Uncles and Gonzales albums and a Sundazed reissue of a surf album, which I reckon would not be high on a list of records to counterfeit and then flog off cheaply!

I was shocked when I saw the MBV. A german dealer had it a couple of months ago. One other detail I forgot to mention is it has a single cover (not gatefold) which is what made me suspicious of it in the first place. It was 16 euro, which I think was about half the price of buying a legit copy direct from source at the time. A CD can easily be used as a LP master these days, hence the glut of crappy reissues on the market. Just because its 180 grams or has a shiney gold foil sticker on the shrinkwrap doesn't mean it's not a piece of crap. These are distinct from the cheap 'reissues' of popular albums, like the first Clash album say, which are usually easily spotted thanks to badly reproduced and manufactured covers, complete with fuzzy, out of focus cover artwork.

But I agree the titles you bought don't sound like the kind of thing bootleggers would bother with, so you got some good bargains there.

[Dr Victor X Storm]

I would say 'sold' means 'sold in shops that have accounts with distributors' - any number of CDs get pressed up where the majority of the run will be sold at gigs/ direct from the bands website/ given away: they may put 10 in the local indie shop and they'll likely be the only ones recorded as 'sold'.

I agree with your deduction here. I think the guy shoots himself in the foot a bit with this dodgy stat.

Still - it's a decent article and something that I long suspected. Surely the killer on these things is the fact that a decent stereo is going to cost about a grand (presuming you don't have the nouse to get a few old bits together and get them working to a reasonable level - which most teenagers and 20-somethings won't). Whereas everyone has a computer and a CD player pretty much. If you buy one of those cheapy decks for fifty quid that sound like hell you're going to wonder why you bothered moving away from MP3s

[eclipsechaser]

I think records should be called VYNILS.

On a personal level, I like vinyl. I own far more of it than most people do. I listen to it, I enjoy handling it, and I get the appeal.

The guy sounds like a plastics perv rubbing his naked body with raw pellets of polymer. VYNILS would remove any such ambiguity

Fkin book worthy

[emperor tomato ketchup]

I think records should be called VYNILS.

On a personal level, I like vinyl. I own far more of it than most people do. I listen to it, I enjoy handling it, and I get the appeal.

The guy sounds like a plastics perv rubbing his naked body with raw pellets of polymer. VYNILS would remove any such ambiguity

For god's sake then don't tell him about Trunk.

[RedX]

Surely the killer on these things is the fact that a decent stereo is going to cost about a grand (presuming you don't have the nouse to get a few old bits together and get them working to a reasonable level - which most teenagers and 20-somethings won't). Whereas everyone has a computer and a CD player pretty much. If you buy one of those cheapy decks for fifty quid that sound like hell you're going to wonder why you bothered moving away from MP3s

This is true. A friend at work (aged 27) who has friends with beards in bands decided she was "into vinyls" a couple of years ago, after they started putting out their little limited edition singles. I had a cheap old belt drive one in the loft (I think it was a Bush, bought from Kays catalogue) which I dusted down and gave her. She was happy, but then a month or two later tells me it's stopped working - "I think the pointy thing might've broken?" So she brings it into work for me to look at. Just loose in a plastic bag, the pointy thing had indeed broke, and the untethered tonearm was flopping about inside the bag, heaven knows what else was now also not working, so we ending up chucking it in the skip. I recommended a few basic decks to her, but she decided on one of these kitsch, retro-looking things on Amazon for about £70 - "it's more about the looks than what it sounds like." I've not asked what she's bought recently, but she doesn't mention vinyls much nowadays