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This topic comprises 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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Author
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Topic: Vinyl record sales increase
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 06-11-2008 08:01 AM
Regardless of one's preferred format, pretty much anyone who is serious about collecting recorded music will eventually need to get a turntable. Many releases have never been made available on CD and many that have were done poorly and sound demonstrably inferior to the LP release. Even different LP pressings of the same recording can sound remarkably different.
Part of the reason why CDs became popular is that a cheap CD player will sound better than a cheap turntable. A good turntable, arm, cartridge, and preamp can really make records sound great, but neither is cheap if you want quality. A $99 CD player will sound pretty good on a typical home stereo, but a $99 turntable is junk.
I've been collecting LPs (new and used) since the early 1990s (when it was quite unfashionable to like the format), but I also like CDs. I don't have a high-end setup for either, but sometimes one format sounds better than the other. It just depends on the release and how it was mastered. CD reissues of older recordings are all over the place in terms of sound quality. Unfortunately, it is difficult to know what format and release to buy until one has already bought it.
For me, the attraction of vinyl (in addition to availability of material not on CD) is partly about sound quality and partly about the larger cover and inserts, as others have mentioned. And, at least until recently, used LPs could be had in good condition and at very reasonable prices.
The music format that most deserved to die (and, thankfully, is mostly dead) is the cassette. As much as I don't like MP3 and other lossy compression schemes for music, they usually sound better and are way more convenient and reliable than cassettes ever were.
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David Stambaugh
Film God
Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002
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posted 06-11-2008 05:09 PM
Well the business section of today's Register-Guard (local newspaper) picked up on the Fred Meyer story, and interviewed a couple other local vinyl retailers to get their perspective. The story was accompanied by this photo of the magnificent cardboard display box described earlier. I almost bought a copy of Dark Side of the Moon there just because it's pressed in freaking Holland, but I already have DSOTM on minty-fresh vinyl as well as CD.
Brian Davies/The Register-Guard
Jaime Grimaldo, an assistant manager at the Fred Meyer store on West 11th Avenue in Eugene, looks over a small collection of vinyl records the chain is now selling in several of its stores.
Enough with all the bits and bytes. Fred Meyer is easing itself back into the groove.
Following a serendipitous ordering blunder, the Portland-based retail chain has begun a small-scale experiment — reintroducing vinyl record albums at 60 of its stores, including the West 11th Avenue outlet in Eugene.
“I don’t listen to vinyl myself, but I’ve had friends tell me it’s a warmer sound with analog (recordings) that you don’t get with digital,” said Jaime Grimaldo, assistant manager of the West 11th store’s home electronics department.
“It just seems like more of an intimate process, listening (to records),” Grimaldo said. “You’ve got to take it out and get it on the turntable. It’s not like just popping in your iPod.”
Fred Meyer began dabbling in vinyl at several of its stores earlier this spring, after an employee intending to order a special CD/DVD edition of R.E.M.’s latest release “Accelerate” accidentally entered the “LP” code instead. Some stores returned the vinyl records when they arrived, but a handful of others put them on display. Twenty sold in the first day.
The chain picked several of its stores in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Alaska to continue the experiment, which remains very small-scale. The West Eugene store, for instance, stocks a total of 30 to 40 albums by a variety of artists that range from Pink Floyd to Michael Jackson to the current “Juno” soundtrack.
“It would be nice to expand a little bit and get a permanent spot (to display the LPs),” Grimaldo said Tuesday. “But it is still a test, I understand that.”
At Eugene’s House of Records, at 258 E. 13th Ave., the only question is if — or when — vinyl recordings will reclaim the dominant spot that compact discs have held for the past couple of decades. Greg Sutherland, a buyer for Eugene’s longest-running retail music shop, said vinyl records now make up at least a third of the House of Records inventory and account for between 20 percent and 25 percent of sales.
“We never gave up on vinyl, and the truth is that it never actually went away,” Sutherland said. “The (record) labels did their best to kill it off, and introduce a new format and everything — the CD — but that didn’t happen. It didn’t truly happen.”
He admits there were the “dark years” in the 1990s when compact discs were truly dominant and vinyl records accounted for perhaps 10 percent of the store’s sales. But CDs never became as entrenched as vinyl records once were — thanks in part to competition from digital alternatives such as MP3 players and iPods — and young customers have been flocking back to vinyl for the past several years.
“The resurgence of vinyl has been happening — the strong resurgence — for the last five years,” Sutherland said. “I get the feeling that kids have heard it all now, in terms of technology. But then they hear a vinyl record and they say, ‘Wow, that sounds really good.’
“If all you’ve been hearing is MP3s and iPods … you’re not hearing everything that’s supposed to be there in the recording,” he said. “That’s because of the weakness of the recording.”
Other music stores also are ramping up their inventories of LP albums in response to consumer demand. Corvallis-based CD World, which has a Eugene outlet just a stone’s throw from the West 11th Fred Meyer, has a vinyl collection that rivals that of House of Records.
Best Buy is testing vinyl record sales at some of its stores, and online book and music retailer Amazon.com created a special, vinyl-only section last fall.
“It’s not just a nostalgia thing,” said Melinda Merrill, a spokeswoman for the Fred Meyer chain. “The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound.”
The Recording Industry Association of America reported that manufacturers’ shipments of LPs increased by more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007, to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped during the same period by more than 17 percent, to 511 million.
The debate over analog versus digital music has to do with the technologies involved. Digital recordings capture samples of sound and place them very close together so that they sound nearly the same as continuous sound to many people, while analog recordings are continuous — with the exception of some new releases that are recorded and mixed digitally, then converted to analog.
At House of Records, Sutherland compared the audiophile’s preference for vinyl to a wine connoisseur’s preference of a fuller-tasting vintage.
“Frankly, there are a lot of people out there who can’t tell the difference,” he said. “But it’s like wine tasting. You can hear the difference. It’s really there.
“I don’t hate CDs, and I’m not pulling for the demise of the CD,” Sutherland said. “But I’d say right now, vinyl is waxing and CDs are waning.”
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 06-11-2008 10:36 PM
Vinyl Sales are increasing because vinyl sales are so small, any increase is going to seem large.
I love vinyl and still have a high-quality working turntable and over 600 albums in my living room, but I'm also a realist and while there will always be a tiny niche market for vinyl (just as some people collect 78s or Edison Cylinders), the market is so small, it basically doesn't exist.
In 2006, vinyl albums comprised 1/4 of 1% of long-form unit sales and .19% (that's not 19%, it's point 19%) of dollars based upon list price.
Even if it increases 500%, it's still nothing.
And as for used-vinyl, look on eBay. 98% of the stuff listed doesn't get a single bid.
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I think on the 1/2speed remastered, and the 180g versions, just like the last two albums.
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