Several good things about Vinyl.

Easy to track sales and pay royalties.
Usually was easier to buy in a store than online.
They wear out or get scratched and need replacing.
Many people are convinced they sound better than anything else on the planet.
Artists had a bigger canvas, Musicians love artists
People will stick a bunch of money into vintage record players and hi fidelity equipment.

Statistics already show young music buyers have a high interest in vinyl. Record setting sales and the trend shows this buying frenzy is not going away.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Billboard US vinyl sales up 53% 2016 first quarter
http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6538585/us-vinyl-album-sales-up-by-53-in-q1
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Forbes 2015 US Vinyl sales up 30%
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/01/08/vinyl-sales-surged-30-percent-in-2015-led-by-adele-and-taylor-swift/#2e067cdf30f1

This trend could save music industry form the streaming disaster.

When vinyl was king large retailers sold plenty of expensive home audio gear. Record stores were buzzing with foot traffic. Malls were busier, people were happier, the world was a better place to live.

No it won't save artists. Too short of a supply of lathes to get vinyl made cheaply/quickly at present.

I believe it's somewhat of a fad.

Same thing is happening right now with cassettes, believe it or not.

Hipster fad.

Its not a fad. Demand caused new vinyl producing machines to be developed and manufactured.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2015/12/07/after-30-years-a-new-vinyl-pressing-machine-is-being-created/

If its a fad Technics is making a misstep. WOW a new SL-1200. Look at that beauty, I sold quite a few in my music store.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2015/09/02/the-technics-sl-1200-turntable-is-back/

I still have mine and I still use it.

I agree with RSN. I think it's a fad.

Citing articles of someone else's opinion as proof doesn't really mean anything. The only thing that matters is if it happens. As an example, there are tons of articles that indicate it is a fad as well...

Rolling Stone

That doesn't mean there's not money to be made though. With the sale of records people do want to play them on something. If you are pretty much the only company making a player, you pretty much are the option for people to play it on. That's just smart business. There is always money to be made in niche markets.

It doesn't however point to it ever being the dominant way people will consumer their music.

I get why people like it, but many times convenience and availability trump quality.

Well, if it does catch on again, you'll have to get one of these.

A fad, IMHO.

Headlines can be deceiving.

“U.S. Vinyl Album Sales Up by 53% in Q1”

From an article you cited:

“Vinyl sales currently account for “only a small fraction of the overall industry revenues” at around 2%”

2% of a crippled business devastated by streaming.

968,000 units sold by the top ten artists in a 5-year period. That's 193,600 units a year.

Fad.


Regards,

Bob

This is crazy funny! I have NEVER seen anything like that before. Thanks so much for the link! It made my day!

Great points Bob! Well thought out response!

That is so true. Examples are 8-tracks, cassettes and MP3s.

{edit}-for the record (pun intended) I buy CDs and I do not stream (steal) anything.

I don't know about this being a fad. Yes, it is not (yet) something for the mass market. But here in Germany there are quite a few vinyl stores that are thriving.

One of our larger electronics consumer chain, Saturn, has very large shelves with vinyl lps that are reprinted from the 50s and 60s with even their cover apearing very close to the original. I just took one name to search for and see what they offer: http://www.saturn.de/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/MultiChannelSearch?storeId=48352&langId=-3&searchProfile=onlineshop&channel=sedede&searchParams=&path=&query=vinyl+elvis

and here is another one of a different genre: http://www.saturn.de/webapp/wcs/stores/s...dizzy+gillespie

Maybe it is a fad, but with so many vinyl repressings of the heyday of vinyl, I'm not so sure.

Regarding me: Buying a new album in the sixties and seventies was an experience. Carefully selecting a album at the store, riding home with public transportation reading the liner notes, at home physically putting the record on the platter and see it turning was something else. That was nothing a CD or even more so mp3 cannot replicate.

Yep, the immediate gratification convenience factor has usurped the enjoyable ritual we used to have with vinyl. That included the care taken to keep the vinyl pristine (you don't need special brushes, cloths, cleaners, etc. with CD's or MP3's).

And while I am still working on digitizing my record album (and audio cassette) collection (unfortunately, I don't have a record player in the car, which is where I find myself listening to my music mostly these days), I still have about 1500 record albums in my man-cave. Almost all of them still play very well, with minimal pops/ticks. And my collection (which started at around 300 albums when I graduated from college and has grown over the years) has travelled (and survived) the world, as it went with me from the United States to Germany (where I was stationed with the US Army), and then back to the States to Georgia, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida.

@bob

You quoted this statistic "968,000 units sold by the top ten artists in a 5-year period." Then concluded "That's 193,600 units a year." Failing to realize very few of those records were sold in the first 3 years. Most of the vinyl has been sold in 2014-2015. From 0 to 1/2 a million units a year has made some major artists choose to release vinyl again,a record pressing manufacturer retool and manufacture a product that has been out of production for 30 years, and a iconic turntable manufacturer Technics (which had vanished from the earth) reappear on the market with their flagship product sl-1200.

I realize 2% seems like a small statistic. But that is 2% of "overall industry revenues" industry revenues include EVERYTHING and that means a lot more than just revenue from music sales. Performance revenue, licensing to movies, film, advertisement revenue. You cannot separate the Film industry from the music industry statistics when it comes to overall industry revenues. This is a significant source of revenue for artists. Possibly a shift in focus for young artists is to chase their dreams in a TV/Film placement rather than a record deal.

Other Music industry FADs???
Victrola,Records
Tube Amps, The Moving coil Loud Speaker Jensen/Magnavox
Talkies/music on film
Radio Music Entertainment Programing like Les Paul Mary Ford
TV Music Entertainment Programing
Stadium Music Concerts
Portable Pa Systems for Touring Musical groups Bob Heil
portable phonograph players
MultiTrack Recording Les Paul/AMPEX
National/Dobro electric lap guitar
Rickenbacker Guitar
Mosrite Guitar, Semie Moseley
Clyde Cooper Wah-Wah pedal
Fender solid body guitar
Les Paul Solid Body Guitar
Guitar Amps above 35 watts Ernie Ball, Dick Dale, Fender collaboration
Distortion Pedal Electro-Harmonix Big Muff
The cassette tape
Personal cassette recorders
Mix Tapes
Karaoke
Karaoke Clubs
American Karaoke Clubs in Japan
the Sony Walkman Cassette player
The transistor radio
the earphone (mono)
Electric Piano Fender Rhodes
8 track tape format, used in radio broadcasting for years before used for general music
FM Radio Stations
The CD
The Music Video/MTV
The synthesizer Bob Moog's, Synclavier, Oberheim
Hardware sequencing devices "Roger" LinnDrum,
Hardware Drum Samplers Thanks Roger and then Akai purchasing his technology.
MIDI - I remember the skeptics on this one
Computer Music Production
Music sequencing SW/Cakewalk Twelve Tone System/Voyetra/PG Music In the 80's We ARE ALL fads in the beginning.
The internet- Huge FAD will never catch on only for GEEKS
Pier to Pier music sharing / pirating music on a wholesale basis
MySpace/GeoCities/et all
Personal CD writers, make your own music CD
Electronic Drums
Music Retailers on line
Acoustic/Electric guitars. Thank you Barcus Berry
MP3 format - never catch on
the iPOD
iPhone
iPad
iTunes
earbuds
Bluetooth Speakers
Music Forums
YouTube

Everything starts out as a Fad, however, who wouldn't like a couple thousand shares of Apple Stock right now.

Edit added youtube

Both sides are right, and I'm out. This could go bad very fast. No one knows the future, and that's where the proof is.

Hear to Learn you ARE correct. Nobody knows the future. So I posed the question will it save the record industry for artists? Doomed to loose millions on streaming agreements, brave bold artists release Vinyl. If this trend continues I think it will help.

Yup, no worries on my end. Just stepping out in case people go to guns and start shooting

Good question though! I don't just don't know the answer. I say divide by 0 and we should be good

@HearToLearn we can revisit this in 10 years and see. Anybody got a DeLorean?

That is one option I would never consider for my albums. And just imagine spinning 45s...

That's funny! I had one last week but crashed it next week, so I will have to see...

Here's some vinyl pressing quote sites:

http://www.urpressing.com/quotegen12.php

http://www.erikarecords.com/12in%20Vinyl%20Record%20Pricing.pdf

http://www.discmakers.com/products/vinyl.asp

Looks like you're in it for at least $1500 just to get started with 200 units. For a marketplace that just doesn't have the equipment to use your product. $1500 for 200 saleable items. That's $7.50 each for cost. CD production for 200 units is about $700 at Discmakers. 10 day turnaround time vs. 19 weeks turnaround time for the vinyl.

Still smells like something that isn't going to save a marketplace.

I love the old album covers. I don't care for the sound and I have heard insanely expensive ($100,000+ systems) at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest https://www.audiofest.net/ that yes sounded wonderful, but knock 3 zeros off for me or at least 2 zeros off, and at that price range, I'll take ye olde CD format every dang day of the week. And I'll rip a 192 kbps mp3 file off of it and my aging ears will be happy to carry it around in my pocket with my Westone ES5 in ear monitors. If I'm feeling like splurging, I'll do a 320 kbps mp3 file and that will be just lovely.

It's a cool fad. Some artists could benefit by catering to the crowd that's into the fad. But competing with something that's about 1/2 the price for a much wider installed customer base, it's not the savior.

But I've never done either, but I'm considering it - so I've been looking at the math.

Best delivery for a small artist is still bandcamp and the like - free setup.

@rockstar_not
For the little guy, I agree Vinyl is a costly product. But, lets face it, our CDs are not a large part of the industry revenue only CD baby's bottom line. CD Baby relies on us the little guys. Their cost for vinyl and turn around time are much higher than CD production because they don't make their own vinyl records. They job them out as do other small shops.


Best Buy is selling several record players equipped with USB interfaces as well as analog outputs for less than 90 dollars. An investment most high school or college age kids are happy to pay. They are the ones who have always started music industry trends. The example you site of a 100,000 setup is something I have also observed. People will spend ridiculous amounts of money on stereo equipment to play vinyl. I think that is an incentive for the industry to start pushing the media. Not a deterrent.

Here is a system that certainly is a fad. Or maybe not?

https://www.gramovox.com/products/floati...xXhIaAqIy8P8HAQ

Crazy thing

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! How many people do you think missed it??? (still laughing)

I was waiting until next week to see if I got it last week.

Not me. I'm a "Back to the Future" guy so I will laugh next week when he crashes it.

I know I won't miss it

dga. I am aware of the USB turntables. I bought an AudioTechnica cheap model for my son this past Christmas and as I digitized about 15 of my albums that I hadn't repurchased on CD I was reminded of all of the foibles of vinyl that I've gladly not experienced the last 25+ years.

I guess I don't understand which industry it is that you feel needs to be saved from streaming audio.

"...I was reminded of all of the foibles of vinyl that I've gladly not experienced the last 25+ years."



I'll never forget (and always regret) buying some stupid album treatment called "Sound Guard", which was guaranteed to prevent scratches, etc. Completely ruined several irreplaceable LP's.


Want vinyl gear? Estate sales/Garage sales. I have a Fisher turntable that was top-of-the-line in 1977. Got it for 10 bucks. Plays like a dream.


Regards,

Bob

Just got back from a shopping trip, Barnes and Noble center isle display. Hundreds of new vinyl records. Old and new releases. Evidently someone thinks people are going to replace those irreplaceable LPs. And a stack of AT Bluetooth turntables, at the end of the display with a sign above "Perfect Father's Day Present"

@rockstar_not I'm talking about the Musicians who derive their net worth from the rights to their music. The whole music industry, related manufactured music products,music retailers, media outlets.

I posed the question, Will vinyl save the music industry. Most industry experts DO NOT repeat DO NOT think vinyl is an industry savior. Because the music industry has lots of problems. They all think Vinyl is a fad and willnever generate enough money to turn around a troubled industry. Read these 99 problems with the music industry. Streaming services like spotify and youtube pay very little to the artists who create the media that they profit from.

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/02/25/the-music-industry-has-99-problems-and-they-are/

Yes they do, but I also wonder how much "put your favorite artist here" and the respective song writers got from you personally for playing a record you like, be it a 45 or an album, over and over again.

Now, when I'm too lazy and use one of the streaming services to play a song, they get more as if I dug out the vinyl or cd and played this instead.

GHinCH As CD sales and Downloads decline year over year, the system that is in place right now, streaming, does not compensate the artist enough to survive. In the past a recording artist could make quite a good living off of a dozen smash hits, with single and LP record sales, and Radio, TV, airplay. Touring was added revenue, not a necessity to survive. Musicians would retire and sit back and relax while the revenue continued to flow in. For today's artists that is no longer possible.

#9
9. Streaming is rapidly becoming the dominant form of music consumption, though it is now widely viewed as a cashless loss-leader for artists and songwriters.

1-10 of the 99 problems sited in the article above from "Digital Music News."

Recording Devaluation Problems.

1. The value of the music recording is plunging, and has been for more than a decade. Across the board, artists are experiencing serious problems monetizing their audio releases.

2. A decade-long decline in recording revenues has dismantled the label system, once the most reliable form of artist financing. That includes both independent and major labels, once the core of the music industry ecosystem.

3. That introduces fan-funding platforms like Kickstarter, Pledgemusic, and Patreon, all of whom have admirably filled some of that lost financing but haven’t come close to matching the overall funding source. Moreover, crowdfunding success stories like Amanda Palmer are sometimes viewed as anomalies, especially given the initial investment in her career by a major label.

4. Streaming continues to explode, but not enough to compensate for broader declines in physical CDs and paid downloads. The overall result is a music industry revenue decline.

5. Even worse, the technological evolution of formats keeps pushing the value of the recording downward. With every subsequent format, monetization deteriorates: streaming pays less than downloads; downloads paid less than CDs.

6. There is little evidence to suggest that this downfall is being made up by touring, merchandising, or other non-recording activities like ‘experiences’ (see below). In fact, many argue that artists are being forced into unsustainably long tours, or touring virtually non-stop just to survive.

7. Other attempts to make up the lost revenue have fallen short. BandPage, a pioneer in trying to monetize artist ‘experiences’ to help make up for lost recording revenues, was unable to scale that alternate revenue source substantially enough. After many years and considerable investment, BandPage was sold at a heavy loss to YouTube.

8. That introduces a number of problems, including artist burnout and an increased risk of accidents while on the road. According to NYU songwriting professor Mike Errico, the artist injury list is soaring, with Dave Grohl, Sam Smith, Miranda Lambert, Steve Aoki, Little Big Town, Meghan Trainor, Nickelback, the Black Keys and Kelly Clarkson all suffering physical, tour-related setbacks.

9. Streaming is rapidly becoming the dominant form of music consumption, though it is now widely viewed as a cashless loss-leader for artists and songwriters.

10. A big part of the problem is that most consumers now attribute very little value to the recording itself, and most consumption (through YouTube, ad-supported piracy, or BitTorrent) happens at little-to-zero cost to the listener.

Very true.

I started selling music on CDBaby back in 2003, released four CD's through them over the years.

Initially I sold quite a few physical CDs, but that changed rapidly, by 2005 I was selling mostly MP3 downloads, not many people buying physical CD's.

But now with most people having internet on their phones and other devices it is all streams, hardly anyone is buying downloads anymore.

When I check my account info I am making between $0.00087734 and $0.00940758 per stream, spotify, amazon, itunes etc.

At .0008 per stream I need 1,250 streams just to make $1.00!

@blue Attitude That's sad. Today you pay CD Baby $9.95 per song up front for digital distribution You may have gotten that distribution free back in 2003. But, at the rate of return you sited if an artist pays $9.95 the first 12,500 streams are break even streams.

I bought my first vinyl in 1958 when I was twelve years old. An Elvis album for three bucks which was what I earned bagging groceries after school for a week. My mother told me I wasted my money and would never hear from that guy again. I still have the album.

From vinyl to tape to CDs to today's technology I've enjoyed the ride. Today Janice and I stream everything - at home, in the Subaru and when bicycling.

And we pay for it. Streaming does not equate to stealing. In 2003 we had a CD that sold quite well, charted in several countries and allowed us to donate all of the proceeds to cancer research in honor of our best friend and stellar musician Randy Howard (see our website for info about him). The songs were eventually all ripped off and became available all over the net for free. We know what stealing is.

Perhaps when the vinyl thing plays out we'll have an 8-track tape renaissance

Bud

I still can't figure out what part of the industry that vinyl sales actually rescues. The premise that high schoolers are going to give up streaming for vinyl has no basis in reality, that is for the vast majority of them. Particularly if they have to pay $90+ dollars for something that has better audio quality on their phone in their pocket. There is a hipster niche, but everyone has a smartphone.

There is a whole different music industry that I would say has blossomed and we don't talk about it, ironically enough. Home recording. Even home recording on ones phone. More people making music these days. I say that's one giant success just not for record companies.

I've thought about this since I saw the headline, and pardon me for not reading all the posts (early gig today).

People have been making music since at least the Neanderthal days. Professionally? Who knows? At least for many centuries.

For the briefest moment in historical time (about from 1950-2000) it was possible for fewer than 1% of all professional musicians to make a living selling recorded music. For every hit record artist there were hundreds of musicians making a living who never cut a record.

Even in the Pre-Rock era, Sinatra, Miller, Ellington, Crosby, Page (Patti), Clooney, and the others thought of records as promotion for their live shows - and that's where they made their money.

During the 50 year time slice, most one-hit-wonders (or one-CD-wonders) never made a dime on their records.

I know, Motown offered us a deal at 2 cents per record, out of the royalties came inflated recording costs, inflated promotion costs and inflated distribution costs.

Plus they wanted to own our name, be the publishing company for our music (the publisher makes more per record than the artist) and have half the writing credits by adding a name to the copyright who had nothing to do with the song.

Our manager figured we would have to sell a million records before we would break even and not owe Motown money. Motown wouldn't even go for 2.5 cents a record, because they knew that others would do it for 2 or less.

So point number one is with the exception of the lucky few, the recording industry has never been for artists, but for the publishers and record industry. +99% of all professional musicians make a living playing music to a live audience and not from record sales.

OK so as I see it, can vinyl save the recording industry??? I don't think so.

Back in the vinyl/cassette days, radio stations all over the country would advertise, "Tonight at 11L00 PM we will play the new ________ album in its entirety without commercial interruption" and millions of people would sit at 10:58PM with a tape cued up and their finger on the REC button.

So piracy didn't kill the recording industry.

Greed did.

Back in the 45RPM days you could buy a new single for less than a dollar. Basically lunch money. But the record companies sold albums and padded most of them with songs the consumer really didn't care about. LPs made more profit than 45s.

How to make even more money? Make the life cycle of a song even shorter, and go from top40 radio to top10 radio. But that made the music more disposable. A "Chiclets Item" chew it up, spit it out, and dispose of it. It lowered the value of the recording so most people didn't really want to own it anymore.

Then when the CD came out, reducing production costs by about 90% did they pass the savings to the consumer? No, they raised the price. OK we have more disposable music at a higher price. Less incentive to buy.

They hired "The Network" to promote major label recordings, in order to put the indie labels out of business. That worked, but with two results (1) promoting a record costs millions of dollars more than it used to - and "The Network" could make or break a record and (2) without the indie labels, there was less innovation and originality competing for the listener's ears, while the big labels were putting out more of what worked last time.

And at the same time they divided the youth market. From Al Jolson through The Beatles all the young people listened to the same radio station. Pop music was the identity of the generation. Everybody may not have liked Jolson, Crosby, Sinatra, Elvis, Beatles and the others, but they knew when they released a new record and knew the words to their song, because the entire generation listened to the same radio format.

Then came disco, followed by alternative, rap, hiphop, metal, death metal, R&B pop (as different from the old R&B 'race' records), and so on. Everybody heard every new Elvis or Beatles records at the height of their popularity, but how many knew all the words to every Metallica release at the height of their popularity?

So Top40 radio no longer was the identity of an entire generation. No need to own the latest _____ record to be "in with the in crowd", instead the latest phone is what counts.

So IMHO the major record companies killed themselves with greed, they had a good run, but there isn't anything they can do to fix it in the short term - perhaps it can't be fixed at all.

Vinyl isn't going to do it.

On the other hand, it makes no difference to +99% of all professional musicians. We still make our living playing music to a live audience. We'll never get as rich as Paul McCartney, but will will be able to buy our house, go on vacation, and do all the things a small business owner normally does. Without ever making a record.

The biggest obstacle to most musicians is not the failure of the record companies, it's Cable TV. But that's another post entirely.

Insights and incites by Notes

Can vinyl save the recording industry? absolutely. As Notes points out less than 1% of musicians drive record sales. Most musicians over the years survived being on records for an extended period of time doing session work with no recognition. They were but an ingredient of the total product.

All the record companies have to do is create a sales pitch for vinyl that is as effective as the sales campaign that motivated masses of people to pay $1.59 for water that can easily accessed anywhere for free. Create a campaign so effective for records so that the world believes about records the same as it does where the whole world buys the idea that 2nd hand smoke can kill without a single documented death solely attributed to 2nd hand smoke.

It's been shown that such improbable things can and do happen. Besides, it doesn't have to be vinyl. The eight track is just as feasible vehicle as vinyl. May even be easier with the higher quality specs the 8 track is capable of producing over vinyl.

Create a need for vinyl to music to match what bottled water became to drink sales. Simple....

Yep, simple. I don't disagree with what seems like a sarcastic response, but the marketing miracle necessary would already be in place, wouldn't it?

Threw out my small vinyl collection and turntable about eight years ago, which was lying in the corner slowly gathering dust.

Have no wish to start all over again and repeat the same mistake.

But hey I have a collection of DVD's in the same corner now, and come to think of it, they need a good dust down.



Musiclover

Excellent post! This whole recording industry phenomenon was only a tiny slice of music history yet sometimes we look back on it as The Way! Before that people shared their music through performance and teaching. Lots of examples in folk music where no one tried to own the music, rather, they just created it or modified it and passed it along. Then corporate interests took control and directed everything, deciding who would be stars and how frequently they would release new music, etc. I would say it was quite a corrupt system from the beginning!

Then digital arrived and people reverted back to a time where music was shared rather than sold and owned! It should have been super-easy to predict! Didya ever know a smart kid who added a 2nd phone line without paying AT&T...a starving college student who tapped into the cable system to get free TV...a friend of a friend who bought the new album and taped it onto cassettes for all his friends? That is human nature right there and music being digitized signaled the end of the recording industry!


Another brilliant observation! When we were kids we had B&W television with 2 or 3 channels that were barely clear enough to watch. We had one phone and often that was a party line if you lived in the country like I did. We had a radio station that played "our" music for a limited time each day. We had a crappy record player and a small stack of 45s. Of course we had libraries and a few comic books but that was about it!

Compare that to what is available today!

- smartphones
- texting
- cable TV with a thousand channels
- NetFlix and Hulu with every movie and tv series ever
- THE INTERNET with millions of options
- unlimited free music from
--- broadcast radio
--- internet radio
--- "legit" online streaming
--- stolen downloads
--- every aspiring artist in the world (millions) who all want you to buy their music so bad they are willing to give it away (and still no one wants it!)

I do not have enough time left in my life to even listen again to most of my classic rock albums!!! Then I have to Facebook and stream and chat and everything else. How in the world am I ever gonna find time to listen to your new music?

My answer is NO. Vinyl won't save a thing. This horse is so far out of the barn. The only chance anyone has to make a career in music these days is 1) perform gigs like some on this forum do and 2) sell shovels to other aspiring artists!

"...sell shovels to other aspiring artists!"



Have you heard about The Starmaker Machine?


Regards,

Bob

Wow! Them's some expensive shovels!

You've talked about this before and so have I because I have a similar experience in 1976.

I've often wondered though if we had accepted that deal. Sure, for a good 20 years we would have gotten totally screwed but still done a ton of recordings and probably big shows, including TV. Still getting screwed though. But....here it comes....

At some point, maybe 10 years ago we would have started doing all these retro shows like the old stars are doing now. Those shows probably pay a whole lot more than all your local duo gigs have paid you over the last 10 years. Total speculation I know but I do wonder about that sometimes. Yes I know, what I'm describing is the tired, old "Play for the exposure, it'll pay off later". Because now you would be booking yourself as Bob Norton formerly with XXXX and XXXX and was on all these gold records. You became moderately famous for creating some killer sax line on whatever record. Even if you were not the front star. Look at all the people now who show up as guest artists with other groups doing all kinds of retro stuff. Gotta be more money and more fun than playing a local yacht club...

I don't know man but maybe we still shoulda done it.

And back on topic, no the vinyl thing doesn't mean squat in the big picture.

Bob

Vinyl to me is really just a fad. Sure, record sales may be increasing, but like people pointed out, they're only a small percent of the music consumption. In todays world, the average listen doesn't really care about how they listen to their music, they just want to listen. The average person is ok with listen to music on crappy laptop speakers, cheep earbuds plugged into their cellphone, or through bluetooth speakers, because to them, it's all about a good beat, and catchy lyrics. Plus, in the era of downloading and instant gratification, why would you want to go buy an album, if you can listen to it on youtube for free?

Now, on to the point of vinyl being just a fad. Vinyl to me is seen more as something to collect rather than the desired format of musical listening for hipsters. They really just want collect vinyl for the sake of owning tangible media. I don't believe that they really listen to the music, correct me if I'm wrong.

Now, there is a lot of hype that somehow vinyl sound way better then digital thanks to the audiophile community. Vinyl does not sound better than digital at all. When producing a vinyl record you have be extremely cautious about your mix. If you try to add to much bass to a song you could actual make the needle jump and ruin the entire album. You also have a to keep a lot of headroom. With digital, you have tons of headroom to make things as loud as you want, and you do end up with clicks and pops like you do with vinyl, unless you want to add the sounds to it.

Last, I do agree with a lot you how say that there is an experience own vinyl. Taking the time to go to the record store, coming home and deliberately putting forth the effort to listen to the entire album is something that digital can not replace. plus from a collectors point of view, you never know what to expect from a vinyl record.

Michael Jackson got $2.00 a record for Thriller from epic. X 65 million copies.

The top 1 percent of any profession makes 99 percent of the money. Athletes, Politicians, Oil Execs, Pirates, Hedge Fund Managers, Corporations, .......

If the top 1% of the recording artist want to make more money, right now, they will release more vinyl. That's the only way they can do it. Can't do it from streaming contracts, touring, TV, Radio.

Oh wait judging Vocal contests, another way.

I agree. I thought about that myself.

Except for the fact that Motown would have owned the name.

They would have hired different people to play our songs and pretend they were us, like what has been done with Earth, Wind & Fire and so many other groups.

At the time, there were a half dozen "Four Tops" touring the country at the same time. Prince and John Fogarty had to sue the record companies to use their own given name. Fortunately they had made enough money to afford that suit.

But then, I could have toured with "Formerly of Rare Earth". But I wouldn't have gotten the big arenas.

On the other hand, we would have made money on the concert tour when our records were on the chart, had a great time being the headliner, and when our recording debt to Motown was paid off with ticket sales, they probably would have quit tour promoting us, and owning the name, we couldn't do it ourselves.

Back on topic.

Vinyl won't help. We listened to low-fi-mono 45RPM records, we listened to very low-fi-cassettes, and we listen to low-fi-mp3s. Why? The average listener doesn't care about the difference (if he/she can even hear it) but prefers convenience.

Vinyl is a lot of work. 45min and flip the disk. Clean the record before playing and still get pops and clicks.

I'm afraid at this point nothing can save the recording industry (I could be wrong though). And furthermore, it makes no difference to me (except I'm not doing add-a-sax-to-your-track studio work anymore - but that was only a trickle).

The -1% of the musicians who made big bucks from records will suffer, the record company 'suits' will suffer, and the songwriters will suffer. The only ones I have any sympathy for are the songwriters.

Me? I'll continue playing live music like I always have, and I'll do so as long as there is an audience that wants to hear it.

Insights and incites by Notes

[quote=Islansoul<...>Now, there is a lot of hype that somehow vinyl sound way better then digital thanks to the audiophile community. Vinyl does not sound better than digital at all<...> [/quote]
That's a matter of taste. New vinyl sounds truer to the source than CDs. I read an article in a trade from one of the inventors of the CD. At the bandwidth used (which was the best they could do at the time) there are severe quantization errors. Plus the DA converters add high harmonics that were not in the original signal, due to the nature of the pulses, which are square waves.

On the other hand, vinyl wears, high frequencies first, and those pops and clicks are a different kind of distortion.

So it's a matter of which kind of distortion do you prefer.

Notes

If you are lucky enough to be an 'automatic', you can make your deal. The one-hit wonders end up working in gas stations of department stores.



When I found out American Idol was rigged I wasn't surprised. The entire year was a promotion for the 'winner' who was already decided. His/her competition was rigged, the judges were told how to judge and even what to say (in paraphrase) and the entire show was supposed to make a star that would save the recording industry by getting the people involved.

Nothing wrong with that except that it exploited the losers who never had a chance.

No, I don't feel sorry for the industry. They did it to themselves.

Notes

Bob, the "high harmonics/square wave" comment is not actually true. Been through the exercise and the theory of how the analog output wave is constructed from the digital audio stream of pulses and I used to think the same thing, but after studying the actual process it actually does not work the way one would think. The impulse response of each individual sample is not a square wave but rather a ringing filter response. When you add all of those ringing filter responses together, you end up with a smooth analog wave form with the intended frequency response. You do not end up with a bunch of high harmonics that are unintended. This has to do with the output anti-aliasing filter technology that has been present for decades.

That was from one of the inventors of the CD in a trade. I suppose he could have been mis-quoted.

Then there are still the "severe quantization errors" caused by the inadequate bit rate of the technology of the time.

In any case, it's about picking your distortion, as no recording medium faithfully reproduced the original.

My ears tell me that vinyl is warmer and digital is edgier. My ears tell me that my all-time favorite sax player (who I have heard live) Stan Getz sounds more like Stan Getz on LPs and his tone drifts more towards Zoot Sims on CD.

After saying all that, I listen on CD because the tone distortion is less annoying than the pops and clicks.

But back to the topic. While most people have historically have not cared that much about recording quality, I don't think Vinyl will save the business. After all, not only did we listen to 45rpm records, but 8-track tapes that would sometimes fade out in the middle of the song 'click-click' change tracks and then fade in for the rest of the song (that was definitely a deal-killer for me). Then we had the high frequency starved cassette tape (with his) and the lossy mp3 format.

Like many things, dinosaurs, steam locomotives, drive-in movie theaters, MS-DOS, vacuum tube radios, floppy disks, etc., the recording industry is past it's prime and possibly on the way to extinction.

If I knew how to save it, I'd go into the consulting business.

Notes

Cassettes could have been a lot better had they gone to a speed of 3 3/4 ips, rather than 1 7/8 ips.

Several vendors had 90-minute, 100-minute, and 110-minute blank cassettes, so the commercial industry could have easily created 45-minute, 50-minute, and 55-minute recordings at 3 3/4 ips.

Alas, water under the bridge.

Tascam Portastudios proved that. Designed to run at a faster speed and record in one direction only. Good quality from VHS Tapes used in quality stereo video recorders for archiving too.

There was a time...long long ago....in a galaxy far, far away.....

When you would cue up your 1/4” tape on your Tascam 2-track tape deck, into a good pre into a McIntosh tube amp and a great pair of speakers....and it was aural heaven!

Yeah. But going for a jog with it was SUCH an effort...

You could jog? My knees are not good so I took the low-impact route and would swim with mine! I was confused for years by what wet vs. dry mix meant.

Keep in mind... Bob said.."..a time...long long ago....in a galaxy far, far away....."

AND... this is a thread about "Can vinyl save the record industry?"

...so it's all just fantasy.


You wouldn't BELIEVE what I can do in my dreams!!!!!

The thing is that the general public prefers convenience to high fidelity.

And sorry to say (as a musician), the words are even more important the music.

Musicians care about tone, and perhaps a few audiophiles do too, but 99% of the public does not. To them there is lousy sound and 'good enough' sound. Good enough is the sweet spot.

Notes