Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986 • Hacker News Board

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#31

Post by leapis » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

big_chungus wrote: post #9

tyingq wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia and appearance. Old cars drive like crap and are unsafe, but popular for the same reason.

I understand that, but old cars are a hobby of a limited number of people, not of "Joe Average". This would be like old cars out-selling new ones.

The CD standard as the "Joe Average" is quickly changing. Anecdotally, as a younger person (recent college grad), people my age don't buy CDs out of necessity nearly as much anymore as they used to. We've gotten to the point where the vast majority of devices (car stereos, home systems, etc) have at the very least, an aux port. Adding on to this, the prevalence of phones as speakers and music players means that you hardly every "need" a CD. CDs are quickly going the way of records and cassettes.

We can see this pretty clearly looking at consumer reports[1], where you'll find that vinyls, compared to CDs, are actually being propped up largely by generations (18-44) that never properly experienced them. CD usage, on the other hand, is generally supported by older generations that are slower to adapt to modern streaming. Vinyl is almost vicarious nostalgia- most vinyl users I know (generally from the same age bracket) enjoy it as a deprecated technology that feels exotic. CDs aren't necessary for us anymore, and since we grew up with them, they aren't as enchanting and romanticized as vinyl.

[1] http://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/MusicWatch-Co...

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#32

Post by iamnotacrook » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

big_chungus wrote: post #9

tyingq wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgia and appearance. Old cars drive like crap and are unsafe, but popular for the same reason.

I understand that, but old cars are a hobby of a limited number of people, not of "Joe Average". This would be like old cars out-selling new ones.

It would be like - in a world where everyone used Uber, public transport etc - 5 old cars outselling 3 new ones.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#33

Post by SomeOldThrow » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #3

big_chungus wrote: post #2

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

Nostalgia and appearance. Old cars drive like crap and are unsafe, but popular for the same reason.

Vinyl is way more popular than old cars.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#34

Post by efdee » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

iamnotacrook wrote: post #26

JohnGB wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality isn't necessarily worse. Vinyl is analogue, and so good quality vinyl has a different sound to the same audio played from a CD. That isn't to say that all vinyl is better, just that the best vinyl is better than the best CD recordings.

No it's not. If there's a digital recording of a band and you can either listen to that exact set of bits encoded losslessly, for example from a flac file from a cheap usb key, Vs whatever the hell happens when you convert those bits into analogue and press them into some plastic with demonstrably worse track separation, distortion, and which physically degrades during each play even in optimal circumstances and wher…

It depends what the digital recording is mastered for, really.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#35

Post by cptskippy » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

big_chungus wrote: post #2

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

You are looking at this as a CD vs Vinyl battle. Vinyl found a niche and never died entirely. Now CDs are dying because of downloads and streaming and you're saying "why the resurgence vinyl?"

There is no resurgence, perhaps a Renaissance in vinyl, but what you're really seeing is just the fall of CD down to vinyl's levels.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#36

Post by CharlesW » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #16

big_chungus wrote: post #2

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in…

There's a lot of albums that aren't mastered correctly for digital. They end up clipping outside the dynamic range because they're too loud. Vinyl doesn't really clip in the same way. And this isn't an old phenomenon, it's getting worse in fact. You can see some of that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war Additionally, bands will typically get better margins on vinyl (although that's starting to disappea…

I'm sure there were early cases of bad audio engineers introducting digital clipping during the digital mastering process.

You mention that "it's getting worse", but it's unlikely that you'd be able to find a release mastered/remastered with noticable digital clipping within the last decade.

As one example of how basic a concern this is for digital mastering, Apple's "Apple Digital Masters" (formerly "Mastered for iTunes") program strictly limits it, recommendeds testing for the existence of clipping both pre- and post-encode, and provides tools (afclip, AURoundTripAAC Audio Unit) for helping to do that.

Generally, "loudness wars" refers primarily to dynamic range compression, which can easily destroy a track (in the musical sense) even if there is zero clipping.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#37

Post by xenocyon » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

thinkmassive wrote: post #15

By revenue, not by units sold. Still interesting, and not really surprising based on my anecdotal experience of artists I follow. Streaming audio is good enough for most sound systems commonly in use. Vinyl serves as a better collectible from a favorite artist for a few reasons. - more room for cover art - physical analog medium (superficial, but has value to some) - requires more care than CDs (proves the owner’s de…

While streaming is obviously the revenue king, the apples-to-apples soft-media comparison point for vinyl and CD is not streaming but digital downloads, which isn't covered in the OP article but is in the linked RIAA report. tl;dr: Currently digital downloads see about twice as much revenue as either CD or vinyl, but trending downwards while CD revenue is holding steady and vinyl experiencing mild growth.

Personally I like DRM-free digital downloads (as opposed to streaming) as they provide the best advantages of soft media while also being mine to fully control forever.

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#38

Post by ofibrvev » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #25

Vinyl is one of those old-school technologies that seems like it's from the future. Somehow we turned sound into a disk. You can see and feel the sound and then a tiny needle will reproduce the original sound just by touching the disk. And in very high quality! Blows me away every time I think about it. And we could have kept going: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc

Could have kept going...

The CED offers one hour of VHS quality per side that rapidly degenerates. I own a sizeable collection of them, and while sorta neat, it’s also sorta terrible.

The vinyl offers quality superior to most consumer tape equipment rivaled only by 11 ips reel to reel. CED had no quality advantages, decays rapidly and is non recordable. It was a non-starter.

The fact is that CED was in the works since the 50s when it may have had a short successful life, but RCA couldn’t get off their ass. In fact CED was the last consumer product ever released by RCA. (The RCA of today is just a badge on various crap after being divested by Thomson Consumer Electronics)

Also even though CED uses a stylus, the similarities end there. You can literally run your nail in a phono groove and hear the sound. It is a literal imprint of the sound wave. Video cannot be encoded in such a straightforward manner, NTSC and PAL are not trivially. Also the CED is not vibrating the stylus. Rather the stylus sits on ridges and the signal is depth encoded (therefore varying the capacitance, hence the name). It is much closer to a crappy laser disc in operation (which also encodes in analog.. not digital)

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#39

Post by rwmj » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

Here I am listening to Daniel Barenboim's Beethoven Piano Sonatas spread over 24 sides of vinyl, purchased for under a tenner in a charity shop. A CD would be more practical, but the set of records is a real experience, even the getting up to skip the occasional scratch and turn over the records.

Edit: downvotes over 20 minutes. Do you doubt that I'm really listening to it (I am, before I read this news)? Or that vinyl is a real experience? Or that I'm some kind of "hipster" (I have thousands of records, and an equal number of CDs, collected over 30 years). Please reply, I'm interested what you have to say.

For the doubters, here's a photo: http://oirase.annexia.org/tmp/20190908_183833.jpg

Re: Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986

#40

Post by taxidump » Sun, Sep 08, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

thinkmassive wrote: post #15

By revenue, not by units sold. Still interesting, and not really surprising based on my anecdotal experience of artists I follow. Streaming audio is good enough for most sound systems commonly in use. Vinyl serves as a better collectible from a favorite artist for a few reasons. - more room for cover art - physical analog medium (superficial, but has value to some) - requires more care than CDs (proves the owner’s de…

>physical analog medium (superficial, but has value to some)

I dissagree that vinyl medium is superficial. It is different entirely. Vinyl has a unique sound. Dynamic entropy is added during the playback from imperfections, many favor this outcome, not all.

Audio sources for vinyl duplication will undergo a seperate mastering process that is taylored for the vinyl version. Even if you do not request another mastering any good vinyl shop will have some adjustments they make before duplication.

All these variables will produce another version of the audio at the end. This will change propective and therefore put a perfect digital copy above or below the other in their mind.