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50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

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Re: 50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

#41

Post by toomuchtodo »

HPsquared wrote: post #28
colechristensen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.” Sometimes I wonder how much INTENTIONAL engineering people's discontent for good or ill happens across the spectrum of human activity. One thing is for sure, people don't talk about it much. I can think of many examples.

Nobody would work if housing and food were super cheap, for instance.

There are overwhelming examples of people who continue to work when all of their basic needs are met. Some work because they love to, some work because they have to; we, collectively, should be trying as hard as possible to make work optional (automation, etc), because the point of life is to live, not to work. Some combination of Abundance [1], Solarpunk [2], etc. The entire planet will eventually be in population decline [3] (with most of the world already below fertility replacement rate), so optimizing for endless growth is unnecessary. So keep spinning up flywheels towards these ends if we want to optimize for the human experience, art, creativity, and innovation (to distribute opportunity to parity with talent).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_(Klein_and_Thompson_...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/12/supply-b...

[3] https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf

(think in systems)

Re: 50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

#42

Post by crazygringo »

Yup, sold my turntable a while ago but kept my favorite ~20 albums. I rotate through them, displaying them on my bookshelf. They look great. They're art, they're vibe, they're decoration.

(Ultimately I went all-in on smart speakers, so I couldn't just hook up the turntable anymore, and getting a turntable/adapter that digitizes the audio to send over Bluetooth, just no...)

Re: 50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

#44

Post by microtonal »

thechao wrote: post #20

My dad grew up in the 50s & 60s. During COVID he purchased my daughters' the, I quote, "shittiest briefcase record players" he could find. Both girls listen to their music on their devices, but also buy vinyl. The other day, my eldest came down from her room complaining that her vinyl "sounded awful". I told her to bring it up with their Grampy. His response: "you can't appreciate good playback until you've heard awf…

I was going to ask, when are the youngsters going to discover CDs? Much less prone to degradation to vinyl, lossless ripping, superior quality.

Re: 50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

#45

Post by embedding-shape »

sbarre wrote: post #6

I guess buying the vinyl is like buying a shirt or a poster now? I support artists I like by going to their shows and buying lossless digital copies where possible (even if I listen to their music elsewhere). But I don't want or need more physical "stuff".

> I guess buying the vinyl is like buying a shirt or a poster now?

Yeah, in some way that's true. In the house music scene almost every producer also sells vinyls of their best songs, sometimes "collectors editions", and also DJs obviously sometimes pride themselves on only playing vinyl. For the artists I really do enjoy, I tend to buy their songs + with the vinyl, as a way to support them, but I indeed have no way of actually playing them, and haven't had for more than a decade.

So here I sit with 20+ vinyl records, most of them unopened, and no record player. But I don't mind, I just want to give money to the artists that provide me joy.

Re: 50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

#46

Post by chollida1 »

Makes sense. Most kids I know put records up on their wall as art. or as a way to pay artists directly by purchasing their album at a concert

If you want to listen to music then Spotify runs circles around vinyl as a medium. Records really suck for music quality which is why everyone dumped them when tapes came along and then even more so when cd's became a thing.

If Vinyl was a good medium to listen to music then no one would have bought cd's or had a Spotify subscriptions.

I can't imagine people going back to old school crt televisions to watch sports or movies either, but I do see people

Re: 50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

#48

Post by dylan604 »

colechristensen wrote: post #30
sbarre wrote: post #6

I guess buying the vinyl is like buying a shirt or a poster now? I support artists I like by going to their shows and buying lossless digital copies where possible (even if I listen to their music elsewhere). But I don't want or need more physical "stuff".

Albums are art that can be displayed and one of the most accessible forms of real-art-connected-to-the-artist.

On the wall above the table with my turntables hang the album covers of some of the albums that were influential in my musical path as a dj. The records are still in their sleeves in a flight case

Re: 50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

#49

Post by embedding-shape »

jwagenet wrote: post #9
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

I am one of these people. I buy to support the artist (usually $40-$50 for an album), but listen to the digital versions via Jellyfin and Plex (to avoid Spotify). I’ll also donate directly to artists, or buy tickets to their shows even if I cannot attend. Great analysis.

IMO, please continue buying records, but don’t buy tickets to shows you can’t attend. I can’t speak for live music, but in SF there is/was an issue of club nights selling out, but having low attendance due to people buying tickets as an “option”. This is a problem because it screws up venues planning for bar sales as a revenue source and deterring last minute buyers/door sales (who may either be heads or punters) who…

> but in SF there is/was an issue of club nights selling out, but having low attendance due to people buying tickets as an “option”.

As a bar/restaurant owner who sometimes host electronic parties, that sucks and does mess up a lot. But as a dance party attender, that sounds like a good thing, the parties tend to have way too high attendance, and if there is no space for people to actually move around and dance, I don't really know what the point of it even is anymore.

Re: 50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

#50

Post by embedding-shape »

Semaphor wrote: post #18
nemomarx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bandcamp is pretty close to this experience if they set it as "pay what you want" (which a lot of artists do)

> (which a lot of artists do) And those who don’t almost always only set a minimum price, so you can still pay more if you want. And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue. [0]: https://isitbandcampfriday.com/

> And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue.

Bandcamp Friday is such a fun day, I always have +5 purchases lined up from the previous month, and usually keep track of the social media of the artists I buy from that day, and many of them post something really wholesome about how much they made on that day :) Such a fun time all around.

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