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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

#91

Post by LTL_FTC »

embedding-shape wrote: post #45
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…

Are these smaller artists that also have a Patreon? The first time I moved and had to move and get rid of all my stuff I swore I wouldn’t accumulate it anymore. As much as I like the idea of a vinyl collection I would not want to lug it around during my next move…Stuff is heavy.

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

#92

Post by rdiddly »

It gives me hope for the future to see the young'uns recognizing instances where progress isn't necessarily progress. If you oversimplify audio history as 70s=vinyl, 80s=cassettes, 90s=CDs, 00s=MP3s, and 10s=streaming, they've parted ways somewhat with the current moment and gone all the way back to the 70s. Ironically as an older fart myself, who once owned numerous records ("vinyls" is a newer term), and later cassettes, and later CDs, I guess I eventually decided I'd had enough authenticity and converted the whole lot to MP3s and stuck with that when streaming came around. So when I parted ways with the now, I only went back to the 00s, and that was mainly to retain control/ownership rather than having yet another damn algorithm mediating my experience. It's a sweet spot for me - maximum convenience while not giving up intentionality.

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

#93

Post by mrob »

bob1029 wrote: post #34
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…

480i content, CRTs, analog signal chains, non-digital transports, film grain, et. al., provide opportunity for our imagination to step in and produce a better interpolation than the ground truth might otherwise provide.

Music doesn't need so much support from imagination. You could argue that 24 fps film is a good thing (I disagree), because special effects are expensive and the bad motion quality obscures the flaws, but the same doesn't apply with music. Every major city has an orchestra full of skilled musicians and a concert hall with good acoustics. Just record it as it sounds in the room and put it on CD. You can apply the same philosophy to popular music genres too. CD quality is good enough for this to work. The only imagination needed is to pretend that stereo audio is the full surround sound experience, and that's not difficult when you're sitting in the right position.

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

#94

Post by LTL_FTC »

stego-tech wrote: post #59

Guilty party, here. I feel I can explain myself though, or at least offer context about why I own about a dozen records and no way whatsoever to play them. I’m a recovering audiophile. I got into the hobby because I enjoy technology in its myriad aspects, and had discovered that good speakers can make things sound better . As I began accruing CDs and re-ripping into lossless audio, I also began collecting vinyls via…

To second the other commenter, just go for it! Music doesn’t have to be blaring to be enjoyed. Just buy some turntable and begin enjoying your collection. Heck, you could even use headphones. I have a pair of open back headphones with a cable that is like 15 feet in length. So I can easily connect to my receiver and sit back and listen on the couch.

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

#95

Post by mrob »

numpad0 wrote: post #76
microtonal wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They don't, because just about anything available is better than CDs. Vinyl craze is actually not about "warmth", just genuinely more data.

The only additional data that (some) vinyl has over CDs is inaudible ultrasound. Ultrasound is intentionally omitted from CDs because they're intended for humans to listen to. In all audible aspects a correctly mastered CD release is closer to the original sound than any vinyl. And if you really want ultrasound (perhaps your dog enjoys it), you can get digital releases at higher sample rates.

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

#96

Post by jwagenet »

embedding-shape wrote: post #49
jwagenet wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

I don’t disagree. Parties are often oversold and I may be overstating the under attendance problem.

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

#97

Post by DonHopkins »

starky wrote: post #53
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…

>"you can't appreciate good playback until you've heard awful playback on shitty record players like I had to.". My eldest is now plotting a complete hifi system This has strong energy of "Teach your kids how to play Magic, they won't have money for drugs."

"Teach your kids how to grow weed, they won't need money for drugs."

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

#99

Post by sbarre »

larusso wrote: post #27
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 still have my old BluRay collection which I build up from the mid 2000. This already was the replacement of the DVDs I had before. They still sit in the shelve because I don’t know what else to do with the space. Same goes for books etc. I mean I really like the covers etc and the fact one has a physical token. But I simply have too much of it in my house already. And replacing the stuff yet again feels useless. I…

About 15 years ago I got rid of almost all of my physical media. I was moving a lot at the time (I've moved 13 times over the last 20 years, several times to different cities) and I had hundreds of CDs, DVDs and books.. It was literally a quarter of my boxes every time I moved..

So I sold and donated all of it, kept what had special value, and re-acquired a lot of it digitally.

I still think I made the right decision, although every now and then I miss something specific and regret it, but I get over it pretty fast.

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

#100

Post by xboxnolifes »

microtonal wrote: post #44
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.

If it is to happen, CDs and CD packaging would need a rebranding. Part of vinyl popularity is the large sleeve surface that provides a large canvas for a piece of art. Another part is that you get a physically large analogue object that, while previously would be cumbersome, has become interesting in a heavily digital age.
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