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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

#251

I oversee pressing for over 150k+ records a year. We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low. I wouldn’t doubt if the number of buyers who don’t own a record player is even higher tha 50%, and that the percentage of people who actually play the records is actually 10-20%. I don’t have data on that, it’s just a hunch. Many of us in the indie music industry (hip hop sustained record…

I’m increasingly conscious of being an outlier here. I prefer physical, for a variety of reasons (ownership being one of them), but also prefer CD to vinyl. Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it. I own vinyl, I like vinyl, but CDs are objectively better and somewhat easier to store.

CDs are great for ripping into FLACs and then playing them from Jellyfin.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much less prone to degradation to vinyl huh... and I thought the vinyl craze happened because it's more durable out of ye old formats CDs are well known to oxydize in the span of decades of storage

CDs can oxidize in the span of decades. I've got hundreds of burned CDs that are from 2003 that are fine (even if they have changed color) because i store them in a climate controlled environment. A vinyl record degrades every time you play it in a normal turntable.

Most of my CD collection is from the 80's and 90's and I've never done much to take care of them. Many have spent a decade or more of their life in a car. Most of them spent ten years in my attic that gets very hot and very cold.

Out of 100 disks, only five or six have failed and all have been because of scratches on the foil side (or whatever the media that the music is encoded into is called).

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

#253
I have a USB record player in storage. I have a number of old albums; mostly for keepsakes. I have a few Tangerine Dream picture disks (including one, cut into the shape of Poland), and a few records that have been out of print for ages.

I don't think of them as "investments," though. I don't think they're actually worth that much.

I have the music on them as digital files that I got from Apple Music, though (I have an Apple One sub). Much better quality sound.

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

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less consumer-oriented culture demands brainwashing, totalitarianism and terror, to force people to not do things they naturally want to, when there is a capability for doing that (if there's no capability, a nation will be physically overwhelmed by other nations and cease to exist/replaced)...

>> Less consumer-oriented culture demands brainwashing It simply requires putting a stop to the constant brainwashing campaigns for inducing demand. >> do things they naturally want to collecting Stanley tumblers is not a "natural" tendency.

Stanley tumblers, no, but even magpies like collecting rocks and buttons and things. Seeing a checkmark on an online digital widget just really doesn't scratch the same itch.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m increasingly conscious of being an outlier here. I prefer physical, for a variety of reasons (ownership being one of them), but also prefer CD to vinyl. Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it. I own vinyl, I like vinyl, but CDs are objectively better and somewhat easier to store.

I love both for different reasons. CDs sound better, they can be ripped and archived and can be carried around without any loss in their digital form. On the other hand, vinyl is great for intentional listening. Putting that hour aside to brew a nice cup of coffee and listen to something while exploring the feelings the album evoke, then get a break to flip/change the record and continue. It's a kind of personal care…

This resonates with me. I have a hobby where I transform classic books into hand-written papyrus as the author intended. There is something almost meditative in unspooling a 10kg scroll where the sometimes illegible ink allows me to wonder what that sentence even was.

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love both for different reasons. CDs sound better, they can be ripped and archived and can be carried around without any loss in their digital form. On the other hand, vinyl is great for intentional listening. Putting that hour aside to brew a nice cup of coffee and listen to something while exploring the feelings the album evoke, then get a break to flip/change the record and continue. It's a kind of personal care…

> CDs are for listening to the music, and vinyl is for listening to yourself This is amazing

> This is amazing

This is not a reply I was anticipating. Can you elaborate a little? =)

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been buying vinyl for the sake of collecting it, with limited intention to ever play it. And I’ve been wondering why would anyone buy the cassette or CD? (And I own more cassette players than the zero vinyl players) I recently found out that some of my favourite vinyls, that I’ve been collecting, ONLY include the art/lyrics booklet in the CD version. These are from the early 2000’s (peak cd?). I reckon I’d buy a…

So you go to work, earn money, then you buy yourself some object to put it in a shelf? And thats basically it? You are not even playing it? To do what with it? Letting your kids/family sell your collection with a loss? Is it background decoration for you? Couldn't you just buy bulk of Vinyl no one wants to use it for your decoration purposes? That feels like consumerism at the peak.

Is it consumerism to walk around the beach collecting pretty rocks to go home and put them on a shelf?

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

#258
As a millennial I think I was probably in the first generation who first started buying vinyl not because we had record players, or preferred the sound of vinyl (although some claimed to), but because when most of us came of age during the time of iPods and mp3 players, if you were going to buy physical media to support an artist, vinyl was probably your best option.

CDs were rapidly heading in the same direction as tape (and continue to), and both were less romantic and felt in many ways a less "authentic" format than vinyl did. The physical aspect of vinyl has a beauty that simply isn't replicated by the CDs optical storage system or the tapes magnetic storage.

Another thing I'd add is that I have a craving for analog more and more in my life these days, especially in music and other media formats. Everything is so polished and so clean that the novelty of the quality has worn off, and everything around you instead feel increasingly unnatural.

As an analogy, I've always thought it was interesting how awful the hologram quality is in Star Wars given they have extremely advanced technology otherwise. But if they were in perfect HD although they would be better from a functional perspective, there would also be something less romantic about them. It's hard to put my finger on why I feel that way, but I think the same is true of lots of technologies. When street lights are replaced with LED lights, they are more functional, but they're also less romantic. Or if you look at food packaging from the 50s, there's something romantic about the materials, colours and print used vs today's plastic packaging and digitally designed labels.

Anyway, I guess this doesn't surprise me at all and I think it totally makes sense, although I suspect most people don't even really rationalise why they're doing it. Vinyl just feels right because there's something more authentic and real about the format.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love both for different reasons. CDs sound better, they can be ripped and archived and can be carried around without any loss in their digital form. On the other hand, vinyl is great for intentional listening. Putting that hour aside to brew a nice cup of coffee and listen to something while exploring the feelings the album evoke, then get a break to flip/change the record and continue. It's a kind of personal care…

This resonates with me. I have a hobby where I transform classic books into hand-written papyrus as the author intended. There is something almost meditative in unspooling a 10kg scroll where the sometimes illegible ink allows me to wonder what that sentence even was.

So glad to see my people. I have a hobby where instead of a modern synthetic ball, I play soccer with a severed goat head. There is something positively transcendent about the resonating thunk of a kick that you just don’t get with a standard ball.

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

#260
post #216
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the vinyl noise and distortion is pressed into the vinyl itself. Even if you play it using an optical player it will still sound worse than a good CD.

My point was more that vinyl has a distinct sound, whereas CDs are just the digital files in a physical package. So if someone decides that distortion suits a particular album better, it's not going to "sound worse" to them.

And that would be wrong. It's the other way around. It's CDs that has a distinct sound for some reason, not vinyl having "analog warmth".
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