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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

#261

Post by topranks »

bartread wrote: post #211
superultra wrote: post #129

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.

For me there is no point storing digital music on optical discs. Easier to steam it or listen from a hard drive.

On the other hand the larger format of vinyl and rather peculiar way it works scratches the “tactile” part of what makes physical attractive a lot more.

Each to their own of course but that’s me.

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

#262

Post by onion2k »

itake wrote: post #194
onion2k wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste. It's only waste if it's being discarded. If someone wants to keep it and cherish it, even if they're not playing it, then it's not waste.

At some point in the future, the owner will pass and their children will have a mass of plastic to manage. Perhaps their children will cherish it for generations, or perhaps their children will have different musical tastes from their great great great grandpa and the plastic ends up in a landfill, forever un-played.

At that point it becomes waste. That doesn't mean it's waste now.

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

#263

Post by topranks »

quietsegfault wrote: post #259
silverlake wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Love me some old school goat ball

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

#264

Post by bkanuka »

onion2k wrote: post #191
godzillabrennus wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I both own vinyl, and neither of us has ever owned a record player. We put them on display for the most part. We have a song we got married to, and we bought a couple of album variations (each with different artwork) with that song; we also like the cover art on some vinyl releases as wall art.

I'm curious - does the music content actually matter to you? Would you buy an album from an artist you've never heard just because the cover art was great?

Not who you're replying to (but I'm in the same camp). I use the album art as decoration, but the music is the first selection criteria. The music has to mean something to me first, and then the album art just needs to "pass".

I have young kids also, so I try to stay away from violent or scary album art.

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

#265

Post by dredmorbius »

topranks wrote: post #261
bartread wrote: post #211

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.

For me there is no point storing digital music on optical discs. Easier to steam it or listen from a hard drive. On the other hand the larger format of vinyl and rather peculiar way it works scratches the “tactile” part of what makes physical attractive a lot more. Each to their own of course but that’s me.

The discs are your backups.

(You can of course also back up the rips, but you have the disc as origin, and as an option for re-ripping at higher or lower quality, etc.)

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

#266

Post by im3w1l »

superultra wrote: post #129

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 oversee pressing for over 150k+ records a year. We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low.

Maybe you are right, but I wouldn't discount the possibility that people are willing to pay for the idea that they could some day download it even if it never ends up actually happening. Kinda like getting an insurance policy you probably wont need you know?

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

#267

Post by exitb »

RileyJames wrote: post #185
superultra wrote: post #129

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’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…

I buy cassettes. Mostly old, period-correct ones, but some new. I also have a fairly high end tape deck, that these days can be had for rather good price. Our perception of cassettes are mostly warped by the experience of badly recorded tapes played on horrible, unmaintained players, but inherently the tape is much less of a limiting factor to quality than most of the things people use to play music nowadays. In fact, when comparing my vinyl and cassette purchases, I have higher change of getting a bad sounding vinyl than a bad sounding cassette.

Notably, tape decks with separate play and record heads let you listen to the recorded signal, while it's being recorded and quickly switch between the tape and source signal. Even on a good pair of headphones, when correctly dialled in, vast majority wouldn't be able to recognise which signal is the tape.

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

#268

Post by sehansen »

coldtea wrote: post #200
superultra wrote: post #129

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…

> It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste. Compared to the plastic waste produced daily it's a drop in the ocean. And at least this is kept and collected. > even though it arguably is the best and easiest income generator for artists Digital is nowhere "the best and easiest income generator" for musicians. A common complain from musicians is how, with the advent of online music, sales craterred, and musicians despite h…

During the entirety of the 90's 11883 records sold at least 50 000 units[0]. If we assume $3 royalty each[1] that's ~1200 artists making $150 000 or more in an average year. That's ~$300 000 adjusted for inflation.

In 2024 1450 artists got over $1 000 000 in royalty from Spotify.[2] Additionally 2.3% (~276 000) earned at least $1000 and 100 000 earned at least "almost $6000".

It seems to me that there now is a long tail of artists making a few thousand a year on Spotify that assume they would have sold tens thousands of records each year in the 90s. E.g. the 100 000th most popular artist on Spotify assuming they would have sold as well as the 1200th most popular artist in 1998.

The more likely case is that the top ~10 000 artists would have made less back then than they do now and the rest would have made essentially zero dollars from selling records back in the 90s.

0: https://bestsellingalbums.org/decade/1990-238 1: https://dailybruin.com/1998/09/27/paying-the-price 2: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/03/12/spotify-loud-and...

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

#269

Post by Alconicon »

bigmadshoe wrote: post #257
Alconicon wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A rock is not a consumer good, so no.

And a rock is unique, nice to look at, did not cost you anything and kind of an appreciation of nature.

Enjoy your rock! (i'm sincere)

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

#270

Post by topranks »

bluGill wrote: post #138
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #122

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

Pressed cds last well in general. Burned cds have a lot of issues. vinyl also wears out from using it, while cds are listen as much as you want with no issuse. I have ripped all my cds to flac on my NAS and put them on usb in whatever format as needed.

You need to take care of them though. Scratched CDs don’t play good.
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