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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

#161

Post by chamomeal »

eudamoniac wrote: post #111
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…

This is fine, but I'd encourage anyone to test all new audio setups with a blind triangle test at least, because most people can't distinguish most differences. If you can't tell a difference, using cheap equipment is great!

Also a lot of the fun of audio is that it comes down to taste more often than you’d think. There are full setups for a few hundred dollars that I love, and fancy expensive setups that I don’t care for. For me the most fun part is hunting for under appreciated equipment in thrift stores. It’s amazing what you can find without much looking

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

#162

Post by icehawk »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #122
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.

> 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.

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

#163

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

Bratmon wrote: post #150
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

Vinyl was infamous for degrading during use to the point where you could identify whether an album had been played more than a dozen times by the reduction in sound quality.

this is perhaps a language barrier, but I'd call "measurement of getting worse during use" *durability*, while degradation is exactly about not-in-use deterioration...

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

#164

Post by HelloMcFly »

sbarre wrote: post #99
larusso wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I did the same as you about 20 years ago. And about three years ago, I started reinvesting in physical ownership again for my music and movies. For me this started from a desire to reduce my reliance on major tech companies, especially licensed content like media. But since moving in that direction, I've found it very rewarding to curate a collection reflective of my evolving taste, and find I treat my time with a spinning record or blu-ray I had to insert with more focus and attention.

I don't share the anecdote to suggest in any way that you or anyone else would feel the same.

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

#166

Post by justarandomname »

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…

> We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low.

Oh. my. gosh. This has been driving me NUTS recently. Please please please here me out. The first dozen or so records I bought were of albums I already owned digitally, as FLAC so I was one of those kinds of people that didn't redeem the downloads. I wanted to buy my faves, stuff that I knew I'd love to listen to on vinyl forever. Now that I'm buying brand new stuff, that I don't have digital copies of I've noticed they rarely, rarely, if ever include a download link and so I had to renew my dang apple music subscription to listen to albums I already own when I'm away from my record player and its started to really turn me off from buying any records outside of bandcamp (where you always get the digital version too.)

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

#167

Post by esafak »

sbarre wrote: post #99
larusso wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Moving that many times is enough to make a person give up interest in all physical possessions, not just media.

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

#169

Post by iainctduncan »

Another aspect of this is that a band or label really need to hit a minimum sales quota to justify pressing albums, so people buying vinyl are actually helping them more than they would be by simply donating the profit of a vinyl purchase (which is of course not the retail price of vinyl). Bands want to release, and this helps them do it.

Preordering product – whether books, vinyl, or digital – really, really helps self-funded artists and indy arts business.

Keep it up, kids! :-)

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

#170

Post by weinzierl »

What do people do with the vinyl then? Collect it like baseball cards?

Funnily I'm in the complete opposite cohort. I own a record player, because stereo sets used to come with one even when vinyl was on the decline already. I have less than a handful of records which I ever only played out of curiosity.

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