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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

#301

Post by bpev »

Symbiote wrote: post #225
bpev wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the artist thinks the distortion of a vinyl record player suits their music, they should add it to the recording on the CD.

And some do. But music listening is a personal experience, and sometimes the preference of the artists doesn't match that of the listener. Should an artist also prescribe the correct speakers/headphones to listen to their album?

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

#302

Post by capncleaver »

danmelnick wrote: post #288
j4nek wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think we all know that Spotify doesn’t pay artists appropriately and we want to help sustain the music we love. not a big fan of all music streaming services, but they only keep about 30% of their revenue. the rest goes to the labels, and this is where most of the problem is. before the 2000s, very small artists hardly earned any income from the sale of (physical) media. I don't like the new platforms such as Spot…

This is part of the problem for sure, but it's also how the revenue is split between back catalog vs new music. In the physical media era, when you bought a record/CD you owned it forever and your marginal cost of listening to a song approached zero over time. Most dollars went to new music. Now, it's close to a 75/25 split of dollars going to back catalog vs new music on streaming services. If you're a new musician,…

This redistribution of revenues from new to old has also taken place in games: ~90% of time in games on PC is spent in games older than a year, ~50% in games 5+ years old like Fortnite, CoD, Roblox etc. Around half of revenues are 'free to play' [1]

This is why making a new game is probably a terrible idea... but hey, world is casino!

[1] https://newzoo.com/resources/trend-reports/the-pc-console-ga... and widely reported e.g. [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1je98mm/pc_gamers...

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

#303

Post by mrguyorama »

danmelnick wrote: post #288
j4nek wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think we all know that Spotify doesn’t pay artists appropriately and we want to help sustain the music we love. not a big fan of all music streaming services, but they only keep about 30% of their revenue. the rest goes to the labels, and this is where most of the problem is. before the 2000s, very small artists hardly earned any income from the sale of (physical) media. I don't like the new platforms such as Spot…

This is part of the problem for sure, but it's also how the revenue is split between back catalog vs new music. In the physical media era, when you bought a record/CD you owned it forever and your marginal cost of listening to a song approached zero over time. Most dollars went to new music. Now, it's close to a 75/25 split of dollars going to back catalog vs new music on streaming services. If you're a new musician,…

This is a problem with all of copyright, not just music.

You need to let things become public domain so people can make new. You need it to be unprofitable to just keep selling the exact same bits in perpetuity.

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

#304

Post by knowitnone3 »

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…

if they don't play it, what do they do with it - toss it under the bed? If people wanted to pay artists, a t-shirt is way more practical or just send them money.

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

#305

Post by bpev »

numpad0 wrote: post #260
bpev wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Saying that vinyl doesn't have a distinct sound is a pretty wild take. It's pretty obvious if you've ever listened to vinyl and switched to a lossless version on the same setup. But here's some reading, nonetheless:

https://now.tufts.edu/2016/07/11/does-music-sound-better-vin... https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-why-vinyl-not-be...

IMO, use a lossless digital file if you want to a more accurate sound, and use a vinyl if you prefer the sound/mastering of that release.

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

#306

Post by lossyalgo »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #121
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.

I am the youngster in this case and I am going to tell you something but we really need to move off of spotify. I never really got onto spotify. I was always the youtube kind of guy, although I recently started listening to youtube music when I realized that my youtube feed was being impacted and youtube music's a better way to listen I guess We really need to get to pen-drives first before CD as well I guess. Like d…

2nd hand CD players are abundant and cheap. New CD players are also rather abundant and cheap (and also have burning capability + DVD read/write) and are available e.g. on Amazon - some are USB, some are standalone units (like we all bought in the 90s). There are tons of options, and as the article says, plenty of people are still buying CDs.

Otherwise I totally agree about aesthetics of vinyl. I have a rather large collection and still buy from time to time, but usually only 2nd hand. I threw away all my CDs because they stopped working after 20-30 years from being stored improperly, being scratched from being played too often, and overall I just prefer the convenience of MP3s.

Internet radio is also lovely (outside of Spotify of course), check out https://directory.shoutcast.com/ which works great with WinAmp (even the old versions from the 90s still run fine in Windows 11). There are of course other smartphone apps that use other directories, but Shoutcast was/is the first and still my favorite place to discover new music.

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

#307

Post by microtherion »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #142
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…

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.

If you use the records as a display (and though I don't do that, I empathize; CD covers just don't generate the visceral reaction that LP covers do), wouldn't it make sense for publishers to offer record covers without the actual records?

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

#308

Post by maxglute »

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".

yeah it's just something for display. I wish vinyl packaging came with a spine.

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

#309

Post by bartread »

autoexec wrote: post #230
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.

> Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it. I loved CDs, but I was forced to stop buying new CDs decades ago because I can't stomach supporting the RIAA. That said, it is still my preferred physical media for music (followed by minidisc) even though ultimately my CD collection was digitized and stored.

> RIAA

I get you but there’s also an element of pick your poison. Not all the online options are great either, particularly not on the streaming front (cough, Spotify, cough[0]) in terms of their treatment - and payment - of artists. I think Bandcamp might be decent, and is generally the place I go for FLAC.

I buy a lot of pre-owned CDs as well: upside, less hard/impossible to recycle waste (discs), and less plastic waste (cases), doesn’t support the RIAA; downside, it also doesn’t support the artists. Somewhat regularly I find pre-owned is the only option though, at least if I want a physical copy.

[0] One could perhaps argue that the RIAA set the standard for turgid money grabbing scumbaggery that modern services have chosen to adopt, I think.

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

#310

Post by bartread »

reaperducer wrote: post #219
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.

Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it. Anecdotally, I see more and more stores that sell music now carry CDs. Just yesterday I saw an entire wall of new-release CDs at a Barnes and Noble bookstore.

Yeah, I’m sort of hopeful it’ll experience a similar resurgence to vinyl.

Despite being terminally online for literally decades now I never got out of CDs just because it always bugged me that I could buy a physical copy with better (or, nowadays, usually equivalent) sound quality for the same or less money than the MP3 (or whatever format) album.

I’d then invariably rip to a compressed format for convenient on the go listening but, in 20 odd years, I’ve bought maybe half a dozen albums digitally, and half of those have been simply because no other format is available. (For context, I have maybe 700 albums on CD but I lost accurate count some years ago so it could well be more.)

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