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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

#321

Post by obrhoff »

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…

At this point its mostly a merchandise/ collectable which I also think is okay.

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

#322

Post by coldtea »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #275
coldtea wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Compared to the plastic waste produced daily it's a drop in the ocean. And at least this is kept and collected. Basically anything taken individually is a drop in the ocean. Problem is all those drops add up and that's what creates the ocean.

The ocean of plastic waste isn't just lots of drops aggregted.

There are massive "water bodies" that make 10% and 20% and 30% of the ocean of plastic use. Packaging is about 30-40%, for starters. Clothes (synthetic crap clothes) and shoes are about 15%.

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

#323

Post by knollimar »

wlonkly wrote: post #35
knollimar wrote: post #8

It seems like a silly cargo cult to me. It feels like ewaste compared to a poster

What's the *e*-waste from a record and sleeve?

You're right it's probably not ewaste. I think the record is entirely wasted along with the energy to produce it. The sleeve is the only value if you don't play it

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

#324

Post by mrob »

detourdog wrote: post #245
jonhohle wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not the mediums fault. I’m sure during the 70s and 80s there were equally horrible vinyl masterings.

The mastering problems the early CDs suffered from was the move to analog to digital.

Classical labels were recording digitally even before CD players existed, to avoid the generation loss of recording to tape before transferring to vinyl. These recordings were later released on CD and mostly sound great.

Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms (1985 release, first CD to sell over a million copies) also sounds great, and IMO better than most modern releases.

Some early CDs were recorded using pre-emphasis, similar to the RIAA equalization used with vinyl records. CDs using this have a flag set in the metadata to tell the player to apply a matching de-emphasis filter. I sometimes see people blaming digital production for early CDs sounding "thin". I think it's more likely they heard rips of CDs using pre-emphasis that didn't have the proper de-emphasis applied.

An average CD from the 80s sounds better than an average CD from any other era, because it pre-dates the loudness war, and because it's intended to be played on a good home stereo (which if you were buying CDs back then you could probably afford).

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

#325

Post by RiverCrochet »

mrob wrote: post #112
numpad0 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People used to say human eyes can't perceive >60fps. It's also just CDs, not digital formats in general. Grab an audiophile and ask their opinions about digital PDM/PCM formats, high bitrate AACs even, against true vinyls. They wouldn't have as much opinions as they do against CDs. Also: 44.1kHz sampling rate != arbitrary waveform up to 22050Hz, unless music you're listening to consists of pure sine waves(and not eve…

Anybody can distinguish 60fps from higher frame rate just by looking at steady motion. The famous Blur Busters Test UFO makes it easy: https://testufo.com/ But in the case of analog recording, nobody can distinguish a pure analog recording from the same thing but with a good ADC/DAC pair in the signal path in a blind test. It's theoretically possible to hear undithered 16 bit quantization noise if you turn the volume…

Isn't this true?

- 44.1ksamples/sec can only represent arbitrary waveforms at some point lower than 44.1kHz/2.

- Example: The only 22.05kHz waveform you can encode at 44.1ksamples/sec is a square wave (for 16 bit samples: -32767, 32768, -32767, 32768, etc.)

Going down to 44,099 samples/sec you could only do an extremely crude "steppy" approximation of a sine wave, sort of like the NES's triangle channel.

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

#326

Post by Loughla »

samiv wrote: post #232
Loughla wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a very nice record player. Absolutely love listening to vinyl while looking at the cover art (Jethro Tull has the best album art and I'll fight anyone who disagrees). For me it's a time machine back to my childhood. We grew up poor and couldn't afford tapes and then CD's. We had thrift store vinyl albums. For my kids, vinyl was this weird thing that sounded scratchy. Then they grew up and found that the plethor…

I'll bite... Slayer - Divine Intervention

I assume you're saying that's an album that surprised you with its quality.

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

#327

Post by Uvix »

masklinn wrote: post #226
bentley wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I’ve been wondering why would anyone buy the cassette or CD? I have no interest in cassette or vinyl. I love CDs because they provide the highest music quality, uncompressed audio that’s trivial to rip to lossless FLAC files, complete with metadata.

Sure, but on the whole I’d take getting FLAC directly over CDs. Not that I don’t have CDs, even deluxe editions with picture books and stuff, but I pretty much never get them out. I can understand people preferring vinyls as physical artefacts, the full frame jackets of my father’s albums are gorgeous in a way that’s distinct from and superior to CD album art, even if the music bit is markedly inferior technically (a…

I'd take getting FLAC files directly, but they're not available most of the time.

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

#328

Post by drzaiusx11 »

bayindirh wrote: post #213
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.

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…

I love the associated rituals and the physicality of vinyl records. The large format album art, liner notes & inserts are great as well. As for sound quality I'm no audiophile so I won't pretend to make any claims of vinyl being better or worse than any other music medium, but I will say I don't get the same intentionality of listening with the streaming services I've tried: Google music, Amazon music, Spotify, etc which all seem to mess with your library by injecting ridiculous things like AI DJ interludes or "enhancing" your playlists by injecting songs into your carefully curated playlists at random. That and I have some really old shit that I haven't been able to find on other mediums.

Both Google music (before it turned into YT Music) and Amazon Music briefly allowed uploading your own music to stream which significantly helped with my use-case, but they both removed that feature during their inevitable enshitification. I toyed with self hosting and doing my own rips of CDs and vinyl, but I find throwing on a record more relaxing than futzing with lossy encoder parameters or patching streaming servers.

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

#329

Post by mrWiz »

freetanga wrote: post #293
bkanuka wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not just buy the cardboard cover?

Where can you buy just the cardboard cover?

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

#330

Post by ranvel »

yeah, those crazy people who gift vinyl to people and collectors who want to make a profit are craaaazy people. (this is sarcasm, these are normal things (not at all an exhaustive list) that might make you buy a vinyl without owning a turntable)

also, we're probably getting some really good stats with this stuff with the folks buying at their local record store, right?

by the way, what was the phrasing of the question they used to get this information?

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