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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

#71

Post by tedivm »

I think a lot of people in the comments here are missing the point in a lot of ways.

The first is that even if people don't own a record player at the moment doesn't mean that they don't plan on getting one. I have multiple nieces/nephews who got record players (at their request!) this year for Christmas. Briefcase record players are becoming ridiculously more popular. The thing is there's no point in buying a record player if you don't already have some records, and artists are doing a lot more limited prints so sometimes you need to buy immediately to be sure you're going to get one.

My wife and I bought a new sound system in 2024, and we decided to include a record player. We have used it way more we had expected to. We still have streaming services (Tidal) but listening to a record has a ton of benefits. There's the fact that the entire album itself is an organized experience, not just random tracks, and the tactile nature of it is really appealing. The albums themselves are like pieces of artwork in a way that a CD or screensaver would never be.

It's also nice knowing that the artist I'm buying from is getting real money from the purchase, unlike the pennies they get from streaming.

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

#72

Post by hunter2_ »

greekrich92 wrote: post #64
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.

I have a record collection and a cd collection. It was not the same. So many CDs of older music sound bad on CD. Recordings made during the CD era sound fine though, but I'm not an audiophile. Maybe the "loudness wars" are a complaint for some.

The loudness war (in the usual sense of the phrase) on CDs was to not seem weak against other releases. The loudness war (if I may use that phrase very liberally now) on analog media is to not seem weak against hiss and surface noise. The desire to compress and limit dynamic range does exist for both, but for these different reasons.

However, a huge difference is that on CDs you're up against a fixed maximum (0 dBFS) so all peaks are equal, which is fatiguing; on vinyl you're up against the adjacent groove, so your maximum amplitude any given moment depends on the amplitude of things in the recent past and near future! Ways to optimize for this are prevalent, amazingly, and the result is less fatiguing.

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

#73

Post by HardwareLust »

Guilty! I have bought a handful of vinyls (limited edition, colored vinyl, etc.) in anticipation of saving up to buy a good quality turntable.

And these were all artists and albums I know and love through CDs or streaming, so it's not like I'm buying them blind.

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

#74

Post by skeeter2020 »

stego-tech wrote: post #59

Guilty party, here. I feel I can explain myself though, or at least offer context about why I own about a dozen records and no way whatsoever to play them. I’m a recovering audiophile. I got into the hobby because I enjoy technology in its myriad aspects, and had discovered that good speakers can make things sound better . As I began accruing CDs and re-ripping into lossless audio, I also began collecting vinyls via…

>> One day I’ll get to enjoy them, but today is sadly not that day.

I've got news for you: you won't. Your post reads like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. Also it's 2026, and being the first day of the new year the PERFECT time to just go ahead and do it. You could probably buy a used record player today for < $50 and be listening to a record.

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

#75

Post by skeeter2020 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #49
jwagenet wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, please continue buying records, but don’t buy tickets to shows you can’t attend. I can’t speak for live music, but in SF there is/was an issue of club nights selling out, but having low attendance due to people buying tickets as an “option”. This is a problem because it screws up venues planning for bar sales as a revenue source and deterring last minute buyers/door sales (who may either be heads or punters) who…

> but in SF there is/was an issue of club nights selling out, but having low attendance due to people buying tickets as an “option”. As a bar/restaurant owner who sometimes host electronic parties, that sucks and does mess up a lot. But as a dance party attender, that sounds like a good thing, the parties tend to have way too high attendance, and if there is no space for people to actually move around and dance, I do…

Affording tickets is already a first-world problem; I have no idea what level this is when not attending has some knock-on impact or attendance hurts another person's experience. Maybe y'all should plan to stay home and make a donation to the food bank...

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

#76

Post by numpad0 »

microtonal wrote: post #44
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…

I was going to ask, when are the youngsters going to discover CDs? Much less prone to degradation to vinyl, lossless ripping, superior quality.

They don't, because just about anything available is better than CDs. Vinyl craze is actually not about "warmth", just genuinely more data.

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

#77

Post by 999900000999 »

It's just a cool piece of merch to me.

Artist make no money off streaming. This is a real artifact I get to own, keep sealed and maybe get signed.

I did have the unfortunate experience of buying a D12 Devil's Night vinyl to find the cover image quality to look like some intern copied it off Google images.

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

#78

Post by chrisweekly »

detourdog wrote: post #54
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.

Introspect my favorite music media was cassette tape. I found them more robust and repairable then CDs.

Huh? IME cassette tapes often begin to stretch after fewer than a hundred plays, which permanently ruins them.

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

#79

Post by RajT88 »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #21

Physical media collecting is about a lot of things but one of them is to have a physical artifact representing your relationship with an artist and the art to have in your home to touch, hold, pick up, and display. Makes sense to me.

This. Vinyls are the most "special" of media formats, because they require the most care. They function as wall art. If you actually want to listen to them, it's a ritual - something you have to make time and space for. You don't have that with anything else - an Artifact is a great way of putting it, but I would also suggest some other words: relic, totem, effigy, charm

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

#80

Post by greekrich92 »

HPsquared wrote: post #28
colechristensen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.” Sometimes I wonder how much INTENTIONAL engineering people's discontent for good or ill happens across the spectrum of human activity. One thing is for sure, people don't talk about it much. I can think of many examples.

Nobody would work if housing and food were super cheap, for instance.

If people were broadly socialized for collaboration and collective good, people could and would achieve as much with many fewer hours of work, and with the many more hours available for personal creative pursuit and play. There is no innate human nature that prevents this, only a prevailing social order which reinforces individualism and competition at the expense of the many.
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