Back to the past: Why isn't Vinyl dead?

[-Jrabbit]

I love watching/reading the opinions of non-audio people on technical audio topics.

In terms of comparative market size, vinyl is dead. But there's a huge installed base of boomer turntables and record collections out there, owned by the largest generation of music consumers. Not all of whom are digital-ready. Plus there's the DJ and scratch community, which is really what saved the vinyl market in the early 90s. (Which I know because I worked for Shure, the world's largest maker of phono cartridges, at the time. If not for hip-hop DJs, they would have been discontinued.)

Over the past decade or so, some major artists would press a few thousand vinyl copies of their latest CD, partly for DJs, partly for collectors, partly for vanity. Lo and behold, in a world of file-sharing and declining sales, it became a way to sell more music, profitably (as opposed to the pathetic royalty on an iTunes download). So it became a thing. A minor thing.

So now vinyl playback is a niche market, sufficiently overpriced to be profitable, but with so little upside that it's unlikely to draw any serious investors. There's very little actual belief that vinyl is better than a lossless, hi-res digital file. And no one thinks physical objects will replace file-based systems. It's just people playing with their preferred, traditional toys - not unlike major league baseball using wooden bats despite the clear superiority of aluminum.

Ours is a pretty big world, and there's room for lots of weird stuff. This is just one of them.

[ZEE]

In nearly every article I read about music, the article mentions the resurrection of vinyl. It’s not only on the internet, I’ve seen it on TV too (well Hulu…I’m a cord cutter) including Jimmy Fallon, and possibly Colbert too, holding up the vinyl albums for the artists that perform on the show. About a decade ago I had some hipster friends who were into vinyl and PBR. I’ve seen vinyl records for sale in Hastings. Here’s a few articles about vinyl.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/13/uk-vinyl-boom-sends-prices-premium-territory-album

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/vinyl-back-in-the-groove/2180386.html

http://buffalo.com/2015/10/14/news/music/vinyl-mania-2-event-celebrates-popularity-of-vinyl-records/

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6722597/q3-soundscan-2015-taylor-swift-bruno-mars-streaming-surge

http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=161868

I guess what I don’t understand is why or how is vinyl coming back? I thought the lowly CD had killed off vinyl in the early 1990’s and then starting with Napster and going up to Spotify or Apple streaming that the CD was dead. Even iTunes and digital downloads appears to be dying in favor of streaming.

Yet possibly the most inconvenient format – one which is larger than all of its current competitors, one that never really made it into cars, one that nobody ever went jogging with – is experiencing some of the fastest growth of any format. Again why?
My memory of vinyl records consists of when I was a kid my mom would play the vinyl of several Disney animated films (Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella and The Jungle Book were three of them, though there may have been more) to put me and my brother to sleep. The vinyl albums were like a novelization of those movies, something like this maybe http://www.discogs.com/Unknown-Artis...elease/1457633 or this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAjWGzgpa0k They would play and we’d fall asleep and sometimes the record would skip when it reached the end of side and it would wake me up.

Later I found my mom’s vinyl albums when I was like 12. My parents had been really religious when I was a child and the Pentecostal church we went to said all music but gospel would send you hell so we didn’t buy very much music when I young. I was always a reluctant Christian forced and cajoled by both my parents and fear of burning for all eternity. However, once I had a choice at like 14 I opted out of church and quickly became nonreligious. I remember one of her albums being Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell. Seeing my mom own something like that (just based on the cover art because I think my childhood record player was either broke or gone by that point so it wasn’t like I listened to any of her records) was an eye opening moment. It made me see my mom in a different light.

Weird thing is I just typed it into Edge to see the album cover and Groove music popped up with Meatloaf songs ready to play. So I clicked play and today is the first time I’ve ever heard some of those songs. Again modern technology for the win. I heard songs from a 38 year old album by accident and without any effort.

I don’t see vinyl having a long term future with smart phones becoming ever more powerful and widespread. At some point all of the “high res” music feature of the Pono player and other devices will show up in a smart phone phones. Most of today’s music is recorded digitally, so it’s not like the analog from start to finish argument works in favor of vinyl works any longer. Though, on the other hand, since I don’t see a reason for vinyl’s resurgence, I also don’t see a reason for it to go away. I guess people buy it as a cool poster for a band you like that can also play songs if you wish.

What is your experiences with vinyl, what do you think about its comeback and what do you predict for its future?

I love watching/reading the opinions of non-audio people on technical audio topics.

In terms of comparative market size, vinyl is dead. But there's a huge installed base of boomer turntables and record collections out there, owned by the largest generation of music consumers. Not all of whom are digital-ready. Plus there's the DJ and scratch community, which is really what saved the vinyl market in the early 90s. (Which I know because I worked for Shure, the world's largest maker of phono cartridges, at the time. If not for hip-hop DJs, they would have been discontinued.)

Over the past decade or so, some major artists would press a few thousand vinyl copies of their latest CD, partly for DJs, partly for collectors, partly for vanity. Lo and behold, in a world of file-sharing and declining sales, it became a way to sell more music, profitably (as opposed to the pathetic royalty on an iTunes download). So it became a thing. A minor thing.

So now vinyl playback is a niche market, sufficiently overpriced to be profitable, but with so little upside that it's unlikely to draw any serious investors. There's very little actual belief that vinyl is better than a lossless, hi-res digital file. And no one thinks physical objects will replace file-based systems. It's just people playing with their preferred, traditional toys - not unlike major league baseball using wooden bats despite the clear superiority of aluminum.

Ours is a pretty big world, and there's room for lots of weird stuff. This is just one of them.

lol

[korn469]

I love watching/reading the opinions of non-audio people on technical audio topics.

In terms of comparative market size, vinyl is dead. But there's a huge installed base of boomer turntables and record collections out there, owned by the largest generation of music consumers. Not all of whom are digital-ready. Plus there's the DJ and scratch community, which is really what saved the vinyl market in the early 90s. (Which I know because I worked for Shure, the world's largest maker of phono cartridges, at the time. If not for hip-hop DJs, they would have been discontinued.)

Over the past decade or so, some major artists would press a few thousand vinyl copies of their latest CD, partly for DJs, partly for collectors, partly for vanity. Lo and behold, in a world of file-sharing and declining sales, it became a way to sell more music, profitably (as opposed to the pathetic royalty on an iTunes download). So it became a thing. A minor thing.

So now vinyl playback is a niche market, sufficiently overpriced to be profitable, but with so little upside that it's unlikely to draw any serious investors. There's very little actual belief that vinyl is better than a lossless, hi-res digital file. And no one thinks physical objects will replace file-based systems. It's just people playing with their preferred, traditional toys - not unlike major league baseball using wooden bats despite the clear superiority of aluminum.

Ours is a pretty big world, and there's room for lots of weird stuff. This is just one of them.

Well that makes sense to an extent. This chart compares vinyl sales from the early 70’s to 2014 and yes it’s on life support, but making some kind of comeback.



The 2014 number is comparable to the 1988 number, at least in terms of revenue. Since the chart doesn’t appear to have adjusted the numbers for inflation, it’s quite possible the number of vinyl albums sold in 1988 was greater than today. From 1991 to 2006 vinyl albums virtually sold nothing, maybe enough to DJs and the scratch community to keep at least some presses working, but very little. I just don’t see how any consumer could not be digital ready into today’s world where you can find smart phones for less than $100, mp3 players are $20 and people have had decades to transition over. I guess that’s what I have a hard time coming to terms with.

[-Jrabbit]

Not just hip-hop/DJ, but audiophile/hipster and old school legacy equipment people. Fanatics happen. Collectors happen. Also, you do realize that there are people in the world without computers and smartphones, right?

As for market size, people seem to forget that there's much more room for fragmentation in today's marketing. The U.S. had 226 million people in 1980. Now we're a nation of 322 million -- up about 42%. We've scaled up. So there are literally more people -- enough to support more specialty niche markets (like vinyl audio) at fairly miniscule percentages of the overall population. (This micro-economy thing is happening in many industries. Look at craft beer.)

Full disclosure: I have sealed containers with favored phono cartridges and turntables in storage. I will literally be able to listen to vinyl my entire life. But it won't be at the expense of convenient, great-sounding digital toys. I have and use those, too.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I bought most of my vinyl from ~77 to ~81, threw it in a dumpster about 2 years ago after sitting in the closet for years. Haven't had an LP player since ~ 2005. I've got anything important on mp3.

[Ming]

Once my high end turn table stopped working, that was it on vinyl for me. I still have a bunch of albums sitting on a shelf only because they are some of my favorites. While I have digital versions of all of the, I still can't quite bring myself to get rid of them yet.

[Dinner]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UbBaSfgNJnE

[-Jrabbit]

I bought most of my vinyl from ~77 to ~81, threw it in a dumpster about 2 years ago after sitting in the closet for years. Haven't had an LP player since ~ 2005. I've got anything important on mp3.

If literally true and you owned even a moderately representative collection of that era, you threw out a fair amount of cash.

And anything important should be in .WAV or similarly lossless hi-res format.

[Proteus_MST]

If literally true and you owned even a moderately representative collection of that era, you threw out a fair amount of cash.
...

Definitely true

[The Mad Monk]

One of my uncles died about two years ago and I had to remind my parents NOT to throw out the vinyl. Then I had to remind them NOT to sell them at the community garage sale for a buck a piece. Ebay listings added force to my arguments.

[ZEE]

In nearly every article I read about music, the article mentions the resurrection of vinyl. It’s not only on the internet, I’ve seen it on TV too (well Hulu…I’m a cord cutter) including Jimmy Fallon, and possibly Colbert too, holding up the vinyl albums for the artists that perform on the show. About a decade ago I had some hipster friends who were into vinyl and PBR. I’ve seen vinyl records for sale in Hastings. Here’s a few articles about vinyl.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/13/uk-vinyl-boom-sends-prices-premium-territory-album

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/vinyl-back-in-the-groove/2180386.html

http://buffalo.com/2015/10/14/news/music/vinyl-mania-2-event-celebrates-popularity-of-vinyl-records/

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6722597/q3-soundscan-2015-taylor-swift-bruno-mars-streaming-surge

http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=161868

I guess what I don’t understand is why or how is vinyl coming back? I thought the lowly CD had killed off vinyl in the early 1990’s and then starting with Napster and going up to Spotify or Apple streaming that the CD was dead. Even iTunes and digital downloads appears to be dying in favor of streaming.

Yet possibly the most inconvenient format – one which is larger than all of its current competitors, one that never really made it into cars, one that nobody ever went jogging with – is experiencing some of the fastest growth of any format. Again why?
My memory of vinyl records consists of when I was a kid my mom would play the vinyl of several Disney animated films (Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella and The Jungle Book were three of them, though there may have been more) to put me and my brother to sleep. The vinyl albums were like a novelization of those movies, something like this maybe http://www.discogs.com/Unknown-Artis...elease/1457633 or this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAjWGzgpa0k They would play and we’d fall asleep and sometimes the record would skip when it reached the end of side and it would wake me up.

Later I found my mom’s vinyl albums when I was like 12. My parents had been really religious when I was a child and the Pentecostal church we went to said all music but gospel would send you hell so we didn’t buy very much music when I young. I was always a reluctant Christian forced and cajoled by both my parents and fear of burning for all eternity. However, once I had a choice at like 14 I opted out of church and quickly became nonreligious. I remember one of her albums being Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell. Seeing my mom own something like that (just based on the cover art because I think my childhood record player was either broke or gone by that point so it wasn’t like I listened to any of her records) was an eye opening moment. It made me see my mom in a different light.

Weird thing is I just typed it into Edge to see the album cover and Groove music popped up with Meatloaf songs ready to play. So I clicked play and today is the first time I’ve ever heard some of those songs. Again modern technology for the win. I heard songs from a 38 year old album by accident and without any effort.

I don’t see vinyl having a long term future with smart phones becoming ever more powerful and widespread. At some point all of the “high res” music feature of the Pono player and other devices will show up in a smart phone phones. Most of today’s music is recorded digitally, so it’s not like the analog from start to finish argument works in favor of vinyl works any longer. Though, on the other hand, since I don’t see a reason for vinyl’s resurgence, I also don’t see a reason for it to go away. I guess people buy it as a cool poster for a band you like that can also play songs if you wish.

What is your experiences with vinyl, what do you think about its comeback and what do you predict for its future?

I love watching/reading the opinions of non-audio people on technical audio topics.

In terms of comparative market size, vinyl is dead. But there's a huge installed base of boomer turntables and record collections out there, owned by the largest generation of music consumers. Not all of whom are digital-ready. Plus there's the DJ and scratch community, which is really what saved the vinyl market in the early 90s. (Which I know because I worked for Shure, the world's largest maker of phono cartridges, at the time. If not for hip-hop DJs, they would have been discontinued.)

Over the past decade or so, some major artists would press a few thousand vinyl copies of their latest CD, partly for DJs, partly for collectors, partly for vanity. Lo and behold, in a world of file-sharing and declining sales, it became a way to sell more music, profitably (as opposed to the pathetic royalty on an iTunes download). So it became a thing. A minor thing.

So now vinyl playback is a niche market, sufficiently overpriced to be profitable, but with so little upside that it's unlikely to draw any serious investors. There's very little actual belief that vinyl is better than a lossless, hi-res digital file. And no one thinks physical objects will replace file-based systems. It's just people playing with their preferred, traditional toys - not unlike major league baseball using wooden bats despite the clear superiority of aluminum.

Ours is a pretty big world, and there's room for lots of weird stuff. This is just one of them.

Well that makes sense to an extent. This chart compares vinyl sales from the early 70’s to 2014 and yes it’s on life support, but making some kind of comeback.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]177920[/ATTACH]

The 2014 number is comparable to the 1988 number, at least in terms of revenue. Since the chart doesn’t appear to have adjusted the numbers for inflation, it’s quite possible the number of vinyl albums sold in 1988 was greater than today. From 1991 to 2006 vinyl albums virtually sold nothing, maybe enough to DJs and the scratch community to keep at least some presses working, but very little. I just don’t see how any consumer could not be digital ready into today’s world where you can find smart phones for less than $100, mp3 players are $20 and people have had decades to transition over. I guess that’s what I have a hard time coming to terms with.

Not just hip-hop/DJ, but audiophile/hipster and old school legacy equipment people. Fanatics happen. Collectors happen. Also, you do realize that there are people in the world without computers and smartphones, right?

As for market size, people seem to forget that there's much more room for fragmentation in today's marketing. The U.S. had 226 million people in 1980. Now we're a nation of 322 million -- up about 42%. We've scaled up. So there are literally more people -- enough to support more specialty niche markets (like vinyl audio) at fairly miniscule percentages of the overall population. (This micro-economy thing is happening in many industries. Look at craft beer.)

Full disclosure: I have sealed containers with favored phono cartridges and turntables in storage. I will literally be able to listen to vinyl my entire life. But it won't be at the expense of convenient, great-sounding digital toys. I have and use those, too.

Hey you guise I just wanted to put this poast here.