Vinyl Sales Soaring

[richidoo]

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4492288376001/check-it-out-vinyl-sales-soaring-in-digital-age/?#sp=show-clips

Recent media coverage of the vinyl reboom say it's due mostly to young people who are discovering vinyl for the first time... 

I'm not sure I agree with that. What about baby boomers, and foreign buyers of American culture? What do you think?

[richidoo]

Another, pointing again to da yoots...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/business/media/a-vinyl-lp-frenzy-brings-record-pressing-machines-back-to-life.html?_r=0

[topround]

Don't know if Williamsburgh brooklyn is the only hipster mecca of its type or there are other "sanctuary" cities for hipsters. But...in WillyB
hipsters love everything offbeat, and records are right up their alley, like film cameras...
WiilB is all white, rich, trust fun kids, and they buy records. I think we audiophiles are a static statistic, the bump in sales must be from them, at least partially....

[sleepyguy24]

It has got to be the yoots or people with disposable income IMO. Have you all seen the prices of records these days? I see pricing average around $19 per record. That adds up to serious $$$ when you buy a bunch of albums.

Another thing I've seen is LPs for sale at Barnes and Noble and Urban Outfitters with some VERY prominent placing with cool displays.

[richidoo]

Hmm, that's interesting Mike...

I thought that the number of audiophiles were increasing with baby boomer retirements still increasing, but nothing else points to that besides vinyl, so you're probably right!

The actual number of vinyl sales is miniscule compared to other media. So I guess da yoots could achieve this percentage surge. But for how long?

[topround]

Rich,
I see a sort of parallel with our economy.
Rich get richer and the middle class getting squeezed.

Seems in audio, prices get higher and higher, aiming for the well heeled among us, and the rest get the crumbs left behind.
I understand everything has gone up in our lives, but audio gear just seems a bit outlandish these days. When an amp costs more than a car, youknow there is a lot of pork in there!

I am not naive I understand these tactics and who they are aimed for, but they have a consequence., and that is the squeezing out of the middle class audiophiles. And that would result in less audiophiles if you ask me.

and yes, album prices are ridiculously high, and that will eventually lead to less sales, especially as digital becomes easier and easier to use, and content becomes readily available(which it is anyway).

I love vinyl, I know it is still superior to digital, but I also know the vinyl renaissance will not last much longer, not because the media is changing,but because the media is changing people, and how they think.
Vinyl will always be around. This renaissance has the digital world to thank for its resurgence, digital came out, it promised perfection , but fell far short, but it was way cheaper to make cds than records, so it had to be......had to...because of profit, but records were still out there, and people who played records were still out there, so when they had the opportunity to compare, they discovered vinyl was still better, and so a resurgence came to be.
MP3's only helped push the vinyl resurgence even further because they sounded so bad, worse than cds...
But digital is still closing the gap and getting closer, it will get so close that no one will care one day
besides we still have a lot of shitty recording engineers at the controls,so before we even have a chance at good sound we need better engineers
you ever listen to some of the digital recordings from the 80's? yikes
thank god we have improved..alot

sorry for the long winded monologue, I will return to hibernation nowzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[richidoo]

I agree that economy ha affected hifi biz in general, but I assumed yoots were worst off. But that may not be true. Some are wealthy, but others can still find a way to get what they want even with very little money. Young people can adopt extreme priorities! Vinyl comes before food and shelter. I certainly did that! 

[_Scotty_]

If the $15 I spent on Sheffield Labs "Dave Grusin Discovered Again" in 1975 is adjusted for inflation the record would cost about $67. About the time I graduated from high school, The Doobie Brothers "The Captain and Me" cost about $7. The Friday Music 180g release is $29.99 from Music Direct. If the original $7 is adjusted for inflation you would be spending $37.57 for an indifferently pressed massed produced album.
 The price of new vinyl isn't that bad, it's just that very few of us managed to keep up with inflation. $29.99 still looks like a lot of long green to me just as $7 did back in high school.
 That is why I don't have a big collection of vinyl. I couldn't afford it working for minimum wage in high school.
 I will consider that we have a true "Vinyl Renaissance" when the first brand new press is built and in production. As long as 60 year old presses are being put back into service via baling wire and mucilage, vinyl is just hanging on by the skin of its teeth.
Scotty

[tmazz]

Vinyl comes before food and shelter.  

I knew there was a reason I liked you. 

[mdconnelly]

Just anecdotal, but I've gotten to know a band that sells their CDs and vinyl at all of their performances.  Their vinyl paces their CD sales despite it costing $5 more.

I doubt it's due to audiophiles but I wonder if it might be more of a collector mentality (and, yes, a coolness factor).  Music is so easily ripped, shared and/or illegally downloaded these days that I wonder if the appeal of the LP over the CD is simply that it conveys a greater sense of long-term value.

I still love and purchase vinyl some despite the fact that my listening to vinyl is likely less than 1% of all my listening.  If/when I buy a CD, it's just so that I can rip it.  I spin CDs less than I do LPs.   
 

[tmazz]

I wasn't that impressed by the fact that Vinyl sales increased by 50% simply because it is a pretty small base so any decent increase at all will look like a big percentage gain.

However, two things did take me by surprise:
1) how far CD sales have fallen and how close the $ amount of vinyl sales are to the total of CD sales ( $480something for CDs vs $367M for vinyl

2) And while I realize that downloads (itunes etc) are dominating music sales lately ($1.3B) what really took me by surprise was the amount of money being spent on streaming services ($1.03B). I have come to grips with the fact that the market is moving away from physical media period, but I was surprised to see that now people increasingly don't want to be bothered even downloading and storing electronic versions of the files, they are happy to simply pull them out of the cloud when they need them.

What worries me is will the demand for physical media of any type drop to the point where it is no longer economically viable to produce the at all. As much as many of us have a distaste for things like tidal it may be our only hope in the future and rather than push it away in disgust perhaps it would behoove all of us in the hobby to push for streaming system in the future that will be able to carry music of even higher bit rate that the standard Redbook format. It may be our only hope. (Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi......)

[mdconnelly]

Setting aside the appeal of vinyl, technology has clearly arrived such that whether you own digital music or simply stream it is not important (or at least to many).  It's how easily you can access what music you want to hear when and how you want it and the experience you have in doing so.

Software such as Roon (and before that Sooloos) is focusing on the experience of playing music regardless of its source (well, as long as it is digital).  And while I have not (yet) jumped, I do admit that I find it a appealing.

So, if much of the appeal of vinyl is in the experience, then perhaps Roon Labs is on to something.

[Putz]

My daughter and I spent the day together, and for her, an IPhone comes before food and shelter (and breathing and her left nut if she had one).

That being said she loves to listen to my vinyl, especially anything by The Black Keys. And she's bugging me to get her a table. Not too happy when I told her she'd also need an amp and speakers.

She noticed my old Magnavox console and asked me if that had all the components needed. I said it did and now that's what she wants. Thinks the cabinet looks cool.

None of her friends have a vinyl system and she wants to be the first one on the block to get one.

Hopefully she's an outlier amongst the youth of today who show an interest. I do see a lot of kids flippin thru the vinyl bins when I'm in a record store so I'm cautiously optimistic.

[Putz]

She took a picture today and posted to Facebook: 4 likes

[sleepyguy24]

Man Putz. You are a very generous Dad in giving your daughter a VPI Aries as her 1st turntable. Good for you and especially your daughter. Most pics I see of young women and their turntables are those God awful  Crosley TTs. These ladies will have lots of records but just play them on those turntables. Great you are starting your daughter off on the right foot with quality right off the bat.