Least Surprising News of the Millenium

A recent study found that around 50% of the current buyers of vinyl don't actually own a record player. I'm guessing 99% of current cassette buyers have never even been in the same room as a cassette player.

It's the same demographic as people who buy pre-ripped jeans or dressers and cabinets pre-painted to look like they were pulled straight out of a crumbling farmhouse. They want the trappings of a life they have no desire to actually live.

I lived the life of buying vinyl and it was swell, but all I really want now is the ability to buy music in a physical format that I can actually afford.

Paradoxically, I own a record player and have hundreds of records I've never played. Simply due to not having the free time!

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Well said, Brad! My first thought when LPs began resurging was that kids were buying them to hang on their walls. (Perhaps there is a whole market waiting out there for LP covers with no LPs.)

> (Perhaps there is a whole market waiting out there for LP covers with no LPs.)

Like Lorde's most recent album, whose download was released in a CD case without a CD in it?

ira Wrote:
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> Well said, Brad! My first thought when LPs began resurging was that kids were buying them to hang on their walls.

I have two hanging on my wall, both soundtracks. One is "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." The other is "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" (the new one with this cover art). The former I bought long before ever considering it as wall art, but the other I bought expressly for that purpose because I thought it looked so darn cool. I also take it out for a listen sometimes as well. But that's TWO out of the hundreds I own. I can't comprehend buying an album with no intention of listening.

Yet they have enough money to spend $25-35 on vinyl as merch they can't listen to? Damn.

I still buy (and listen to) vinyl, but I'm mostly looking in the used bins for treasures from the past. Still, even in that pursuit, the economics are catching up to me. For example, on Discogs, a VG+ copy of New Order's 2-LP comp Substance, shipped from an American vendor, starts at $90. (A few copies are available from foreign vendors, but the shipping costs often can outstrip the purchase price ... assuming the vendor will give you a quote on the shipping charges up front.)

How can they justify charging that much for an album which was popular enough to go gold and must still be in print (although maybe not on vinyl)?

I was at the dinky little record store in Carbondale, IL a week ago and they had a used copy of Angst In My Pants on the wall for $80.

Then again, half of the record store's space had been converted to a hair salon (that you have to pass through the record store to get to) since the last time I'd been there, so crazily inflated prices on used albums doesn't seem to be enough of a money maker to pay their rent.

This reminds me of this Ted Gioia column I read just a few days ago.

The vinyl revival has always been as much about souvenirs as listening experiences. Ditto the cassette revival*. Kids who didn't grow up with it, but think it's cool, buy it off the merch table at shows to support their favorites and get a memory item from the show, but never take it out of the shrinkwrap. Instead, as Gioia points out, they stream the music when they want to actually listen to it.

I went back to buying vinyl in the past few years, depending on, well, a lot of factors too obscure to explain, but I also still buy plenty of CDs - indeed, moreso than vinyl. I have some albums on vinyl I would've bought on CD had they been available, but weren't. (Vinyl and DL-only albums is a big thing amongst Austin's indie musicians these days, despite the high expense and long wait for the goods.)

I agree on the prices for new vinyl. (Collectibles depend on market fluctuation and nerdly desire, of course.) It's hard to justify, even more so now that we're in a recession. I suspect the high price will keep money-conscious consumers away from it in the next couple of years, slowing its growth and contributing to its second demise (at least as a mass product). Unless there's a CD revival in the offing (and the jury's still out on that), that will mean the death of physical product in terms of music, which more than one industry watcher and writer has claimed is the major labels' goal.

*About ten years ago, a buddy of mine took his band on what ended up being one of their final tours. One of his bandmates insisted that they press (?) up some copies of the latest album on cassette, which my friend thought was ridiculous. But he did it, and darned if the cassettes were the only piece of merch from that tour to sell out. I personally don't own a working cassette player, and won't be acquiring one.

In a video he released today, musician/YouTuber Benn Jordan said that running his own label selling physical media didn't work out for him financially, with vinyl (packaging included) costing $19/album. Then he had to pay for postage and packaging materials, and he found that he had to sell an album for $32 to break even on mail order sales.

I also expect CDs to get revived soon, probably for $10 more than they retail at now. I love the availability of $1-2 used CDs at thrift stores at the moment.

Same here. For years (decades?) vinyl was usually no more than 99cents. Now, a beat-up warped record is at least $4-5 at a Goodwill, even as CDs are merely a buck or two. I’m making some pretty cool ‘90s discoveries.

While intriguing hypotheses were explored in Ted Gioia's article, his error was to consider the music industry as a business. It's more closely akin to a loan-sharking operation than a legitimate business! Hence the essential uselessness of his theorizing!

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Just for laughs, let's consider one of the most notorious releases in the history of the record business: the Kiss solo albums.

As you undoubtedly know, these four albums all were released on the same day in 1978 -- arguably at the peak of Kiss' popularity. Neil Bogart, the president of Casablanca Records, hyped the living hell out of this multi-album onslaught, and then shipped a total of five million vinyl albums to record stores.

Well, the four albums together sold about half that number. Thanks to the record industry's then-standing policy of allowing unlimited returns from retailers, the other half were shipped back to Casablanca as surplus. Within less than two years, Neil Bogart cut his losses and sold the label to Polygram. (He died two years after the sale.) That acquisition ended up, in the short term, as a millstone around Polygram's neck. Even discounting the returned merchandise and relegating it to the cutout bins didn't make up the sunk cost of those four albums.

Today, if you go shopping on Discogs.com, you can purchase one of those remaindered copies from 1978 -- still in the sealed shrink wrap, with the cutout mark visible -- from an American vendor, for as little as $37 plus shipping.

Ahhh, Kiss ... as a journalist once said, "They went out as cheese, and came back as ... fromage."

Here's another hilarious example (in case it were needed) that this collectors' market is getting ridiculous.

Browsing a particular vendor (based on his/her inventory including something I did want), I spotted an original copy of the UK release of Are You Experienced? The vendor rated the vinyl itself as Poor and the sleeve as Very Good. I quote the vendor: "Record is beyond scratched; really bad. But OK copy of cover; some big creases, but functional. More like VG-."

And yet the vendor thinks that this chewed-to-shit copy of Hendrix's debut, in a sleeve that's functional at best, will be worth $30 to someone.