Vinyl Sales Made More Than Downloads Last Week

[jjbomber]

I though vinyl enthusiasts would all want a pipe and slippers for Christmas, but apparently not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38221420

 

[muljao]

I was in Cork city the other day and there was a load of vinyl in the few music shops, way more than I've seen for years.

So more buying lps, and probably less downloads also with Spotify/deezer/apple etc, all with their paying base increasing

 

[seemorebtts]

This is great news as bad compression is killing music.i don't have a turntable but this could save are music.my mate buy's records coz they look good

 

[nopiano]

That's more LPs than seemed to have been sold in a year about a decade ago. Incredible!

 

[lovstromp]

This is great news as bad compression is killing music.i don't have a turntable but this could save are music.my mate buy's records coz they look good

Don't they just transfer their digital masters? And don't cd's have wider range than LPs?
Having inherited stacks of records I'd love to get a TT at some point

 

[jjbomber]

Don't they just transfer their digital masters? And don't cd's have wider range than LPs? Having inherited stacks of records I'd love to get a TT at some point

Didn't a test show that 22% of CDs on Amazon were fake? I expect that is why so much CDs are poor, rather than the mastering. Just a hunch, that's all.

 

[hybridauth_Facebook_100004211376004]

Turntables and vinyl is just so much more involving and youngsters are finding this out for themselves.I loved buying vinyl as a teenager and getting it home on the turntable,grabbing the cover and inner sleeve and absorbing as much info as I could.....mp3's and downloads just can't match it for that feeling and ownership value.I know it doesn't mean much to some but to others it's everything and adds so much to the overall listening experience,it also encourages you to listen to an album in it's entirety without skipping through tracks....it's how the classic album was born and I doubt very much that modern albums that might have been regarded as classic will be noticed as such again with the way we consume music these days.Unless that is IF Vinyl really does become the most popular way of listening to music but I won't hold my breath.But it's great to see and hear it in a healthier state.As for the folks who say's it's inferior to this medium or that medium.....I don't care..I love playing my vinyl.

 

[chebby]

I would find only a tiny percentage of the content I enjoy available on LPs, so long live the CD (and to a lesser extent the download).

Otherwise it's radio for me. (BBC iPlayer, and BBC FM.)

My musical needs (hardly anything from the UK or USA any more) are amply catered for by Apple Music or Spotify Premium.(Leaving me with hundreds of no longer wanted CDs of UK and US originated rock/pop/reggae/soul etc. "wallpaper" music representing the rather dubious tastes of my youth.)

A nice looking old turntable is still a lovely thing to watch (ornamentally/aesthetically) but that's about it for me. I'd struggle to find anything i'd want to play on one.

 

[MajorFubar]

Turntables and vinyl is just so much more involving and youngsters are finding this out for themselves.

I'm not really sure youngsters find LPs far more involving at all. Of the 48% of record buyers who actually have a record player, probably 47% of that 48% have a Crossley or a Steepletone which sound immeasurably worse than their phone. I just think for the moment retro is cool with the bearded man-bunned hipster types. Long may it continue I say, but the bubble will burst.

 

[hybridauth_Facebook_100004211376004]

Fair enough Major your probably right but out of those hipsters, crossley and steepletone unfortunates will emerge a hi-fi enthusiast or two....hopefully . it's in our nature to get better than what we already have.....is it not?or maybe I'm just over optimistic.

 

[Gazzip]

...is all this is. It's a fad, phase call it what you like. I am now 43 and was 16 in the late eighties. CD's were just a fad back then and were way more expensive than records, but I was still buying them. Why? Because they were new, my parents didn't understand them and the marketing world told us they sounded better. I wasn't listening to music like mum and dad listened to music. I was different. I was of my generation and my generation was doing it and hearing it better.

Fast forward 20 years and many of us spotty teenage pioneers of the digital age are now churning out our own crop of youths. Our kids see us oldies with our collections of 1000's of CD's gathered over a couple of decades of which we are so proud, and they think no thanks to that. That is definitely not so cool. So they buy records, which are different, which are their thing and which interestingly the marketing machine say sound better. Which they don't. Come 2040 when CD's are all but extinct you can bet that our kids kids will bring them back.

Unfortunately for my kids I have a wide collection of both records and CD's, so they are fu@ked.

 

[MajorFubar]

Fair enough Major your probably right but out of those hipsters, crossley and steepletone unfortunates will emerge a hi-fi enthusiast or two....hopefully . it's in our nature to get better than what we already have.....is it not?or maybe I'm just over optimistic.

You'd think some might...which is a good thing Depends whether or not their early disappointing experience puts them off. We live in a world where most <35 year olds buying records have no experience or knowledge of their sonic potential beyond these nasty plastic things which sound terrible. Yeah of course when I was youngster kids still owned nasty plastic record players which sounded terrible, but we always knew someone with at least half decent kit because turntables were the main source.

 

[steve_1979]

Simple reason. Records make good Christmas pressies for children and last week was their parents pay day week.

Also have you ever tried wrapping a downloaded MP3 file in Christmas paper? It's a b**ch.

 

[jjbomber]

Simple reason. Records make good Christmas pressies for children and last week was their parents pay day week.

Also have you ever tried wrapping a downloaded MP3 file in Christmas paper? It's a b**ch.

Even worse, try getting one signed by a band after a gig. Impossible.

 

[Gazzip]

Simple reason. Records make good Christmas pressies for children and last week was their parents pay day week.

Also have you ever tried wrapping a downloaded MP3 file in Christmas paper? It's a b**ch.

Even worse, try getting one signed by a band after a gig. Impossible.

Or eating your dinner off one.

 

[nopiano]

That's more LPs than seemed to have been sold in a year about a decade ago. Incredible!

Thanks to an article in today's Times newspaper I see that vinyl sales fell from a peak of 92million in 1975 to just 205,000 in 2007. So my speculation of 120,000 sold last week as almost a year's sales at the lowest ebb wasn't too wide of the mark.

 

[FunkyMonkey]

obviously they/we don't buy vinyl for the sound quality. If that was our main concern, we woudl all buy SACD's.