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CD vs Vinyl prices?

Minio

Minio

Kind of Sort of Not really...
Looking for some new (to me) vinyl I came across a copy of Soft Machine Seven for £25. OK.That sounds like the going rate I suppose.

I kept on browsing and next I found new issues of 5 Classic Soft Machine albums, in one box (including Seven), on CD for around £17.
Oh my dilemna!

Do bargain box CD prices dampen your vinyl ardour to some extent?
 
If a recording is that good, I usually end up with both. Has to be that good 'though. :)
 
Minio said:
Do bargain box CD prices dampen your vinyl ardour to some extent?
Click to expand...

No, not really, I still buy loads of new LP's, but hardly ever new CD's. I do buy loads of 2nd hand CD's though; mostly from pfm! I do agree though, that some of those CD boxes are remarkable vlaue and I do have a few of those.
 
Yes. I bought a CD box from Sainsburys for about 2 or 3 quid called Art of Jazz 1959.
It had 6 classic albums on it, including Miles Davis KOB and Coltrane Blue Train.
The sq on the KOB was so good I took it to a hifi dem. Even the sales guy was amazed at how such budget material could compliment his thousands of quids worth of gear so well.
 
paulfromcamden said:
When (as if often the case now) the vinyl is close to £30 and the CD can be had for £8 I often dither and end up buying neither!
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I know some people are die hard vinyl junkies but paying around 4 times as much for it doesn't give me 4 times the sound quality.
The main reason for paying over the odds for vinyl can only be the nostalgia and the nice 12" album covers.
Possibly?
 
I have stopped buying vinyl on principal now as it seems a massive rip off. When I started buying it in late 90s, a new release album on vinyl (if it could be found) was either the same price as a CD or very slightly more expensive. Nowadays it is three times the price and they are producing far more of it than they ever did twenty years ago.
 
Case in point, I was looking yesterday for Steve Mason's Monkey Minds in the Devil's Time from 2013. New CD, cheapest price about £8. New vinyl, £18. Used vinyl, £24 (there's only 1 vinyl version listed on Discogs so they'd be the same). Go figure.
 
I'm not sure if vinyl has necessarily got more expensive in real terms. According to the Bank of England £9 in 1987 when I started buying LPs is £25 in todays money.

CDs have certainly got a lot cheaper by comparison though so it feels harder (for me!) to part with the readies.
 
paulfromcamden said:
I'm not sure if vinyl has necessarily got more expensive in real terms. According to the Bank of England £9 in 1987 when I started buying LPs is £25 in todays money.

CDs have certainly got a lot cheaper by comparison though so it feels harder (for me!) to part with the readies.
Click to expand...
My impression is that the price was held down relative to inflation for a long time (why?) and then quite suddenly there was some (over?) compensation. Quite recently too: ISTM that in the late noughties “special” releases could be arbitrarily priced, but then around 2010-11 almost everything seemed to be suddenly much more expensive. I remember going to Selectadisc (usually the best prices in London) to buy Let England Shake, seeing it in the window for £17.99 and thinking WTF? Their price for a regular release around that time was more like 12 or 13 quid IIRC.

It was around the time of the VAT increase and I thought at the time, They’re using that as an opportunity to jack prices.

TLDR: It’s all the Tories’ fault!
 
Minio said:
Yes. I bought a CD box from Sainsburys for about 2 or 3 quid called Art of Jazz 1959.
It had 6 classic albums on it, including Miles Davis KOB and Coltrane Blue Train.
The sq on the KOB was so good I took it to a hifi dem. Even the sales guy was amazed at how such budget material could compliment his thousands of quids worth of gear so well.
Click to expand...

Out of copyright I presume.

Tim
 
Minio said:
Do bargain box CD prices dampen your vinyl ardour to some extent?
Click to expand...

I binge-buy CDs, both new and second hand, it is often a great way to get great music cheaply. I still buy vinyl, though any opportunistic random second hand buying has stopped thanks to covid 19 as I can’t visit my favourite shops anymore (and has therefore largely killed the pfm record shop for a while), but I’m still buying new vinyl mail order. My taste is for the very limited obscure self-produced or small-label stuff, that stuff is well worth the asking price and tends to become very valuable. As an example of the 10 or so LPs I’ve bought this year three have either hand painted or screen-printed covers, one other was a limited edition of 200, another of 100. I’ve no interest in buying bog-standard reissues of anything, in that case I’ll either wait until I find a mint original, or buy the best CD or SACD mastering.
 
There are a lot of new jazz releases (usually via Bandcamp) where the only options are of a limited CD release or file download. In this instance I'll buy the CD (you get the files in FLAC/AIFF format anyway). In the instances where you get all three options - vinyl, CD and download files - I tend to get the vinyl copy as they are usually limited edition pressings (you still get the files), so has a future market value (theoretically).

For general releases, my rule is to buy the vinyl if its a limited run or a 'superior' pressing (e.g. the Blue Note Tone Poet/BN80 releases). CDs in most other cases: I'm too old and 'old school' for purely downloaded hi-res files - streaming fills that need.
 
It did start to feel a few years ago that vinyl was being marketed as a luxury item.

An extreme example is the Triple Point label currently offering a Bill DIxon / Cecil Taylor double LP for $94 (plus shipping!)

On the other hand vinyl from the German label Jazzwerkstatt always seem to be reasonably priced (their website lists the wholesale price for an LP as € 8)
 
This is quite fascinating. There must have been a point in time when vinyl prices overtook CD prices.

I remember the days when CD was the latest thing. And the most expensive way to buy music.

How times do change.

PS I gave in and bought the 5 album CD set of Soft Machine for less than one vinyl LP. Doh!
 
I do still buy the occasional LP but tend to buy far more CDs. I find that sometimes the release is not available on CD. Most recent example was The Microphones - Microphones in 2020 (Bandcamp). LP looks beautiful but it's expensive.
 
With vinyl now often more expensive than hi-res downloads I haven't bought an LP for over a year despite having some really nice equipment to play it with.
 
When my CD player equalled the quality of my modded Technics I naturally moved to CD.
Haven't bought an LP for a few years now.
Then there's the price, and the convenience of CD
 
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