Vinyl is more alive than ever
- Thread starter GT
- Start date
By numbers or value? It appears vinyl is still able to support a considerable number of bricks and mortar retail outlets plus a considerable online presence - which is more than the alternatives have been able to sustain. I have no new CD retailer near me (supermarkets excepted) but have a choice of at least half a dozen vinyl outlets which appear to be thriving. Would Amazon continue to serve a tiny niche?
I have long believed vinyl sales are under-represented in the industry statistics we get presented with for a host of reasons.
Don't know whether Tony has any observations on this, but presumably his vinyl business isn't terribly well represented in the BPI stats either...
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
That's certainly how The Iliad survived for several centuries.
Barrymagrec
pfm Member
How many of these vinyl outlets sell only new product? Amazon is surely a different thing, as an online retailer they only have to find a shelf in the warehouse, they don`t have to justify whole premises to serve only a small area.
Again,, the distinction is not so simple. Is a great painting the physical painting or some 'idea' it represents? Ideas (consciousness, if you will) can only be conveyed through physical expression...we have no access to the mental activities of other people, except through their physical activities. And artifacts are one of the main activities through which us humans express our ideas and feelings.
Re-reading this, I seem to be turning into a Bhuddist, or some other form of '...ist'. Perhaps it's a reaction to the plodding, grey, literalism which sometimes infects pfm.
I imagine some of these people existing on survivalist rations, proclaiming that ordinary food is wasteful and unnecessary. And they'l have lots of graphs to 'prove' it.
And it's also why we don't know how authentic the Iliad actually is.
paskinn's analogy isn't great because a Georgian house is a carrier format for what precisely?
I am less interested in the container than the philosophical considerations of the contained, musical necrophilia is everywhere and as a composer in L plates I am continually seeing people not in the audience mistake the packaged recorded music (in all its site specificity and performance and location imperfections) as canon and all else after it is "recreation of canon" and implicit in that is a whole dark area of "what is canon?"
For Georgian people the layout and the building material considerations, lighting, door placement floor arrangement, room height and dimensions and window placement are dictated by certain material, aesthetic and historically stylistic elements, a person today would regard it as a shell, gut it and make it comfy for a modern person to live in, unless they were some kind of history buff and wanted to make their house a theme park for a bygone Lifestyle.
Its tricky stuff, for me, like all of us here "a love supreme" "is" the recording -- the frozen captured moment is all we will ever get to hear of it, but is the recording the composition? Is that the breadth and width of what Coltrane was trying to convey?
Personally I do not think so and that is why I listen to the music in certain ways, to look at the structure, the material bricks and mortar of the edifice to try and gain insight into what is implied but not necessarily stated.
That's why I do what I do and is the only thing I am confident at.
I am less interested in the container than the philosophical considerations of the contained, musical necrophilia is everywhere and as a composer in L plates I am continually seeing people not in the audience mistake the packaged recorded music (in all its site specificity and performance and location imperfections) as canon and all else after it is "recreation of canon" and implicit in that is a whole dark area of "what is canon?"
For Georgian people the layout and the building material considerations, lighting, door placement floor arrangement, room height and dimensions and window placement are dictated by certain material, aesthetic and historically stylistic elements, a person today would regard it as a shell, gut it and make it comfy for a modern person to live in, unless they were some kind of history buff and wanted to make their house a theme park for a bygone Lifestyle.
Its tricky stuff, for me, like all of us here "a love supreme" "is" the recording -- the frozen captured moment is all we will ever get to hear of it, but is the recording the composition? Is that the breadth and width of what Coltrane was trying to convey?
Personally I do not think so and that is why I listen to the music in certain ways, to look at the structure, the material bricks and mortar of the edifice to try and gain insight into what is implied but not necessarily stated.
That's why I do what I do and is the only thing I am confident at.
Mescalito
pfm Member
There is absolutely nothing of intrinsic artistic worth in 5 ozs of PVC in a cardboard sleeve.
It is a container, identical to probably 100s of billions produced over the last half century.
The thing of worth is the music it is encoded with.
Containers which can store the music in a more faithful, acurate & robust format have superceded the vinyl disc.
Chris
I would say that actions and interactions rather than things we gather around us are the main method by which we express ideas and feelings; that an artefact my be a consequence of an action is (to me) missing the point of what triggered that artefact to come into being in the first place.
Ms fox knits and gives away her mittens, scarves and doodads to anyone and everyone... the expression is not in the mittens per se but the thought behind the action that enables its expression, the mitten is the carrier for a much bigger idea.
dudywoxer
pfm Member
Is hard disc really more robust, I have the odd scratched slab of vinyl, I also have assorted dead hard drives. Vinyl, and its various forms of playback neuroses have been replaced in some areas with hard disc storage, ands it back up neuroses.
Mescalito
pfm Member
John
Rack’em Up!
Interesting quote from the article that hits home with me though I seldom stream and own no digital music. I wonder if that quote hits home with others?
I was sick of forgetting what music I owned digitally and what I was streaming. When I bought CDs regularly I never lost track of what I had. Once I’d made the move to digital I kept losing files and finding myself falling out of love with an art form that had dominated my life ever since I was 13 and first played a vinyl copy of The Beatles’ blue album.
I like looking through my records to see what I want to play. I also like organizing them in different categories, ie. genre, newness, favorite(keepers), in rotation, label, alphabetical, least played. All this adds to my ease and enjoyment in finding something to listen to. I also like the history involved behind acquiring all these artifacts. When folks come over it's nice that they can look through my records and pick out ones they want to listen to.
I'm taking care of my records and hope they will be enjoyed by others when I pass on.
I was sick of forgetting what music I owned digitally and what I was streaming. When I bought CDs regularly I never lost track of what I had. Once I’d made the move to digital I kept losing files and finding myself falling out of love with an art form that had dominated my life ever since I was 13 and first played a vinyl copy of The Beatles’ blue album.
I like looking through my records to see what I want to play. I also like organizing them in different categories, ie. genre, newness, favorite(keepers), in rotation, label, alphabetical, least played. All this adds to my ease and enjoyment in finding something to listen to. I also like the history involved behind acquiring all these artifacts. When folks come over it's nice that they can look through my records and pick out ones they want to listen to.
I'm taking care of my records and hope they will be enjoyed by others when I pass on.
Mescalito
pfm Member
He must have had some really crap control point software.
I have about 25000 CDs on my NAS. I can locate & play any track in seconds.
I can set up categories in the control point software any way I like..alphabetivcal, genre, wife's favourites, date acquired, date recorded, by record label. Least & most plyed is calculated automatically.
And I don't have to put everything back in it's case/cover at the end of a session. Records/CDs never end up in the wrong covers/cases, never get scratched, damaged, nicked at parties, left in the car player.
Chris
maxflinn
pfm Member
I can fully understand this and I expect many others feel the same.
There is a tiny but enthusiastic market for used LPs and singles. How many are principally collectors or "investors" I don't know. I used to be one of them when it seemed to me to be good value. I am not now since the collector value of the discs is w-a-y higher than what I am prepared to pay for some of the discs which are available on CD for less, often many times less.
I have streaming capability I use too but they seem too much like computers, reliability wise, to be a satisfactory domestic music playing format for me personally.
I have streaming capability I use too but they seem too much like computers, reliability wise, to be a satisfactory domestic music playing format for me personally.
Most of my younger DJ mates have little or no knowledge of File compression, lossless vs lossy, and the varying formats available.
A lot of their music has come from downloads, or poor iTunes rips, and their CDs are often created from substandard digital sources purely in order to 'scratch' from CDJs.
So no wonder there's a market of youngsters (age is a relative thing) out there who's first experience of uncompressed music is Vinyl (there is no MP3 equivalent of an album...flexi disk perhaps), plus it has that DJ kudos thing of strolling down a Shorditch street with record case.
The record industry have seized the opportunity, pushed the medium, and inflated the prices accordingly...no danger of perfect copies, and extra revenue from the inflated prices too.
For myself I still have all my old vinyl, buy everything on CD, but listen almost exclusively to lossless file based music, ripped from my CDs., full meta data, and securely backed up along with my server, and accessible from 5 systems in my house.
The best solution is always context based, I've worked with computers since punched cards and teletypes, so going the file based route is a no brainer for me...for others it's probably an unwanted learning curve, for limited perceived benefit.
A lot of their music has come from downloads, or poor iTunes rips, and their CDs are often created from substandard digital sources purely in order to 'scratch' from CDJs.
So no wonder there's a market of youngsters (age is a relative thing) out there who's first experience of uncompressed music is Vinyl (there is no MP3 equivalent of an album...flexi disk perhaps), plus it has that DJ kudos thing of strolling down a Shorditch street with record case.
The record industry have seized the opportunity, pushed the medium, and inflated the prices accordingly...no danger of perfect copies, and extra revenue from the inflated prices too.
For myself I still have all my old vinyl, buy everything on CD, but listen almost exclusively to lossless file based music, ripped from my CDs., full meta data, and securely backed up along with my server, and accessible from 5 systems in my house.
The best solution is always context based, I've worked with computers since punched cards and teletypes, so going the file based route is a no brainer for me...for others it's probably an unwanted learning curve, for limited perceived benefit.
I'm feeling a bit mischievous today
Firstly the normal clarification of what sort of compression I mean, firstly lossy compression to fit more music into a given space, then dynamic range compression to lift the quiet music away from the noise.
In fact the LP was and is the equivalent in the analogue domain of lossy compression such as MP3. For mechanical reasons to do with cutting a continuous groove and replay it with practical equipment it -is- lossily compressed compared to the tape original, in that certain information is discarded when cutting an LP which can not be recovered.
Also, since the dynamic range of LP is limited, dynamic range compression is more necessary on LP than CD (even though a lot of pop CDs have huge dynamic range compression in recent years, this is a marketing feature rather than a technical requirement).
Its a great feeling standing in front of a wall or two of music and just letting the eye fall on the spine of... something, it's probably still the best and only way to decide what to play in a physical collection, but in time you adjust, you develop new skills and new tools to help navigate larger music collections, potentially limitless global libraries and also open yourself up to intelligent agents that find new music you might possibly like based on what you like in your habits. I have spent weeks never playing the same thing twice and just letting the system take me to places I would never go, listening to what is recommended by playlists crowdsourced by my own preferences it's quite exhilarating. Its different, much like the days of radio and I am sure ceding that control would have given me the willies a few years back.
Neither approach is right or wrong, better or worse: we are no better or worse off for the disappearance of carrier formats because humans adapt to whatever circumstances throw at us, the music remains with us, more so than ever its just served up in ways we are not accustomed to and user interfaces are constantly catching up and being experimented with. It's certainly not a thing for me to get too worked up about. I miss going on music buying reccies but I don't miss the complex chain of hardware required to play it.
For me my biggest conundrum is what to do with all the space freed up, just a few books, no DVDs no CDs no vinyl. I am almost scared to start filling it up... with less stuff you need less space and a modern digital streamer with DAC now need only be the size of a fag packet so no need for hifi racks, its an unimaginably simple aesthetic really. I don't know how I feel about the experience. Weirded out.
Neither approach is right or wrong, better or worse: we are no better or worse off for the disappearance of carrier formats because humans adapt to whatever circumstances throw at us, the music remains with us, more so than ever its just served up in ways we are not accustomed to and user interfaces are constantly catching up and being experimented with. It's certainly not a thing for me to get too worked up about. I miss going on music buying reccies but I don't miss the complex chain of hardware required to play it.
For me my biggest conundrum is what to do with all the space freed up, just a few books, no DVDs no CDs no vinyl. I am almost scared to start filling it up... with less stuff you need less space and a modern digital streamer with DAC now need only be the size of a fag packet so no need for hifi racks, its an unimaginably simple aesthetic really. I don't know how I feel about the experience. Weirded out.
Anh
Naim ghetto blaster
There is still that snag about computerised music collections.
Non-IT experienced people will be confused about the concept of music being stored as data files and how modern OS' try to dumb things down by automatically arranging the location and folders of your music and putting up smoke and mirrors such using libraries and playlists as the only logical way of locating and managing music, Windows media player is a prime culprit for this.
Then again, if people can find the skill and co-ordination to lay down an LP and carefully place the tone arm onto the grove of the track they want to play then they should be able to understand how music is stored on a computer and how to manage it.