UK vinyl market sees 70 per cent increase in 2012 (1 Viewer)

the strange thing is that some of the independent record stores (who specialised in vinyl) have gone to the wall in the last year (including one of my local shops that had been going for over 25 years.) With the last remaining high street chain going into administration (HMV) there is the possibility that these independents can continue though, and with that maybe new kids will look and think: "what are those oversized plastic CDs? They'd look great next to my Atari console and orange plastic chair. If only I could get my wallet out of these skin-tight leather flares."

On another note, I've been thinking of finally selling my Tascam 4-track and I was amazed to see how much people will pay for one on ebay; especially as it seems increasingly difficult to source cassette tapes. If anyone is interested in that, or my Gramophone mixing desk then drop me a PM.
 
Is it the big old Portastudio 244? I had one of those, they were great machines.

There are dozens of record stores in Los Angeles. Most of them tiny, some fairly good sized and one huge. And for the record (get it? See what I did there?) I still buy old vinyl. But not if I can get the same record on CD. Any CD made in the last 10 or 15 years puts any vinyl to shame as far as sound goes. I cringe when I have to play an LP, but if that's the only place the music lives, so be it.

You can say one good thing about kids buying LPs though - it's keeping the long form alive. The kids who don't listen to albums find the idea of hearing 10 or 12 songs by the same artist ("You mean, like, in a row?!") to be absurd. I don't blame them. That's a long time to keep two little pieces of hard plastic jammed into your earholes.
 
I'm going to start scouring Southern California thrift shops for 19" Sony Trinitrons. I should be able to accumulate a warehouse full of them for $5 or $10 apiece. It's only a matter of time before people start waxing nostalgic for them ("The analog picture is so warm!"), and when that happens I'll make a fortune selling them for $1200 a pop on eBay ($2500 if you want a Betamax VCR to go with it).
 
It's quite funny I suppose that dance music in the 90s (which a lot of people thought wasn't 'proper' music) is what pretty much saved vinyl from oblivion. Well, I think it's funny anyway. The rise of the 'Superstar DJ' was the downside to that though.
 
You're right. And people used to say disco sucks. They just weren't looking at the big picture!

The idea of a DJ as a creative entity is an amusing thing. I suppose it comes from the old rap DJs being the musical backbone of those groups. Some chimp playing records (sorry, spinning) in a club is not creative. Yet it's somehow become a path to low grade stardom.

Take away the records and all you've got is an idiot in funny pants with one side of a pair of headphones cradled between their ear and shoulder, wishing everyone in the room would just look at them.
 
The idea of a DJ as a creative entity is an amusing thing. I suppose it comes from the old rap DJs being the musical backbone of those groups. Some chimp playing records (sorry, spinning) in a club is not creative. Yet it's somehow become a path to low grade stardom.
There's a degree of skill involved in DJ-ing, especially if you look at the technical stuff like scratching as you get with hip-hop DJs and the like but if you're just talking about beat-matching / mixing records then I really don't see what the big deal is. As someone who has had limited success at trying to play the guitar and has also tried a bit of 'DJ-ing' in the past I can tell you that there's no real comparison in the level of skill required. Basically, if you've got a little bit of rhythm, can count to 16 and can listen to two tunes at once then you can DJ with a little bit of practice. That said, I do think a good DJ is a good entertainer of a crowd in a club, but that's all he/she is. Some of the hero worship some of them received (and still do) is a little bit silly. Back in the 90s there was this guy called Jeremy Healy (who was basically a glorified version of some guy playing records at a wedding) who could command up £10,000 (YES! TEN THOUSAND!) per gig (maybe only playing an hour) and who was fully booked all the time. Crazy stuff. I was more of a techno man myself.
As for the creativity involved, well, it's someone else's tunes, isn't it? And while we're opening up here, I feel I should admit I don't mind a bit of disco now and again (Chic and the like). We all have our guilty pleasures though, eh? ;)

there's a group of baristas and mixologists outside that would like a word with you...:DD
Hey, I mix a mean Martini I'll have you know.
 
"The playing time of the music dictates the number of grooves on the disc..."

Eh, what? No.

There is one single (very long) groove on each side of every record. If there were more than one groove a record wouldn't play continually from the beginning to end of the side, would it.

The playing time of the music dictates how many times that single groove will circle the record.


Better copy of that film here.
 
There is one single (very long) groove on each side of every record.
An exception being the 12" LP version of Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief. One of the sides (side two, if I recall) has a double groove; if you put the needle down at the usual spot, you get one groove but if you put it down a bit further from the edge, you get a second groove that spirals aongside the first groove. Seriously; there are two separate grooves on one side of a good ole vinyl LP.

I know this because I am a total geek my college roommate had a copy and showed me how it works - and I nailed groove 1 and groove 2 more than a few times, despite the reality of college in the early/mid-80s.
 
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Yes. I remember that there were also some novelty kids records in the 50s and 60s that had multiple grooves. They were story records, and depending on which groove you hit, the story would have a different ending.
 
Thanks, d gray,
I can't relate much to metal, but that's a generation thing, I am sure.
I like him too. He sure has the looks of Hank senior.
 
"I don't have much of my grand dad's stuff, you know...a tie...a gun...and this [acetate]."

Hank Williams' gun? I'd buy that.
 
I am moving for the second time in 12 years. When I moved here from San Francisco I pick one box and had to decide which albums would fit in that one box. The rest went on the street. Well that one box sat in the attic for 12 years. Tomorrow, I am bringing them to the bar and accepting all offers -- three albums for a PBR is my best hope. In any case, this is not my Who collection, which I'm sure I'll only get 20 cents on the dollar from when I bought them between 1984 and 1988. This market went to shit and my back can't take hauling them around anymore.
 
This is a UK sleeve I came across during my record sale. If they only knew what was coming down the tracks... Seems funny now.

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Yeah but that's not so hard to do. Have you seen the price of "new" vinyl? Yikes. And compared to the price of digital music it's ridiculous.
 
Right, vinyl can be almost twice as expensive as a CD, which is why it's amazing vinyl outsells CDs and downloads.
Is there really that big a difference between listening to an album on vinyl compared to the same album on CD?
 
There's a price difference, for sure, and that's what leads to that headline. Ironically, LPs are now in the price bubble that CDs were in when they first came out. They're expensive because they're a niche item. No one is pressing a million LPs for a release, so the cost is never going to come down to where it was.

It isn't even possible anymore to do a general wide release on vinyl because there aren't enough manufacturing plants still in operation. If two major artists decided to do a million copy pressing in the same month the system would shut down. No one else would be able to get a record pressed and it would take three months to get those two records out.

Even if you wanted to start a record pressing plant now, no one makes the machinery anymore, so you'd have to buy 50 year old machines that require 50 year old knowledge to fix, maintain and operate. And even if you had that knowledge and experience, there are parts that aren't available anymore.

Is there really that big a difference between listening to an album on vinyl compared to the same album on CD?
Yes, there's a tremendous difference. The vinyl sounds like shit and the CD doesn't. ;)

But that's a debate that will never end and never be settled.
 
Yes, there's a tremendous difference. The vinyl sounds like shit and the CD doesn't. ;)

But that's a debate that will never end and never be settled.

Hahaha...Good thing I always buy CDs then. They take up less space too. In this high tech time and age CDs should be at least as good as vinyl, but even if it's a fact you´ll never be able to convince a vinyl collector. A lot of it probably have to do with nostalgia including the ritual of handling and cleaning vinyls.
Funny, you can't settle the debate by comparing CDs to vinyls in an audio scientific way.
 
Bottle of Smoke Press just issued our first vinyl release. Just in time to go on hiatus! Bloodshot Bill Sings Charles Plymell is a 45RPM release and not available in any other format. Limited to 500 copies, 450 are regular and 50 are housed in a letterpress printed book. This is a joint release with Feeding Tube Records. The release will be available from me, Feeding Tube Records (Florence, MA), Bloodshot Bill (at shows) and from Forced Exposure.


The reason that I mention this... When we approved the test pressing, we had no idea how long the pressing would take. Byron Coley, who was handling these things said that it can take a while because there are so few places that do this and so much demand. The records showed up in about a week....

I guess that it is no surprise that a guy who prints with antique presses would be into a media that is also antique.

Vinyl is very similar, in many ways, to letterpress. Letterpress is tactile (like vinyl), but frankly, you can almost always get a cleaner print with offset and certainly can print pictures better digitally that you can with letterpress (and digital, done right, IS cleaner than vinyl). Still, people will pay a massive premium for the ancient technology of both...

Bill

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Naw, not dumping Big Country. There's room for everyone in my country(basement). That pic was taken maybe 2 yrs ago. My good friend Lem wanted to send a pic of what he considered a real record collection from a real record collector to this guy we know who now considers himself a record collector. "Guy" does buy albums but just totally doesn't get it. "Guy" collects albums like fine wine- expensive, limited editions, and by our standard, lots of shitty music, also lots of lps you could normally get in dollar bins. That's okay i guess but the guy has no clue about the culture of rock n' roll, music, etc. It was all Lem's idea to send the pic. Actually Lem wasn't being snarky either. He was really polite about it to the "Guy", wanted to hint at some insight. Our opinion tho? The "new collector" takes all the fun out of collecting. That is one of the many reasons I will never hang with the"Guy" and haven't since high school.
 
That is one of the many reasons I will never hang with the"Guy"...
But you're missing out on the opportunity to take his records out of the protective .5 mil polypropylene outer sleeves and grab the covers, getting your horrible fingerprints all over them and carelessly tossing them into piles, maybe bending a corner here or there...

Don't disregard the potential fun to be had there.
 

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