Vinyl Bargain or Rip off?
Hi, I have made this post to hopefully start a conversation on the state of the vinyl record market, please feel free to post with your commentsIt would be great to see what others think?Have you been looking for a good copy of your favorite record lately? Tried all the usual places Ebay, boot sale, Doscogs? even HMV.
If you have you will have noticed the recent price hike.
I used to work in the record industry in the 70's and 80's and I can tell you that back then there was a price for a single album and a price for a double album, but today....
If you want a record by let's say the Beatles chances are you will not find one under £30 (and I'm talking new press not collectible) Yet you you can find say The Band for £8.99.
My point is this.... We are being ripped off! It cost's no more to make a Beatles record than it does a record by the band, and that includes royalties the cost of Vinyl and VAT! If they are going to milk the new record buyers in this way they are going to kill the vinyl market again!
It's the same with these sill plastic record players with plastic needles that they are selling! It's all a cynical attempt to maximize profit and it's wrong!
I feel so sad that teenagers are coming to the market and discovering the beauty of vinyl for the first time and they are not getting what they paid for! It's such a shame that they have no one to teach them what vinyl is all about how to play it, how to look after it and how to get the most out of it.
So what do you think? What do you think can be done to solve the issues raised? Supply and demand. If the public are prepared to pay for it the companies will remain with those prices. As for quality the vinyl you now see on the supermarket shelves are probably from the same mix as the current CDs. I not into snap, crackle and pop any more and prefer SACD where the market seems to be focused on re-mixes of old titles and they rarely hit the market new in the UK but are around $30 from the likes of MoFi or Analogue Productions making them even more expensive in the UK as they have to be imported. Sick to vinyl for me, but you are still being ripped of at $30 that's the point. It may take some kind of intervention from readers via to music mags but what ever it is the industry needs to be shown way on this one. I think you're going to find that SACD and to a lesser extend that vinyl, especially on 180g discs, are a minority and somewhat niche market. Even those with quality kit are listening more and more to streamed music and the young generation are more than happy with MP3 on their phones. There are up and coming artists that I can't get even on redbook and discs both CD/SACD or vinyl are the minority, hence the high prices. I think there is more to it than that, last Christmas vinyl sales reach a record high and the record companies were caught out but now they are geared up to cash in The only thing we can do is not buy at that price.
I tend to buy at the £15 to $20 mark, plus I have favourites already bought from the 80s when they were a fiver tops... data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7 It's a rip off, pure and simple.
Why buy a Vinyl album for £20 when you can get the CD for £10?
When the two formats were side by side in the past (I didn't buy anything on cassette and MiniDisc passed me by) there wasn't such a huge discrepancy.
Supply and demand is always trotted out as an explanation as if it's a form of justification for greed. It's not. But then the music industry doesn't really care about music, just business. Especially when the majority of vinyl is taken from the same highly compressed masters as the CDs. With old titles you're better off looking for CDs in charity shops or the local market music stall. Derek you're forgetting the difference in sound quality. You don't get the absolute clarity of the snap, crackle and pop with CD. Quite a while back I posted about this. Is most of the vinyl really that more expense in real terms? If you factor in inflation the prices might not be that expensive compared to back in the day.
Like @gibbsy I'd rather have the higher end CD style formats like SACD, DVD-A and Blu Ray Audio. The sound quality is often excellent with no snap, crackle and pop. Also their much smaller size has got to be better for the environment. Blu Ray Audio often has loads of different mixes and additional material.
Bri I think you get more of a "physical" product with a Vinyl album compared to the equivalent CD. The artwork usually looks better and you can actually read the text as it's not so bloody tiny! data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
It still doesn't justify the huge price discrepancy, though.