When did vinyl become mainstream again?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by SixOClockBoos, Feb 22, 2017.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Bowieboy

    Bowieboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville
    exactly... I notice when I got back into vinyl about 8-9 years ago, you could get a lot of "good stuff" in clearance used bins at Half Price Books for a quarter/50 cents... we're talking Prince, Bowie, REM, Gary Numan, Stevie Wonder.. all in excellent to near mint condition.... now you're lucky to find beat up copies of the same albums for $10. Even the "usual suspects" we always saw in clearance bins like Ronstadt, Fogelberg, Streisand, etc... aren't necessarily guaranteed to go into that section if the condition is good enough (as if someone really is going to spend $5 on a copy of Simple Dreams after 300 of them have come and gone in the 25 cent bin over the past ten years).
     
    Damien DiAngelo and Vinyl_Blues like this.
  2. Nostaljack

    Nostaljack Resident R&B enthusiast

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    I was quite surprised to visit my local Barnes and Noble a couple of days ago to find the LP section doubled in size. There are no more than 30 CDs in the place. The turntables they have are cheap, of course.

    Fad, I think, but one that's doing very well now.

    Ed
     
  3. Bowieboy

    Bowieboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville
    Exactly... you finally speak with some sense, instead of just seeing units, but actual $$$ generated. When you look at the price of albums vs. the price of cd's or digital albums, of course it's going to sell less.... just like many will still go for the Wal-Mart $5 bin DVD of something vs. the $25 Shout Factory deluxe blu-ray. Vinyl sometimes cost 2-3x what the cd counterpart goes for, so of course less are going to be sold, but I could see where they're earning more money.
     
    Rocketdog and Vinyl_Blues like this.
  4. Bowieboy

    Bowieboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville
    You mean a fad that's been going on for close to ten years now? I got back into vinyl in 2008 and we were already seeing classic albums getting reissued and people writing it off even then. I remember on another forum in 2008 someone posting about "when is the vinyl fad going to die?". After nearly a decade, I think it's fair to say it's a genuine renaissance and not just a novelty hipster fad.
     
  5. DeRosa

    DeRosa Vinyl Forever

    Current sales is only one way to measure.
     
  6. Nostaljack

    Nostaljack Resident R&B enthusiast

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    I don't honestly think many are listening to the albums they're buying. They use the download cards if available and put the pretty packages on a shelf. They're tactile possessions in many cases, not listening mediums like they used to be. The big art is the draw quite often.

    Ed
     
  7. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Vinyl died around 1987 with the advent of CDs. Can't compare this vinyl revival in the same breadth.
     
  8. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    Really, I'm surprised anyone knew about it in 2008. I remember seeing Bob Dylan reissues in 2003. In 2006, Reveal Records in Derby, UK was stocking new LPs for £5 each. A few people were buying them. They also had a few used ones as well. Now you see them in HMV, but I wouldn't call it mainstream. My used record store is empty every time I visit.
     
  9. drasil

    drasil Former Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    and the waveforms, right here on my cellphone.
     
  10. rich100

    rich100 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Middle of England
    [​IMG]

    Apparently it's doing quite well........
     
  11. Bowieboy

    Bowieboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville
    2008 I was seeing EMI already reissuing Pet Sounds and various Radiohead, Coldplay, REM etc... titles. It was small play compared to what we have now but the labels were seeing that there was a chance to get someone to buy yet another copy of Dark Side Of The Moon back then.

    The real problem I think then and now is price point. Nobody expects vinyl to move the numbers a cd would be expected to, but the premium price point does alienate many more than it draws in. To me, I view it the same way as I'd view Criterion Collection blu-rays costing more than a generic edition of something, but many people out there don't want to pay $35 for the latest Weeknd album on vinyl when they can get the cd or even the mp3 version of the album for $10-12.
     
    Vinyl_Blues likes this.
  12. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    I remember the Dylan reissues that I saw in the US were about $20 each. There were other reissues such as Tim Buckley for a lot less. The used bins were full of records for a few bucks. It was easy to find classic albums for very little. Reveal Records in Derby stocked a lot of Sonic Youth reissues and reissues on labels such as 4AD. Everything was £5, including double LPs. Upstairs they had US imports for around £8, although my Double Nickels on the Dime cost £13.99 (it's a double LP). If single LPs were priced around £10, then they would fly off the shelf. The ones in HMV are about £20 (£20 for Tapestry!).
     
    Bowieboy likes this.
  13. rich100

    rich100 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Middle of England
    From Record sales: vinyl hits 25-year high which is an article based on the UK's BPI annual release. Based on this, in our neck of the woods at least, Vinyl is on the up, CD's are on the way down as is digital downloads (the biggest con in history in my opinion), and streaming is the mainstream. It took me a while to come round to streaming but actually I'm reasonably impressed with Spotify.

    Personally, I love vinyl, for all the reasons most people state such as more dynamic sound and the artwork and the tangibility of it. But, I suspect there is a similar thing at play as with the massive rise of cycling in recent years, it's something that guys of a certain age can now afford to invest in and have a nice hobby, you get to geek out on the kit too.

    Some snippets from the article but follow the link to get the full context:

    "Sales of vinyl in 2016 reached a 25-year high as consumers young and old have once again embraced physical formats of music."

    "More than 3.2m LPs were sold last year, a rise of 53% on last year and the highest number since 1991 when Simply Red’s Stars was the bestselling album. This was also the first year that spending on vinyl outstripped that spent on digital downloads."

    "While vinyl sales still only account for 5% of the albums market, they are becoming increasingly important sources of income for record labels and musicians."

    " of which $1bn (£810m) came directly from streaming, and in the first half of 2016, streaming revenue in the US grew by 57% to $1.6bn"

    "In contrast, CD sales were down 10% on last year."

    "the trend towards streaming – which has rocketed 500% since 2013, with 45bn audio streams over 2016 "

    "At least 30 albums sold more than 10,000 copies in 2016, a stark contrast to 2007 when digital downloads began to take hold and a meagre total of 200,000 LPs were sold overall."
     
    pedalhead and Vinyl_Blues like this.
  14. Bowieboy

    Bowieboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville
    Some I don't have a problem with, like the Pearl Jam reissues are a "bargain" when you consider that No Code and Yield were previously fetching anywhere between $150-400 second-hand before Sony put them back in the market, same with many other albums from the late 80s, 90s and 00s that weren't easy to find for years (The Killers recently reissued Hot Fuss, $20 for an album that used to go over $100 isn't bad) but so many 70s and 80s reissues have been headscratchers. Like the Styx reissues of albums that are still easily attainable for less than $5.... who really is going to cough up $25 for a new copy of Kilroy Was Here?
     
    bataclan2002 and pghmusiclover like this.
  15. qwyjibo

    qwyjibo Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Totally agree. There's no reason why something like a new vinyl copy of Tapestry should cost £20. I was in Fopp's store in London on Monday and found albums by one of her contemporaries, Joni Mitchell, for £15 as well as stuff like Who's Next by The Who for £12. A price point of £10-15 for reissues of older albums would be much better. A new album should not break the £20 mark unless it has more than 2 LPs.
     
    crispi likes this.
  16. NaturalD

    NaturalD The King of Pop

    Location:
    Boston, Mass., USA
    Nonsense that presumes to know the motives of strangers. (Unless you have some data you would like to share.)
     
    e.s. likes this.
  17. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    Big selling albums from the 80s should still be easy to find. Madonna is another one that had a somewhat crazy reissue campaign. I still find it hard to believe anyone pays $15 for Thriller on LP.
     
  18. rich100

    rich100 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Middle of England
    It starts at around £12 on Amazon, which is where the race to the bottom on pricing usually is. Like most things high st prices are often premium price, and lets face it considering the weight of these things and the fact they are all now imported I'm not overly surprised.

    Personally I'm OK with spending £20 on an LP from a shop if I could take it home there and then, but if I think it's an opportunist inflated price which is sometimes (but not all the time) the case in HMV, I'll compare on Amazon on the smartphone and order it online there and then if much cheaper.

    What gets my goat is second hand shops who really do take the p*ss with their pricing for scratched up old tat. Don't get me started on Oxfam.
     
  19. Nostaljack

    Nostaljack Resident R&B enthusiast

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    You just don't like what I said. I can live with that. I wouldn't just invent that.

    Ed
     
  20. It never became mainstream again.
    CDs and mp3s are mainstream. Most people, like it or not, don't give a damn anymore about vinyl albums, if they ever did.
     
  21. Jeff Kent

    Jeff Kent Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mt. Kisco, NY
    Record Store Day #1 in 2007
     
  22. Bowieboy

    Bowieboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville
    Madonna doesn't bother me for the fact that her 90s and 00s albums were once hard to find. It is nice to get Bedtime Stories for an affordable price because it used to sell in the $200-300 range a few years ago, same with Erotica. Same with MJ, nice that Dangerous and Invincible are now affordable, even though HIStory is still long out of print.

    The irony with Madonna is that with all the reissues of her Warners output, MDNA (her first post-Warner release) was quietly taken out of print and is now running in that $100+ used vein that her 90s stuff was once going for lol.
     
  23. The Elephant Man

    The Elephant Man Forum Resident

    I can't provide any sources or graphs but I think there is a parallel growth with veganism and silly amounts of facial hair. .
     
    Nostaljack likes this.
  24. e.s.

    e.s. Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Oh yeah, I know, but I figure a pointlessly rational response doesn't hurt every now and then.

    Has the guy who hates vinyl but posts in every thread about vinyl with the clinking beer glasses emoji showed up yet?
     
  25. Bowieboy

    Bowieboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville
    Or the one who points out that there's no way vinyl is popular because there is no record today (in this era where album sales are literally down the toilet) that sells the quantities that a vinyl copy of Saturday Night Fever, Rumours, Hotel California or Thriller sold when they were at their peak could? Even though, Adele notwithstanding, there hasn't been a single CD in the past ten years that has moved the same type of quantities those 70s and 80s powerhouses could either? lol.
     
    Rocketdog, Vinyl_Blues and e.s. like this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine