Where did I say the esoteric market is dying? Well, it's always dying - it's a really precarious place - but the shifting cast of ultra high-end audio manufacturers has some perennial names (McIntosh), and those will probably survive so long as there are doctors left willing to shell out $5,000 for an amp.
I agree, but I don't see it happening. The problem is volume. There just isn't enough volume for them to bring the costs down all that much without completely trashing quality, at which point you're competing with $150 bargain basement turntables from Audio-Technica or, worse, Crosley. If you're Sony where are you going to spend your time? Engineering and supporting a business to supply $350 quality turntables that can best competing designs from boutique players like Pro-Ject and Rega, and that sell for relatively thin margins, or manufacturing more PlayStation 5 consoles that you're making a zillion a year off of in licensing (if not necessarily the hardware sales themself)? We've also been overly focused on turntables lately on this thread. They're just a relatively minor component of the whole audiophile separates landscape, from entry level up. Most people aren't listening to vinyl, even most people with separates, and it's certainly not the primary format they're listening to. Home theater, CD and streaming are the overwhelming dominant formats still for separates, especially in the low to mid market. I'm not sure how they reboot sales as older people die off if younger people are mostly content with their earbuds and headphones. Because the user experience with components right now is absolute crap compared to the ease with which you can setup a pair of earbuds and start listening.
If you focus only on things you cannot change (how consumers are not behaving as you expect or as you have seen in the past), you will miss opportunities. I mean, ten years ago, you would have said they’ll never buy vinyl, and you certainly would have said that they’ll never buy a turntable. You would have been wrong.
I think you are asking the right questions (perhaps unlike the executives). They need to know the answers, then come up with solutions for the market. Turntable sales are up 60% - who’s buying them and what are they buying? Are they buying cheap all in one players (as I did when I was 12 years old) ? Might they want to upgrade later in life (as I did when I was 24 years old)? What do current upper middle class buyers have in their homes? No music? Streaming to a mid-fi system? Integrated with their home theater? Or is everyone listening alone via headphone? Is a Blue tooth output turntable the way to go? So many questions and in all likelihood, lots of opportunity
It was two years ago, that I posted that the MOFI Dylan 45 rpm mono releases, numbered to 3000, were not selling and that, in fact, John Wesley Harding, his debut and a number of other titles were being heavily discounted by MOFI. The same was true of a number of the Elvis Costello MOFI albums, which had been available for over five (?) years - it looked like they were barely selling, and titles like Almost Blue and Blood and Chocolate were being discounted to try to sell them. Fast forward two years later, I go to MOFI's website and they only have two (TWO!) titles in stock, Ry Cooder's Chicken Skin Music, and J Geils Band The Morning After. All of the Elvis Costello titles, and all of the Dylan monos that sat on the website for years are now sold out and climbing on Discogs. At the same time, sales of turntables (presumably mostly Cheap all-in-one players) are up 60%? Audio company executives need to be asking themselves what is going on, and they can't just guess based on past examples, or on a few isolated anecdotes. They need to do the work and figure out what the future holds in the US, in Europe, in Asia.
Here's the newest info I can find: April 20, 2017 (Press Release) - Turntables are seeing renewed consumer interest as evidenced by double-digit growth in both U.S. dollar (16 percent) and unit sales (23 percent), for the 12 months ending February 2017 versus year ago, according to global information company, The NPD Group. Premium products were a contributor to sales growth, as dollar sales of turntables priced above $250 grew 135 percent in the 12 months ending February 2017, accounting for 11 percent of total sales. An expanding number of entry-level products also aided the market increase, as evidenced by a six percent decline in average selling price.
MOFI is/was notoriously bad at marketing outside of the audiophile crowd. Timing is also an issue. They were too early on certain releases and some of those releases took forever to sell or had to be discounted to move. Now they go for higher prices on the secondary/used market. The latter doesn't really help MOFI much. What MOFI figured out is it's easier for them to milk safe albums as FOMO one-step releases. Flippers scoop them up fast and hoard them, then drip feed sealed copies to eBay and Discogs. MOFI doesn't care because they get paid quickly on these instead of waiting 5-8 years for albums to sell through.
Actually, the point I was trying to make is that demand for audiophile vinyl has just exploded, which seems to have taken everyone by surprise. Fans, retailers, MOFI itself. It makes no sense to have a record company with employees, administration, etc., and have only two records and some pre-order One Steps to sell. So, what do the audio companies do with all of this increased interest - both from people buying audiophiles buying up all of the MOFI and Speakers Corner inventory, and from young kids who just received a shiny Crosley from their boyfriend/girlfriend? As someone who remembers having to "special order" things like Paul McCartney's Flaming Pie months ahead of release to make sure I could get a copy on vinyl, this is an amazing time. I think that the audio companies should be working through the nights to figure out how they can capitalize on this new demand.
In the video I saw on Youtube, someone mentioned 60% increase in turntable sales in 2020. I can't find it though.
If I had my wish, they’re capitalize by issuing quality product at reasonable prices. And in reasonable amounts so as not to feed the flippers. I saw first-hand what hype did to the comic book and sports card industry in the 1990’s and think we’re nearing that point in vinyl. Too many with a speculator mentality, where the perceived monetary value far outweighs appreciation for the music itself. Hope I’m wrong.
I agree, but it's not all the fault of the record companies, as the pressing plants are just cannot keep up with orders. My question is more focused on what the high end audio equipment companies might be able to do with all the new audiophiles. I mean, I heard that MOFI is close to selling out of its One-Step pressing of Carole King's Tapestry. That's 10,000 copies, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago. And it doesn't come out until September.
The high-end equipment companies are in a bind I think. If they spend the funds to develop/manufacture more modest equipment and then the vinyl bubble bursts they’ll be left with an investment that very well might not pay off.
Not getting this whole mentality at all. Are you saying that a majority of people buy these albums and never play them? No way. Do you think a teen/pre-teen listening to music on a Crosley or an Alexa device or their phone through headphones is a bad thing for the industry down the line? Makes zero sense to me. Lot of "get off my lawn" talk going around on here about these "young whipper-snappers!" I think we all need to step back a little and realize how we started listening to music. At this point in my life (49) I have a setup that I'm super proud of.. I love it. It's what I do for fun. Music rules.. But I didn't start with a McIntosh rack at 12, and if you did good for you.. I started listening to music on an old rectangle tape deck like they had at school and a boxed turntable in the late 70's early 80's. Through high school I had a boom box or two, a lot of Walkmans, and crappy car stereos. In my 20's I had surround sound setups that I would play some music through. Kids came and nothing new came around. Then, all of a sudden 5 years ago I just decided I wanted to get a real set up. I spent 30+ years listening to my music through absolute garbage, and in the last 5 years I decided it wasn't good enough. There is no way I'm alone in this. Way too much talk that kids listening on non-audiophile devices is a bad thing for the long term of the industry. Get kids to like music, no matter where they get it from. If you don't, that's where the industry dies.
There are artists and groups whose entire musical careers have come and gone without ever having a physical release. And if they get dropped by their "record label", their entire online presence can disappear at the press of a button.
Out of hundreds, or perhaps as many as 1,000 texts by around 80 authors, only 32 complete Ancient Greek plays had survived, by just three playwrights. Now, this is a cultural tragedy. Same can be said about the culture of Aztecs. By contrast, if the entire online presence of a modern musician disappears at the press of a button, the world won't notice. Too much garbage — both material and cultural — is being produced, so some weeding is in order anyway. But fear not, if they have produced anything remotely interesting, someone have recorded it and will share it.
You said the following... "I think it's pretty doom and gloom, at least for the separates component market, just based on what we've seen happen to manufacturers over the past decade-plus. There doesn't seem to be any end in sight for the contraction." What I am seeing as an audio publisher who talks to many manufacturers of separate components is that the separates market is doing fine.
Multi Channel music is still Physical mostly n the few Atmos titles released seem to be flopping in that newer streaming catagory Streaming is mostly 2 channel
10 years ago there were already breathless articles about the vinyl revival, so no, wouldn't have said they'll "never" buy vinyl, since they already were. They were buying turntables as well - Crosley junk had already shown up in Urban Outfitters 10 years ago (which was 2011). High-Tech Electronics Dressed Up to Look Old (Published 2010) From the look of things on social media, they're buying cheap cute turntables from Crosley, mostly. This ain't gonna sustain the separate components market down the road.
Yup. It's a market almost entirely driven by collectors, not listeners. This is what I'm worried about as well. Exactly. And the low and middle sections of that market are already existing on razor thin margins thanks to the massive rise of online shopping and the fact that, in the bricks and mortar world, they're essentially down to one nationwide vendor now, BestBuy, which frankly isn't all that well run and doesn't seem to be particularly focused on separate components - soundbars and Bluetooth speakers have largely taken over all the floor space the past few years. One thing we haven't discussed - both categories are much easier to merchandise than separate components. The soundbars slot nicely with the TVs and can be an easy upsell item, especially as TV prices have cratered. Meanwhile, the Bluetooth speakers tuck in nicely over with the cell phones, headphones and accessories while taking up very little floor space. Components and separate speakers by contrast demand their own dedicated space, and quite a lot of it, along with complex switching systems if you want to facilitate test listens. It's a considerable investment in a fairly low-margin category. You can sit around the local Magnolia at BestBuy and watch tumbleweeds blow thru it's so dead, and this is one of the wealthiest cities on the planet. I can only imagine how dead they are now elsewhere. Not a good sign. The rest of the store isn't crazy, but it's at least got lots of foot traffic...
Yes, a huge percentage of albums that are purchased these days are never played. We've known that for some time, and the behavior of the labels - like releasing multiple copies of the same album in different colored vinyl at once - just reinforces that this is happening and indeed that they're specifically targeting collectors with these releases. There's nothing wrong with that - it's like the labels selling posters or whatever - but what it means is that the demand for turntables is not scaling with the unit sales of vinyl, and it's probably not scaling with the number of people buying vinyl either if a substantial fraction of new buyers are just are collectors and not listeners. This poses a big problem for the audio hardware industry, although it's certainly not their only problem. It just means that it isn't clear any increase in vinyl sales is going to translate into sales of separate components. Indeed, with the rise of the Bluetooth turntable it could result in the sale of one cheap $200 turntable and literally nothing else, even if they are listening to music off vinyl. They could easily be doing so from a Bluetooth speaker, a soundbar or their headphones. I don't think it's a good thing. There's absolutely no indication any of them will ever seek out any kind of an "upgrade" that involves separate audio components. When I was a kid in the '80s, even in a fairly lower middle-class area, a couple of my friends had decent stereo systems and a bunch certainly coveted such devices. These were largely mid-market rack systems, so the desire had absolutely migrated down to the masses. This supported the broad availability of separate components at a slew of retailers, from dedicated stereo stores to electronics stores like Silo and Circuit City to specialty retailers like Best to large department stores like Sears and local department store chains like Diamonds (where I got a great Sony system in '83). Plus of course there was mail order, not to mention Radio Shack. That entire retail infrastructure has collapsed. You have Amazon, BestBuy and a couple of mail order players, plus your local high end audiophile store if you're in a major metro area or wealthy college town, at least here in America. Vanishingly few people under 30 have a separates system like that, and they have little to no exposure to them so would have no idea what they sound like or what the advantages might be. No exposure to a product among younger consumers = the death of that product. It's just a matter of time.
If they get dropped, wouldn't they just take their catalog to another label? I'm not seeing what the doom and gloom scenario is here?
Which separates market? The low end stuff you find out on the floor at BestBuy? The mid to higher end stuff you find in the back at the embedded Magnolia? Or the bleeding edge stuff you find at the local audiophile shop? My guess is the latter is doing alright for now, since the wealthier members of last generation of folks exposed to separates early on is aging into a point where they're settled down and interested in upgrading to that kind of equipment. The market Magnolia targets clearly isn't doing as well - I'd be surprised if that's not in decline. I can't imagine the cheap stuff is competing well with the plethora of soundbars - many really quite decent - scattered around them and much more prominently-placed and upsold as part of TV purchases.
Vinyl won't save the hi-fi industry. Vinyl is three things. The 1) baseball card & beanie baby type buyers, 2) music nerds, and 3) audiophiles. Streaming and cell phones already won the format war. The piece of the pie left over is relatively small. I don't think the industry will die off entirely but it will look different. Bigger companies consolidate and offer less traditional stereo type products. The headphone nuts, music nerds, and audiophiles will keep some of the smaller companies in business, but not all of these companies will be around in 10 or 20 years.
