Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD’s Coffin
This is a couple weeks old now, and had meant to post it when it was first published, but spaced it. Deal with it!
Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD’s Coffin
By Eliot Van Buskirk 10.29.07 | 12:00 AMAs counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl — the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles — is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.
Talk to almost anyone in the music business’ vital indie and DJ scenes and you’ll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.
“I’m hearing from labels and distributors that vinyl is way up,” said Ian Connelly, client relations manager of independent distributor alliance IODA, in an e-mail interview. “And not just the boutique, limited-edition colored vinyl that Jesu/Isis-style fans are hot for right now.”
Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today’s music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.
“For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release,” said Matador’s Patrick Amory. “The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music.”
Because these music fans also listen using portable players and computers, Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Amory called the coupon program “hugely popular.”
Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they’re right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs.
Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It’s the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can’t be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.
Another reason for vinyl’s sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist’s theorem to the contrary.
“The digital world will never get there,” said Chris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the country’s largest record pressing plant.
Golden-eared audiophiles have long testified to vinyl’s warmer, richer sound. And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand.
Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he’s not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: “new albums, reissues, majors and indies … jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock.”
Turntables are hot again as well. Insound, an online music retailer that recently began selling USB turntables alongside vinyl, can’t keep them in stock, according to the company’s director, Patrick McNamara.
And on Oct. 17, Amazon.com launched a vinyl-only section stocked with a growing collection of titles and several models of record players.
Big labels still aren’t buying the vinyl comeback, but it wouldn’t be the first time the industry failed to identify a new trend in the music biz.
“Our numbers, at least, don’t really point to a resurgence,” said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America’s director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.
But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don’t really know what they’re talking about. The RIAA’s numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don’t include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay — arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.
Vinyl’s popularity has been underreported before.
“The Consumer Electronics Association said that only 100,000 turntables were sold in 2004. Numark alone sold more than that to pro DJs that year,” said Chris Roman, product manager for Numark.
And the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD.
San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files.
“Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound,” said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. “The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder.”
In the past month, I have purchased a whopping two CDs (Climber and Jonah, but only because it was at Climber’s CD release party and the discs were priced $10, which is what CD’s should fucking cost! Oh, disgustingly talented bands, the both of them; you should probably check them out. This is a long parenthetical remark isn’t it? I probably could have punctuated this more effectively and avoided the parentheses altogether, but oh well. Maybe I should start using footnotes? Nah, I like parentheses.) On the other hand, I have purchased seven records.
Here’s my plan to save the CD format:
A: Cut the fucking volume! Modern CD’s are just too goddamn boosted. Here’s a quick comparison I whipped up. The first waveform here is Bad Religion’s Modern Man from their 1990 album Against the Grain. The second is the same song from the 2004 remastered version of the album.
This is a fucking WALL of noise. In a $15 pair of earbuds, the only discernible difference is volume, but on a decent pair of speakers or headphones, things are clearly awry — especially if you pay close attention to highs like crashes in percussion. In the original album, cymbals and high hats are warm and ring like they should. In the remaster, almost all percussion is a sharp tinny mess, crashing over the top of mooshy guitars. Granted, if this was the only version of the album available, you would assume this is an accurate representation of the band’s “sound”, but as long as we have the original version against which to compare the remaster, you can’t help but wonder why they thought this was “better.” Audio information has been lost.
B: Cut the fucking price! I don’t know what popular music costs, so I had to look it up. As an example, Justin Timberlake’s latest album (now one year old) has an MSRP of $18.99. You can find it cheaper than that online of course, and the vast majority of record stores sell below MSRP, but some do not. For example, the album is available on FYE’s site for no less than $22.99. I had to check four or five times to make sure I wasn’t looking at a DVD or some special edition of the album — it’s not. So your average teenager has to work three hours to afford a single album? And CD sales are down? Weird. Here’s an idea: A plain-Jane CD-in-a-jewel-case-with-a-multi-page-insert should cost $10. Special packaging or double discs could sell for more than that, but probably never more than $15 at most. A lot of things these days seem to cost almost exactly twice as much as they should — CDs, Wii Virtual Console titles, plane tickets, housing, T-shirts, hamburgers — but maybe things just appear expensive to me because I’m not a record exec.
C: Cut the fucking awful product! My theory for the decline in CD sales:
• 15% is due to the convenience of downloading. I’m no business major, but an album getting downloaded one million times doesn’t exactly represent one million lost sales. Really, that only tells you there’s a million people willing to LISTEN to it. For example, the RIAA is now trying to pass ridiculous legislation that forces universities to provide legal music downloading services for ALL their students or risk the loss of federal funding. Sounds a little like extortion, but who am I to say? College students are dirt fucking poor; the only reason they download albums is because it’s an affordable (read: free) way to listen to the music they want to. If the only way to listen to the music they wanted was to purchase it at $18 a pop, they probably just wouldn’t listen to the music they want to!
• 50% is due to the ridiculous prices they want for CDs.
• 35% is due to shitty product. Popular music is boring, identical-sounding, overproduced, bullshit performed by untalented, whiny “artists.” An extremely talented group of morbidly obese musical prodigies that wrote breathtaking music that invariably brought its listeners to their knees have no shot in the music industry because they don’t have the “look” (although now that I’ve envisioned them, I desperately want to see this hypothetical band perform). There are exceptions of course, but for the most part the Top 40 isn’t filled with artists; it’s filled with marketable figureheads for the guy behind the scenes with a knack for writing catchy hooks. You hear a great deal about how sexy a lot of these young pop stars are, but not as much about how great their music is. Profound, I know. There’s a reason the independent music scene is referred to as “burgeoning”; people are growing weary of hearing the same three albums every year (i.e. the “pop” album, the “rap” album, and the “rock” album). At least, I’d like to have that much faith in the average music consumer.
Yeah yeah, wishful thinking. I can dream, can’t I? And if you’ll excuse me I have some music to download.
12 Responses to “Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD’s Coffin”
Thoughts on Radiohead’s recent go at releasing their new album online, with the option to pay what you think is fair?
Almost every thing I’ve read online from people is that they have gone back and “bought” the download again, paying roughly the ten bucks most feel is the price for an album, about 45 minutes and ten tracks.
They also offer the incentive of the discbox. I think it’s about 80 bucks or something. You get the album on CD, the album MP3 download and two 12″ heavyweight vinyl records with artwork and lyric booklets. The box will include a second enhanced CD which contains 8 additional tracks, as well as digital photos and artwork and packaged in a hardcover book and slipcase.
So if you opt to buy the discbox right now, you still get the one album for free online like everyone else, and then come December 3rd, you get a big bitchin’ package in the mail.
Plus, it’s a really good album. If you’re into Radiohead.
That Radiohead album was released at 128kbps, well below standard quality.
I completely agree with your #1 though. A band by the name of 65daysofstatic released a CD called “The Destruction of Small Ideals” this year and all the levels are set at varying frequencies well below the average output of modern music. It’s astonishing at how the lowered rate makes the music sound so enormous. You should really check it out with you’re SR60’s. I think it is hard to find any modern day recordings that are as pleasing to listen to for the audio experience as this one. It really exploits whats wrong with most audio engineering today.
Then why am I listening to it at 160 right now? Granted it isn’t much better..but regardless, it’s pretty rad to be able to have that to tide you over were you to buy the disc box and you can do whatever you want, make your Vinyl FLAC rips or whatever the fuck audiophiles do.
The point I’m making is free download, DRM Free, with the option to own rad shit. If that below standard quality makes it impossible to listen to then buy the discbox.
And aside from the quality, which might be a ploy to get you to buy the discbox, it’s a hell of a lot better way to get you to buy their stuff or get into them as a band.
Yeah, 192CBR is my absolute minimum quality limit, and I haven’t even downloaded something in 192 for a long time. I skipped over some rare acoustic White Album sessions for that very reason. 128 is inexcusable.
Well, I guess you tools can wait until someone makes a version from the discbox that is up to your higher standards in turd, so you can steal what used to be free.
With my sub standard computer speakers, car speakers, headphones, and general not giving a fuck THAT much, I’ll have a good time enjoying the album.
Okay…
And I checked, it’s actually in 160kbps — a weird choice.
I just got home from work and was listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan all the way on two blown factory speakers with no bass whatsoever. It was incredible, just like it always is. Are we too punk to be able to appreciate a good song anymore unless we have the highest possible quality recording/bitrate/headphones? Bad form.
Musical masturbation vs. musical Roman orgy, I guess. To each his own.
Too obscure a metaphor for my alcohol-addled brain to comprehend. Try again, and after you try, check out some Leonard Cohen. “Everybody Knows” is of course his big hit, and for good reason, but “Take this Waltz” is probably the coolest waltz in the history of the universe. It’s this really whimsical waltz tune with really dark lyrics and that fucking incredible voice. Dude is like 150 pounds soaking wet and he sounds like Barry White when he just woke up off anti-depressants. Although, I will admit, sometimes I fantasize about listening to my music not through blown speakers, but when my date starts complaining, “Why is it making that buzzing noise” I just reply “You didn’t come over here for the bass in the music baby, you came over because I’m a bull on the springs”.
Wow.
agian wow
Goddamn do I loves me some Chris Weaver.
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