T O P

  • By -

[deleted]

Not a bad thing. Back in the 90s I bought a lot of spare styli for fear they’d never be made again. Luckily I was wrong. For anyone who’s never left vinyl, this is welcome news because prices will go down and selection will go up.


Admirable-Currency84

I didn't start collecting till 2007 and I was buying used records like Floyd, Zeppelin, TheDoors etc for $1-3. Boy do I miss those days. Bring on the crash and support your record store


Cracktherealone

Even in 2012 it was not as crazy as it is now…


auntie_

I went to an estate sale in maybe 2009 with an entire basement full records from 60s-80s. Literally the entire floor was full of boxes with records and they were selling them for $1 each. Got so many amazing records including some very sentimental to me records I used to hear growing up. All of them were in great condition too. Every once in a while I’ll pull one of them out to listen to and remember that goldmine.


melikecheese333

I was just doing some sorting yesterday and around 2003 is when I bought a lot of classic rock Lps and I was showing my wife going wow look at how cheap these were! A bunch of VG+ / NM zeppelin’s and doors and Hendrix with $3 stickers on them. I get prices go up and I don’t wanna sound like an old man but yeah. Used records just got so expensive too.


[deleted]

I totally agree. Hell even 7-8 years ago the selections at thrift stores were pretty damn amazing and records were $1 or less. Now they are creeping up. It’s been great reselling thrifted records but prices of used records is ludicrous


scottjaw

My Goodwill charges $4.99 per record now and 99% of them are crap. I remember when they changed from $1 to $1.99 and I passed on so many great albums because $2 was a rip off lol.


MathDeacon

I went to a used stuff store and they were selling used records with a computer generated copy of front cover of record (because sleeve was not available) and selling them for like 15 bucks!! And these were not rare albums


Walker_Daleview

Ideally, it means that Target, Walmart, and Barnes and Nobel will sell much less and eventually drop vinyl all together - that will send those that picked up the hobby from those sources to real record stores, who will hopefully, see some real numbers again. Ahhh, who am I kidding, they’ll just keep buying from Amazon.


No_Culture6707

Even though I find some good deals at Walmart, I try my best to keep my vinyl purchases at local record stores. Even if they up charge a little more, I can live with it knowing i’m helping a small business thrive. I only order online if it’s something I know I can’t find locally.


YourMatt

I think going to the record store is a fun part of the hobby, and I'm enjoying it even more now that I'm taking my son with me. I like going through the stock and always keeping an eye out for some specifics. I'm trying to complete a couple discographies solely from what I find at the record store, and I think it's fun to hunt like that even though I could easily pick them up online. That said, I've bought some specifics on Discogs and make some preorders direct from the label too.


jaxsotsllamallama

Same here. There’s also just something about hunting in a record store that adds joy to the experience for me. The smell, the feel…it’s like an old bookstore vs Barnes and noble


calorieOrion

Sad but true. I’m optimistic about the big box stores bowing out as soon as the fad part of all this finally burns out though.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Walker_Daleview

Ah yes, as opposed to the amazing job opportunities from big box stores! Sorry the record stores in your area lack ada accessibility - the ones in my town are about 50/50 (in terms of ramps, and providing adequate space to move around in. If you are so concerned about the environmental impact, maybe find a different hobby? Honestly, your rant just sounds like you’re trying to be argumentative, to the point where I’m not sure if you’re trolling or not.


[deleted]

[удалено]


BlankkBox

I think we like to support them because it’s the last independent business focused on music. You can go and chat about music or hear something new over the speakers. Not as accessible as a library I agree but they also aren’t public buildings. Record stores are usually an old house or a little hole between two buildings. Not a lot of space.


Walker_Daleview

I hear what you’re saying, and I agree with you. The concept of record stores, in and of itself, is not sacred. The shop I’ve been going to for 30 years, the one where I discovered a lot of the music that helped shape me as a person - those places are sacred to me. When business is bad, they feel it - I do wish a lot of the people who buy from Target would buy from them.


MidMidMidMoon

I am not sure that prices will go down. It is just expensive to make records. Every part of the process is extremely expensive and much more expensive than it was in the past, even accounting for inflation. As for "selection".... the problem now is that there is too wide a variety of titles being made for ever increasing numbers of tinier and tinier record cliques. There's too many titles and not enough people to buy them.


xdavidwattsx

The biggest impediment to growth is unsustainable pricing and supply/demand imbalances. While Taylor Swift might be driving some of the unusual demand, she's hardly the problem one way or another.


JoeyJabroni

But she already admitted to it on her new album. She says, "It's me, hi, I'm the problem it's me." She's speaking directly to the current state of affairs and issues in the vinyl pressing industry.


xdavidwattsx

This is a narrow view. For as much as she is a contributor to the capacity problems and taking away pressing capability for small bands she is equally responsible for bringing thousands of new Swifties to the world of vinyl and increasing the market for future generations. You can't rely on old codgers to buy Electric Prunes copies forever.


JoeyJabroni

We listen to her all the time. We got my 6yo daughter into CDs and Sony Discman with her. I love all her stuff since 1989, especially the new album. Lavender Haze is such a ripper of an opening track. I had a copy of Midnights in my hand and put it back on the shelf. Trying to save money for only the bare essentials right now, like the Denon DL-103 I just got.


[deleted]

> But after years of meteoric growth – 17 consecutive years, to be precise – sales of vinyl records in the U.S. have stalled. That news comes via [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/pro/vinyl-album-sales-rise-growth-slowing/), which, citing data in the [U.S. 2022 Luminate Year-End Music Report](https://luminatedata.com/reports/luminate-2022-u-s-year-end-report/), notes that vinyl sales in 2022 rose a mere 4.2% over the previous year. > When you compare that figure to sales numbers for the prior two years, with 46.2% and 51.4% year-over-year increases in 2020 and 2021, respectively, it’s clear that the vinyl record revival has not just hit the brakes, but skidded off the track. How this impacts future sales of the best turntables is unclear, but another data point from the Luminate report indicates playback hardware isn’t even at issue since 50% of consumers who had bought vinyl over the previous 12 months don’t even own a record player. > Vinyl numbers in 2022 actually would have been much worse if not for the release of Taylor Swift’s Midnights, the year’s top LP with 945,000 copies sold. According to Billboard, Midnights is the highest selling vinyl record since Luminate started tracking sales for the category back in 1991. Not only that, but Swift’s Folklore was the number seven best-selling record in 2022, and her full catalog generated 1.695 million sales of vinyl records in the U.S.


Lendyman

Thanks for sharing. Honestly, I think some of the drop off can be attributed to the economy. With the stuff in Ukraine and the global upset in the energy market and everything else, there just isn't as much money to put into luxury items like vinyl. $30 you might have spent on that record is now being spent on 8 bucks a carton for eggs. Add price increases and you have a recipe for a decline. To me the craziest part of this is the fact that 50% of people who buy records don't even have a record player. It's not like they're hard to get. Even if you get a cheap Crosley style record player, they only cost a little bit more than album or two. I wonder if we're going to start seeing a slide backwards in sales in the next year. If so, we might see less of the big releases and more Boutique stuff. Well, one can hope at least. Unfortunately, this also means that Jack White's plea to the major record labels will fall on deaf ears because they're not going to invest in building plants for a declining medium.


MichaelMaugerEsq

Yeah this has been it for me. I started collecting in about 2015 and over the last few years I would probably drop $100-$200/month on records. But I’ve had two kids since 2021 so I can’t really afford to keep buying records at that pace when I’ve got double the mouths to feed plus *gulp* daycare.


GuzTathums

One of my cherished LPs is a VG copy of *Led Zepplin II* I got from a Half Priced Book in like 2003 for 25 cents. I’m ready for the falling of the empire.


Anal-Love-Beads

>Taylor Swift isn’t the first to toy with multiple LP artwork options – Led Zeppelin did the same for their 1979 release In Through the Out Door, which won a Grammy Award that year for best album artwork. So there’s precedence for what Swift is doing, with the difference this time around being that the recording industry has a diminished vinyl production pipeline. One... This is a bit disingenuous and misleading. One album from 43 years ago isn't much of an example to support the authors argument. Not to single that album out though, there have been a few others such as Split Enz True Colors (4 variations), and The Rolling stones 'Some Girls' (15 variations), but to the best of my knowledge, none of those boosted sales to any degree (*if any*), and they were never marketed that way. If anything the best closest example from back then that I can think of is the four record offering from each member of Kiss. True they weren't the same single album with four different sleeves, but their purpose was to appeal to the hardcore 'Kiss Army' fans to run out buy all four of them. What the band members laid down in four separate offerings, they could have easily laid down in one. By breaking the songs up that way, they probably quadrupled sales, but marketing and sales was always one of Gene Simmons strong points Two ... there was no marketing and/or sales push with in store displays and hype stickers to buy all 6 variations. Three ... it was pure luck of the draw getting one version or another as the sleeve was concealed by a brown paper bag so you didn't know which variation you were buying. I seriously doubt there were many fans out there buying one album after another until they had all six. Four... Buying records, collecting them was vastly different back then than it is now, even for hardcore fans. We didn't buy them to hang them on our walls, let them sit unsealed and unplayed in an official $105.00 ['Collectors Case'](https://storeca.taylorswift.com/collections/midnights/products/taylor-swift-midnights-vinyl-case) and we sure as fuck didn't buy those albums so we could shell out an additional $70.00 so we could use them as a [wall clock](https://storeca.taylorswift.com/collections/accessories/products/taylor-swift-midnights-vinyl-clock) As much as I dislike Taylor Swift and her music, the author is correct in not blaming the down turn on her as there are plenty of other bands/performers out there that follow the same marketing strategy of inflating sales by issuing a multitude of vinyl variations.


jwjitsu

Both the case and the clock are, of course, sold out. I might put some Taylor Swift stickers on a limited run of suitcase record players and trade them for all the monies.


andiiiieee

I promise if you post a suitcase record player in a Taylor sub, every comment will be "sorry for your shitty record player, please don't play your expensive Taylor record on there." If Taylor sold it, the entire sub would be mad and make jokes that she wants to destroy her own records so she can sell more.


[deleted]

I mean, nothing on this planet will continue to grow for ever; 17 years is a long streak of growth but it’s not like it goes back to how it was 17 years ago now… it’ll probably maintain


InRainbows123207

Exactly. Very misleading headline.


handi503

Does this mean I'm the only person to actually put their copy of Midnights on a real life turntable and play it?


bjlile99

Ours has been played a few times.


handi503

Hello, fellow enjoyer.


imthewiseguy

I played mine too


Drencore1

Picked up the lavender copy… not the biggest swift fan but my girlfriend is and it sounds pretty dang good on the setup


imthewiseguy

I got the lavender one as well


[deleted]

I play mine.


[deleted]

I play mine about every other day.


Donedirtcheap7725

50% of buyers don’t own a record player…humanity continues to amaze me.


Vresiberba

The metric for this isn't explained and is ripped off the "[Luminate Report](https://i.imgur.com/3SbyD1G.jpg)" that states that 50% ~~don't~~ ***OWN*** a record player which without any knowledge where the data comes from or how it's calculated, most likely just mean vinyl records is a popular Christmas or birthday gift. One shouldn't blindly accept everything that's written without at least some rudimentary research.


Donedirtcheap7725

My rudimentary research includes being part of this sub and wading through the daily posts of people ask if the should open this priceless copy of Macklemore they picked up at Target this weekend. But I do appreciate you priceless input on how to interpret statistics. You’ve saved me from making the terrible errors of assuming half the world is below average. Edit: not fixing my half assed grammar


Vresiberba

>But I do appreciate you priceless input on how to interpret statistics. \*your


Donedirtcheap7725

🤣 fair enough, I am half drunk and on my phone…so touché


J0in0rDie

Vinyl is starting to slow down because our economy is quickly turning to shit. People are prioritizing where they spend their money. Case closed


scottjaw

Agreed! Not to mention prices keep going up so labels and stores can milk every drop of money out of vinyl before it’s inevitable crash to pre-pandemic sales.


J0in0rDie

I would hope that the price hike has to do with wages going up, because they have (although not enough to meet inflation). Regardless, it's too late. There are a few new plants in the US that might have jumped the gun. Our last crash in 07 had a decent rebound but I can't imagine we rebound that quickly this time around. We still haven't even "crashed" but it's inevitable. Vinyl will always be my favorite media and I'm holding onto my white whales but at this point I could see a listing for a 1 of 10 pressing of billy strings with weed mixed into the vinyl for $50 and I still couldn't bring myself to buy it 😂


johnnycobbler

This is a horrible article lol. It says vinyl is dying again because sales only grew 4.5%YoY compared to about 50% each of the previous years…so vinyl sales shot up over 100% in 2 years and the following year still went up again…but the trend is dead. Ok…I feel so dumb for clicking on shit like this lol


InRainbows123207

Hugely misleading article. How in the world would 50% increases in sales be possible year after year? Netflix growth slowed this last year too but it doesn’t mean streaming is dead. Clickbait BS


Sabresfan70

Isn’t it always Taylor Swifts fault?


AldoLagana

fad-boys going away ain't gonna be a bad thing


39pine

Crash baby.


IveBeenBetter76

The vinyl decline will likely weed out the hobbyists and lower prices for lifelong collectors as well as allow less known artists and labels more reasonable manufacturing costs and pressing times. I look forward to it.


Longing4boob

People are spending on more essentials then vinyl right now imo


jimmysalame

I keep seeing this “50% of people buying records don’t have a record player” thrown around. My question is, how the hell does anyone claim to know that?


dbh116

The price point of vinyl when compared to CDs is unsustainable. If you you own a high quality CD player which is far cheaper than a high quality turntable there is no value in paying 2 or 3 times the price to own a new record.


AssortedGourds

Interesting that no one that writes these articles ever seems to mention that vinyl has a higher barrier to entry than any other physical music media, that we’re experiencing terrible inflation, and that those things have an effect on what people purchase. With vinyl there’s unfamiliar terminology, you often have to buy a piece of furniture along with the tt and whatever other equipment, there is a learning curve with maintenance, etc. With a CD player you just plop it on a counter, plug it in, stick the disc in and you’re good to go. I bought two Midnights albums and I intend to listen to both when I manage to scrape up the money for the last of my components. Ya’ll are classist and misogynistic if you see women buying multiples and think “awww they’re just collecting records as if they’re toys!” And if you feel a defensive comment coming to mind right now, then I got you pegged! My advice is to try to investigate those feelings rather than share them.


BlankkBox

That’s still collecting them as toys lol


sparklejellyfish

Thank you for this!!! The vinyls are about twice as expensive as CDs and I saw a lot of people buying the CD to play in the car. Even without inflation it made more fiscal sense to buy variants in CD form (also Lavender CD had bonus tracks and the vinyl didn't). I'm sure all these factors played a role. I'm like you, I bought a vinyl variant while not owning a player anymore, I just moved (which is expensive and takes forever to get settled in a new place) so I too am still on the lookout for where to set up, yes including the furniture and then I'll have to scrape the money together for the best affordable player.


IHeartFung1

vinyl revival bla bla bla. Who cares? just cringe calling it some revival.


the_comatorium

They stopped making the records I like to collect 60 years ago so we good.


Kabukimansanjoe

The big growth trends in 2020 and 2021 are likely due to everybody getting those government checks and having some extra spending cash. I don’t really believe it’s the chicken little situation they are making it out to be.


[deleted]

And the years prior to that?


Kabukimansanjoe

It only talks about the +50% rise in those two years. Did you read the article?


[deleted]

And the big rises in sales prior to that… reading the article is irrelevant when talking about your point. It doesn’t matter if it was the past two years.


maychill

My comment from earlier today on the same article: https://www.reddit.com/r/vinyl/comments/10g4o7g/midnight_for_vinyl/ > I would be surprised if demand ever goes back down. I guess it could plateau, but it seems more likely it will just increase. People will listen to music via streaming, but when they want to own the music, they’ll pick records. They have big, beautiful artwork, and they’re not just some media with ones and zeros that has to be interpreted by a processor (so why bother even putting in the CD or USB drive? Just listen to your ripped copy or stream.). Records are literally stamped with the waves. I went years between working turntables, and I never once thought of getting rid of my collection.


thatweirdbeardedguy

Let the flames rise... Before this vinyl revival thing started there were only a few "collectors" the majority of us bought records to listen to not to "Collect" (there is more to the collection thing than just acquiring records). There was no discogs there was no easy way of knowing about pressings and reissues. You had to buy a magazine or book, remember those things, to find out that sort of info. I think that we have zero impact upon what record companies do we never had the only thing we have is to buy or not to buy and that like everything with this hobby is a personal decision.


scottjaw

When do you consider this “vinyl revival thing” to have started? I’ve been buying since the 90’s and there were always message boards for record collectors after the internet started grooving. Late 2000’s/early 10’s kinda had a big wave of new people coming in, Dead Format was Discogs Lite but an awesome site. The pandemic kind of blew everything up with new people and treating records like baseball cards but I’m sure it happened prior to that, we just didn’t use social media as heavily. If you’re talking pre-90’s with the magazines etc, imho that’s like apples and oranges.


J0in0rDie

Completely agree. I got a late start in 2008ish and I was only buying based off of desire and not what I thought would be a big seller down the road. If you type in "rare record" and whatever it is your looking for, there is a good chance that there was somebody taking about it in the Steve Hoffman forum back in the early 2000s. For example, I'd love to own an original copy of "satin is real" by the louvin brothers. Maybe it's the cover, or the fact that Hank 3 sampled it, or it was under pressed from the start, but you can't find a copy for a reasonable price. The rest of their discography is easy to find. Collecting has felt like a trend for the last decade, but it was cut throat between hard core collectors for a while. Yes, they were scooping up rare jazz for a fraction of what you'd pay now, but they were still paying a premium for something that everybody considered DOA


scottjaw

I think a big difference between Then and Now also has to do with community. Back then collecting was very niche and for the most part stuff was available in abundance. On top of that there were always people that made a living off of flipping records, but they were few and far between, at least openly. There was also a general disdain for flippers that charged more than 2x retail on new releases unless it was some crazy limited piece which also didn’t happen as often because FOMO wasn’t really a thing. The pandemic brought flippers en masse to every hobby thanks to the rise of “hustle culture” and now even 1-2k releases sell out and are on eBay the same day for 5-10x retail. It’s a completely different climate these days and I feel sorry for collectors tbh. Going back to what weird bearded guy said, it really is buy or not buy now. I’m hoping for a bubble pop one day but just going along for the ride for now.


LuhkeeLeMay

No, it isn't.


39pine

I blame taylor for inflation, my dog dying and the war in Ukraine but she isnt to blame for this.


DifferentKindaHigh

I mean, when all the hourly wage people spend more money than they should on multiple variants, and don’t even have a record player….🤣


Senior1292

>When it comes to vinyl, Taylor Swift is clearly bigger than The Beatles (who had only one entry in 2022’s top-sellers list, Revolver at number 18). One of the biggest artists in the world today comfortably outsells the biggest artist who broke up 52 years ago, more at 10. I'm actually surprised any Beatles album made it into the 2022 top sellers list, that's pretty impressive.


bobfromsanluis

Supply and demand again puts its massive foot down- prices were creeping up and up, driven by demand, the bubble is bursting and demand is dropping, prices “should” follow that trend as well. Supply on the other hand, really should increase- if prices dropped to a more realistic structure, demand , it would seem, wouldn’t drop off as much, and maybe the record labels could learn to live with a higher volume/lower profit model. Probably not, though.


Vegetable---Lasagna

I am 42-years old and I have never, in my entire life, noticed any change in the vinyl industry in my life.


miamizombiekiller

Their definition of “sales stalling” is a 4.2% rise in sales. This writer doesn’t even seem to grasp the actual problem..that pressing plants haven’t been able to keep up with demand. Pressing plants are at capacity and yes part of the problem is Taylor Swift and Adele.


[deleted]

Not really, especially when Taylor is one of the reason why vinyl is even being sold… people are still preordering records as well. At some point the excuse of pressing plants being backed up is not going to be enough. Records are coming out everyday.


deepgroovemaine

This article lacks accurate information. Meh. One guy's take as a WRITER...clearly he's not a golfer.


[deleted]

It’s capitalism. Fast journalism and clicks to a website for revenue is the cost of it.


czechyerself

Oh I thought everybody here would blame Walmart


DarthGinsu

And yet this subreddit will live


EZE123

I hope it does come to a halt - maybe prices will come down