Some good questions to ponder on a Sunday morning!
First, regarding "peak vinyl." I don't think we're there, it's certainly hot right now compared to say 10 years ago, but the "peak" for vinyl (so far) was decades ago. Given enough time, most mediums will ebb and flow. People are into CDs again...tapes are making a modest comeback...
There is a return to physical media--regardless of form-- and I think that reflects a larger trend away from mindless consumption, and a return to intentionality. Rough comparison, but I think it's analogous to the defection from social media towards things like blogs and newsletters that we're also seeing.
And at the risk of undercutting that point, we are absolutely privileged compared to previous generations; we can use a streaming platform to discover far more than we ever could before and we can then go online to either the artist's website/ Bandcamp /a record store page to pickup a physical copy. The digital and physical worlds can (and should) work in tandem rather than as opposing forces.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed. I was so annoyed at my blooper and thought the video was a messy mess 🤣 but that camera blunder is now my favourite part of the whole thing.
I agree 100%, especially with your point about digital and physical coexisting. I wish more collectors saw it this way as well. We really have to embrace both and stop seeing them as rivals.
Thanks again for watching, commenting and sharing!
Totally agree! ‘Peak vinyl’ doesn’t really matter—it’ll rise and fall. What truly counts is that vinyl made a comeback. It remains one of the few ways we can experience music the way it’s meant to be: with intent;
Absolutely! I couldn’t agree more: we need to stop obsessing over popularity and celebrate the fact it’s again part of the ecosystem, rather than coming to threat (or being threatened by) other formats.
Listening with intent takes the experience to a whole new level.
In my Anti-Folk rant, I delve into the forced death of vinyl as the majors' effort to get rid of us pesky indies. That was in 89. I closed the label in 90 and went to law school. Great rant on your part and celebrating the resilience of vinyl is the point, not relative popularity. Bravo! I add my link for context. I still buy vinyl new, used, and thrift store. I recently got a Brothers Four BMOC, a slice of super-sonically perfect history for $3 at a used furniture store. The listening experience of dropping a needle on a record and then the 20-25 minute per LP side, a perfect digestible quantity, cannot and will not be improved upon so it will undoubtedly last forever. A comforting thought. The majors' attack on vinyl by stupidly rushing the CD in without any protection from digital file sharing was rash and unnecessary for any other reason than to get rid of the competition. It didn't work in the long run. Indies still rule to some extent. It did run some of us out of the muzak biz into other careers. I never really stopped making music; I just stopped making vinyl records. A true labor of love. A painstaking process from start to finish requiring a "good ear" and an eye for creating iconic lasting 12" x 12" artwork to represent the music. That special connection with the listener. Nobody stares at a CD cover while dreaming along with the music. Back then vinyl LPs were "official" releases for airplay, chart, and record review purposes and unlike cassettes which co-existed happily alongside LPs as a clever, malleable convenience. CDs led to streaming commodification. Cassettes only led to mixtapes and to listening to your favorite LPs while driving, walking or anywhere records couldn’t be easily played.
TVR: Never wave the flag of surrender and keep the lamps trimmed and burning 🔥 Long Live Vinyl! And yeah, Spotify sucks for so many reasons but if someone likes it, like you said, it's just another format. Why trumpet the end of a "fad" when the most desirable format that made music the product everyone still loves so much for the past 100 years is still so wildly popular? It's truly a thing of beauty preserving waves of sound for eternity in an incomparable package. Put the needle on the record. https://stevegabe.substack.com/p/anti-folk-and-the-tompkins-square?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=14weym
Thank you so much, Steve. You hit the nail on the head, or the needle right on the groove, with everything you said.
Very interesting to hear your story with your label and how you still, career change and all, managed to keep your love for music and records alive.
I tend not to stream records I own, and I try to own as many of my favourite records as I possibly can. For me, nothing can even come close to the ritual of playing a record and getting lost (or found 😉) in the sound.
Thanks a lot for watching, commenting and sharing your story. Long live vinyl!
During my last major move I realized I had neither the strength nor the space for the 1000 lps I’d been lugging around for the past 40years and nearly a half-dozen moves. The albums were tied in bunches of about 50 and weighed (I don’t really know) about 40 pounds. 20 or so of those bundles. So I caved. I found an indie used music shop in Portland ME with an owner that cared about the music and sold him about half my collection. I was bouyed by knowing someone would give them a good home, handle them carefully, to avoid scratches, like the innocent babes all lps are and smile as the magic of their sonic healing drenched them in aural paradise.
Do I miss my babies? Sometimes I feel like crying when my mood tickles me with a breezy guitar line or a lyric and I realize after ten minutes of looking through my current collection, that they’re no longer there.
None of the music services have them, the really special ones, except for youtube which blows my mind every time I go looking. It’s almost ALWAYS there in one version (or twelve) and though I hate the way they place their ads, it’s something.
I have an entire rant in me about how Apple has kidnapped my digital music collection and is holding it for ransom but that’s for another time.
Im so grateful for what you share here. I’m a newbie to Substack so will now visit more often. So honored to share a birthday with you and for our connection, regardless of the frequency of it. We will always have congas on the Sierra rapids to make us smile!
Great points my friend! I think the people who consider vinyl a fad have no passion or true interest in vinyl. They may even be mad that they got rid of their vinyl before it began its resurgence in popularity. People who love to collect vinyl will always do so regardless of trends. With more and more stores stocking vinyl I don't see it going away anytime soon. You're also absolutely right: all formats can exist side by side. They do in my home!
Thank you so much, Dan! You’re so right. Those who consider vinyl a fad have no real interest other than coming across as cool or doing the popular thing at the right time. I love the fact formats coexist in your household—so do they in mine, despite the obvious bias on my part towards wax 😅
Such a keen observation, Andy....seems like it was only recently when we, right here, were celebrating the astronomical vinyl sales figures of our favorite format over the unit-volume of the dreaded CD! But, what a great way to keep your finger on the vinyl pulse....your creative Googlery!
I do think it's important to keep our respective and collective digits on the pulse point of vinyl....I wonder if there's a site (or one could Google) that publishes the weekly vinyl sales figures, worldwide and/or in a particular country or two (like, U.S. and UK), and someone could graph it out, so trends can be tracked.
I appreciate your skepticism re: those "Is vinyl still a fad?" and "Is vinyl still worth buying?" queries....if they're, indeed, genuine and valid questions, I wonder what's causing them to be asked in the first place! What data or experiences are people seeing at points of purchase (both in stores and online) that lead them into that question?
Plus, if vinyl popularity is, indeed, shrinking, what, if anything, is taking its place? Streaming? CDs again, rearing their--let's face it--ugly heads? I'm proud of our corner of the 'Stack...our collective of music writers gathered here...most, if not all, are active and proudly vinyl-forward, so, on one hand, we're doing what we can to carry the vinyl torch, and to a large degree, that's all we can do. Most of us are active enough in the marketplace, too, to impact sales figures, plus we can "carry the message" to other places online to promote the tactile joys of our favorite PVC experience!☕🙏
Thank you, Brad! Did you like my product placement? If only I could handle my phone camera as smoothly as I can place products 🤣
Now seriously, you raise very good and interesting points. What I tend to do is wait for the official figures. From the US, I tend to prefer RIAA (we saw the mess Billboard and Luminate made last year), and for the UK, it’s all a bit more spread out (the irony in a much smaller country!) but I tend to look at BPI first.
Vinyl sales keep growing, but I suspect at some point they may well plateau. I’d like to think we’re now in an era of music —perhaps unprecedented— in which formats can and will coexist. The main question for me is at which point or percentage each will land. Time will tell.
I personally don’t think CDs will reach the current vinyl levels, but everything is possible these days.
What I do hope is that there is still place for all.
Completely agree that we are quite lucky here in the Musicstack, with the skills and knowledge each brings to the table, and with the way we support the music ecosystem as a whole.
I loved your product placement! I went subtle in my graciases hoy, with my end-of-comment emoji-forward ☕🙏! Good to hear vinyl sales continue to grow, and I enjoy Kevin's last paragraph, that we can use online to enhance our vinyl experience...use it to find what we can purchase to hold in our hands..."co-exist," as he puts it!
I loved getting the brief tour (peek?😊) at your vinyl largesse! Muy impresivo! I need to pick up my Spanish game, as I still work on upping my emoji game!💪☕🙏👍🌟
You’re always very gracious, my friend, and my Tune Tag mug is a great companion. Coffee in the morning and noon, tea in the late afternoon, and well… you can imagine what goes on at night! 😉😅
Totally agree that we should embrace the coexistence of formats, and you’re right, Kevin couldn’t have put it better!
Thank you—nothing compares to your dad’s (and then obviously your) collection, though. Now that must have been truly impresionante!!! 🥰
Great points, Andres. There is a lot of talk, but I’ve conducted several interviews with Gen Z buyers and it is not a fad for them. Hopefully, the *fad* portion is endless streams of color variations to drive people to buy the same Taylor Swift album 5 times. The biggest threat to the vinyl resurgence is the price points getting out of control. The majors are pushing to have more and more gimmick albums with crazy splatter designs and objects like water, powder (charlie xcx ), etc. inside the vinyl. The slow in sales is due to this abuse and vinyl will suffer the price cliff-effect if this keeps happening, where suddenly sales nosedive. It’s having another consequence, which is pressing plants are favoring semi-automatic presses that can do about 400 pressings each day, as opposed to automatic presses that put out 1000/daily. All these splatters and color variations also mean more time between each job because machines have to be cleaned out in addition to changing stampers. Rising prices, slowing supply, plus tariff nonsense, threaten to create another situation where indies get pushed off presses and the backlog returns. It’s not so much a vinyl problem as it is a capitalism one.
Thank you, Jason, for watching and commenting. I hear where you are coming from. There are certainly supply side issues —some more justified than others— and crucially a lot of demand pressures not just from consumers but also from labels and artists themselves. For me, the main appeal of vinyl is the sound and the connection with the music — the visuals are secondary. But sadly for a lot of people, the funky colour or splatter pattern would seem to rank quite high in their list of priorities. Part of me thinks if there’s a market for it then why not, having said that, it is getting a bit ridiculous when the same record gets released a million times and others have to wait ages to even secure a spot in the line.
I also think right now there isn’t yet the vinyl production capacity, consumer appetite or even the market for some of those indie records and yet it saddens me they don’t even get a chance to see the light of day. Lots of food for thought here. We may not have all the answers, but it’s important to keep asking these questions.
Yes, I’m a bit torn on it myself. I understand the need to differentiate and stand out, but I’d prefer to see it on album artwork, rather than the vinyl itself. The pressing plants themselves are incentivized to offer the endless variations because it massively increases the average sales price to the client (label, band, etc) and can change that price from $4-6 to $8-$12 per unit. There’s another factor too, which is the plants impose minimums and lower prices as order sizes increase. An order of 300 is more expensive per unit than 500, 1,000, etc. BUT color variations change that in a couple ways. First, if you want 300 records in two colors, but the minimum is 300, then you need to order 600. Second, both orders of 300 can be priced at the higher price if they are treated as two separate orders of 300 instead of one of 600. It’s not uniform across all plants and everyone I know wants to do right by the artists, but the incentives work in favor of variation, not consistency and sound quality.
I agree 100% I’d rather see the visuals on the album artwork than the vinyl itself. Clearly there’s a lot of pressure to do all these different colour variants as they tend to be ridiculously popular, especially among Gen Z fans. There’s also this whole “instagrammable” element which gets on my nerves. A record is beautiful, full stop: it doesn’t have to come in funky colours.
I mostly buy old pressings in the resale/second hand market but I will occasionally get some new vinyl, and one thing I’ve noticed is sound quality in some new pressings has overall improved (or I’ve got really lucky) compared with, say, 7 or 8 years ago.
What prompted me to dig out my vinyl collection was a local brewery that does vinyl night every Wednesday where you can sign up for a 20 minute set and spin your records! Once a month they do a theme. What got me was a female themed night last summer. It’s always interesting and sometimes challenging to see what kind of set I can put together with what I have. I’m not going to lie- I’ve definitely bought a few records just to spin them on a theme night. 100% of them are records I would want in my collection anyway.
This month’s theme is to spin a set all from the same year! This was one where I had to do some serious pairing down! My record collection is mostly 1981-1989 (aside from newer stuff, which is all over the place release year wise)
I decided on 1985 because all of these are 40 years old this year! Some of my most loved ones look it too 🤣
Thank you, Kristin! Your vinyl themed nights sound like a lot of fun. Do you play each song in its entirety or do you have to do some sort of megamix?
1985 is a great year to choose records from. Whitney’s debut, Robert Palmer’s Riptide, A-ha’s Hunting High and Low, Grace Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm, and plenty more!
Yes!!! I have a-ha’s Hunting High and Low! I really had to pare down because I have too many great ones from 85! You get to play a song in its entirety, of course you could mix it into the next one if you are skilled 😂 they have two turntables, so you get to queue the next one up.
I’ll come back with my playlist in a bit lol It took me all morning to figure out what to play! I pained over it! 😂
What else I wanted to play: a-ha, Simple Minds, Simply Red, Blancmange, Tears for Fears, The Colourfield, Dead or Alive, something from Catching Up With Depeche Mode… lol
I loved this so much! Loved your perfect blooper. And between this product placement and the newest TuneTag, I finally ordered a mug! Purple of course!
Funny, someone above mentioned 1989 as when they tried to do away with vinyl. I just catalogued my collection on Discogs, and until my purchases over the past year, the last year I had vinyl from was 1989.
I sold off a lot in college to eat and pay rent, but not before downloading them from Napster and burning them to CDs 😂 But, there was at least one crate that I would never sell!
I love that vinyl made a comeback and I can share the love with my kids. The sound is SO MUCH better!!
Thank you, Kristin! I need to up my camera skills, but I do realise my lack thereof can be a source of entertainment! 🤣
Sooo glad you ordered your mug! I seriously can’t get enough of it. It’s gorgeous and very nicely done. Enjoy!
Interesting what you say about 1989, but it makes a lot of sense. That’s roughly the year when vinyl started to wind down.
For me, the vinyl revival was a game changer. I was born in 1988, for context, so you can imagine I only knew “of” vinyl but never actually held a record in my hands before I was 20! Crazy when you think about it (it’s my reason of being these days!) 🥰
Your face when you read that last “what other people asked question”! Hilarious!! Tell us what you really think without saying anything. Then you had to refocus and find your Zen moment. Hahaha, love that!
I wonder how much the “is vinyl a fad” questions are driven by people that are thinking about getting into vinyl but wondering whether they might be getting into a format that won’t be supported in the future. Just a thought.
I personally can’t see vinyl going away given how established it feels like it’s become. Plus there’s literally millions of old records that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Thank you so much, Mark! You're a very keen observer, or I am a shit liar, or both: when my husband watched this video, he pinpointed that very same instant as a true reflection of when I get angry (well, in his words, when I'm about to tell him off 😂). I think it helps that I don't really have a script per se but rather a rough outline in my head of what I want to say, but I let things run freely so as to keep it spontaneous and real.
I agree with you that vinyl is unlikely to fade again (at least, certainly not in the way it "faded" 35 years ago) and it is indeed very possible some are testing the waters based purely on popularity or the prospects of it being "viable" in the long run.
Ha! Those product placements are a lot of fun--thanks! I'm left handed as you may have gathered but the spot I like to record these in (thanks to good lighting) means my desk is on the right, so I'm trying to get a bit more "adroit" when moving things around!
Thank you so much, John. These are huge compliments and I’m really humbled. Truthfully. Thanks a lot for watching and for your kind words.
Exactly—this sensationalist trend, particularly after covid, with pretty much everything being either smoking hot or burning down in flames, devoid of any context or critical thinking, is truly sickening.
The people who still like it will still buy it, the tourists will move on to something else as they always do. But I guess we'd have to thank the tourists a bit for helping build vinyl up although I don't think it's dying in the least.
What an absolute joy to listen to. There's so much to digest and what you said that I find it hard to pick a starting point.
First off, I didn't know jumping from one pile of s*** to another pile of s*** was even an option. I've always been one that if you're passionate about something, you're passionate about it and you don't change course easily. I started collecting vinyl when I was young and I've never stopped. The amount of albums that I purchase per year has increased and decreased according to changes in life and where your money is spent.
Second, if all of the wannabes jump to a new pile of s***, hopefully the price of existing vinyl will come down a little bit so I can afford to grab some of the stuff that I've always wanted.
Third, well let's just not worry about all the... Other people.... That don't get it.
Thank you so much, Bob! I’m really glad you enjoyed.
Sadly some people behave as if jumping from one pile of shit to the next. Fortunately there are collectors like you who have always stood firmly by vinyl’s side, not letting any of this shit come between you and the music. I’m of a younger generation but I connect a lot more with your approach than with the approach of many of my contemporaries.
Thanks a lot for watching and commenting and above all thanks for being here!
Some good questions to ponder on a Sunday morning!
First, regarding "peak vinyl." I don't think we're there, it's certainly hot right now compared to say 10 years ago, but the "peak" for vinyl (so far) was decades ago. Given enough time, most mediums will ebb and flow. People are into CDs again...tapes are making a modest comeback...
There is a return to physical media--regardless of form-- and I think that reflects a larger trend away from mindless consumption, and a return to intentionality. Rough comparison, but I think it's analogous to the defection from social media towards things like blogs and newsletters that we're also seeing.
And at the risk of undercutting that point, we are absolutely privileged compared to previous generations; we can use a streaming platform to discover far more than we ever could before and we can then go online to either the artist's website/ Bandcamp /a record store page to pickup a physical copy. The digital and physical worlds can (and should) work in tandem rather than as opposing forces.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed. I was so annoyed at my blooper and thought the video was a messy mess 🤣 but that camera blunder is now my favourite part of the whole thing.
I agree 100%, especially with your point about digital and physical coexisting. I wish more collectors saw it this way as well. We really have to embrace both and stop seeing them as rivals.
Thanks again for watching, commenting and sharing!
Totally agree! ‘Peak vinyl’ doesn’t really matter—it’ll rise and fall. What truly counts is that vinyl made a comeback. It remains one of the few ways we can experience music the way it’s meant to be: with intent;
Absolutely! I couldn’t agree more: we need to stop obsessing over popularity and celebrate the fact it’s again part of the ecosystem, rather than coming to threat (or being threatened by) other formats.
Listening with intent takes the experience to a whole new level.
Thanks again!
In my Anti-Folk rant, I delve into the forced death of vinyl as the majors' effort to get rid of us pesky indies. That was in 89. I closed the label in 90 and went to law school. Great rant on your part and celebrating the resilience of vinyl is the point, not relative popularity. Bravo! I add my link for context. I still buy vinyl new, used, and thrift store. I recently got a Brothers Four BMOC, a slice of super-sonically perfect history for $3 at a used furniture store. The listening experience of dropping a needle on a record and then the 20-25 minute per LP side, a perfect digestible quantity, cannot and will not be improved upon so it will undoubtedly last forever. A comforting thought. The majors' attack on vinyl by stupidly rushing the CD in without any protection from digital file sharing was rash and unnecessary for any other reason than to get rid of the competition. It didn't work in the long run. Indies still rule to some extent. It did run some of us out of the muzak biz into other careers. I never really stopped making music; I just stopped making vinyl records. A true labor of love. A painstaking process from start to finish requiring a "good ear" and an eye for creating iconic lasting 12" x 12" artwork to represent the music. That special connection with the listener. Nobody stares at a CD cover while dreaming along with the music. Back then vinyl LPs were "official" releases for airplay, chart, and record review purposes and unlike cassettes which co-existed happily alongside LPs as a clever, malleable convenience. CDs led to streaming commodification. Cassettes only led to mixtapes and to listening to your favorite LPs while driving, walking or anywhere records couldn’t be easily played.
TVR: Never wave the flag of surrender and keep the lamps trimmed and burning 🔥 Long Live Vinyl! And yeah, Spotify sucks for so many reasons but if someone likes it, like you said, it's just another format. Why trumpet the end of a "fad" when the most desirable format that made music the product everyone still loves so much for the past 100 years is still so wildly popular? It's truly a thing of beauty preserving waves of sound for eternity in an incomparable package. Put the needle on the record. https://stevegabe.substack.com/p/anti-folk-and-the-tompkins-square?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=14weym
Thank you so much, Steve. You hit the nail on the head, or the needle right on the groove, with everything you said.
Very interesting to hear your story with your label and how you still, career change and all, managed to keep your love for music and records alive.
I tend not to stream records I own, and I try to own as many of my favourite records as I possibly can. For me, nothing can even come close to the ritual of playing a record and getting lost (or found 😉) in the sound.
Thanks a lot for watching, commenting and sharing your story. Long live vinyl!
During my last major move I realized I had neither the strength nor the space for the 1000 lps I’d been lugging around for the past 40years and nearly a half-dozen moves. The albums were tied in bunches of about 50 and weighed (I don’t really know) about 40 pounds. 20 or so of those bundles. So I caved. I found an indie used music shop in Portland ME with an owner that cared about the music and sold him about half my collection. I was bouyed by knowing someone would give them a good home, handle them carefully, to avoid scratches, like the innocent babes all lps are and smile as the magic of their sonic healing drenched them in aural paradise.
Do I miss my babies? Sometimes I feel like crying when my mood tickles me with a breezy guitar line or a lyric and I realize after ten minutes of looking through my current collection, that they’re no longer there.
None of the music services have them, the really special ones, except for youtube which blows my mind every time I go looking. It’s almost ALWAYS there in one version (or twelve) and though I hate the way they place their ads, it’s something.
I have an entire rant in me about how Apple has kidnapped my digital music collection and is holding it for ransom but that’s for another time.
Im so grateful for what you share here. I’m a newbie to Substack so will now visit more often. So honored to share a birthday with you and for our connection, regardless of the frequency of it. We will always have congas on the Sierra rapids to make us smile!
Great points my friend! I think the people who consider vinyl a fad have no passion or true interest in vinyl. They may even be mad that they got rid of their vinyl before it began its resurgence in popularity. People who love to collect vinyl will always do so regardless of trends. With more and more stores stocking vinyl I don't see it going away anytime soon. You're also absolutely right: all formats can exist side by side. They do in my home!
Thank you so much, Dan! You’re so right. Those who consider vinyl a fad have no real interest other than coming across as cool or doing the popular thing at the right time. I love the fact formats coexist in your household—so do they in mine, despite the obvious bias on my part towards wax 😅
Thanks a lot for watching and commenting!
Such a keen observation, Andy....seems like it was only recently when we, right here, were celebrating the astronomical vinyl sales figures of our favorite format over the unit-volume of the dreaded CD! But, what a great way to keep your finger on the vinyl pulse....your creative Googlery!
I do think it's important to keep our respective and collective digits on the pulse point of vinyl....I wonder if there's a site (or one could Google) that publishes the weekly vinyl sales figures, worldwide and/or in a particular country or two (like, U.S. and UK), and someone could graph it out, so trends can be tracked.
I appreciate your skepticism re: those "Is vinyl still a fad?" and "Is vinyl still worth buying?" queries....if they're, indeed, genuine and valid questions, I wonder what's causing them to be asked in the first place! What data or experiences are people seeing at points of purchase (both in stores and online) that lead them into that question?
Plus, if vinyl popularity is, indeed, shrinking, what, if anything, is taking its place? Streaming? CDs again, rearing their--let's face it--ugly heads? I'm proud of our corner of the 'Stack...our collective of music writers gathered here...most, if not all, are active and proudly vinyl-forward, so, on one hand, we're doing what we can to carry the vinyl torch, and to a large degree, that's all we can do. Most of us are active enough in the marketplace, too, to impact sales figures, plus we can "carry the message" to other places online to promote the tactile joys of our favorite PVC experience!☕🙏
Thank you, Brad! Did you like my product placement? If only I could handle my phone camera as smoothly as I can place products 🤣
Now seriously, you raise very good and interesting points. What I tend to do is wait for the official figures. From the US, I tend to prefer RIAA (we saw the mess Billboard and Luminate made last year), and for the UK, it’s all a bit more spread out (the irony in a much smaller country!) but I tend to look at BPI first.
Vinyl sales keep growing, but I suspect at some point they may well plateau. I’d like to think we’re now in an era of music —perhaps unprecedented— in which formats can and will coexist. The main question for me is at which point or percentage each will land. Time will tell.
I personally don’t think CDs will reach the current vinyl levels, but everything is possible these days.
What I do hope is that there is still place for all.
Completely agree that we are quite lucky here in the Musicstack, with the skills and knowledge each brings to the table, and with the way we support the music ecosystem as a whole.
Thanks a lot for being here, as always!
I loved your product placement! I went subtle in my graciases hoy, with my end-of-comment emoji-forward ☕🙏! Good to hear vinyl sales continue to grow, and I enjoy Kevin's last paragraph, that we can use online to enhance our vinyl experience...use it to find what we can purchase to hold in our hands..."co-exist," as he puts it!
I loved getting the brief tour (peek?😊) at your vinyl largesse! Muy impresivo! I need to pick up my Spanish game, as I still work on upping my emoji game!💪☕🙏👍🌟
You’re always very gracious, my friend, and my Tune Tag mug is a great companion. Coffee in the morning and noon, tea in the late afternoon, and well… you can imagine what goes on at night! 😉😅
Totally agree that we should embrace the coexistence of formats, and you’re right, Kevin couldn’t have put it better!
Thank you—nothing compares to your dad’s (and then obviously your) collection, though. Now that must have been truly impresionante!!! 🥰
Thanks again!
Great points, Andres. There is a lot of talk, but I’ve conducted several interviews with Gen Z buyers and it is not a fad for them. Hopefully, the *fad* portion is endless streams of color variations to drive people to buy the same Taylor Swift album 5 times. The biggest threat to the vinyl resurgence is the price points getting out of control. The majors are pushing to have more and more gimmick albums with crazy splatter designs and objects like water, powder (charlie xcx ), etc. inside the vinyl. The slow in sales is due to this abuse and vinyl will suffer the price cliff-effect if this keeps happening, where suddenly sales nosedive. It’s having another consequence, which is pressing plants are favoring semi-automatic presses that can do about 400 pressings each day, as opposed to automatic presses that put out 1000/daily. All these splatters and color variations also mean more time between each job because machines have to be cleaned out in addition to changing stampers. Rising prices, slowing supply, plus tariff nonsense, threaten to create another situation where indies get pushed off presses and the backlog returns. It’s not so much a vinyl problem as it is a capitalism one.
Thank you, Jason, for watching and commenting. I hear where you are coming from. There are certainly supply side issues —some more justified than others— and crucially a lot of demand pressures not just from consumers but also from labels and artists themselves. For me, the main appeal of vinyl is the sound and the connection with the music — the visuals are secondary. But sadly for a lot of people, the funky colour or splatter pattern would seem to rank quite high in their list of priorities. Part of me thinks if there’s a market for it then why not, having said that, it is getting a bit ridiculous when the same record gets released a million times and others have to wait ages to even secure a spot in the line.
I also think right now there isn’t yet the vinyl production capacity, consumer appetite or even the market for some of those indie records and yet it saddens me they don’t even get a chance to see the light of day. Lots of food for thought here. We may not have all the answers, but it’s important to keep asking these questions.
Yes, I’m a bit torn on it myself. I understand the need to differentiate and stand out, but I’d prefer to see it on album artwork, rather than the vinyl itself. The pressing plants themselves are incentivized to offer the endless variations because it massively increases the average sales price to the client (label, band, etc) and can change that price from $4-6 to $8-$12 per unit. There’s another factor too, which is the plants impose minimums and lower prices as order sizes increase. An order of 300 is more expensive per unit than 500, 1,000, etc. BUT color variations change that in a couple ways. First, if you want 300 records in two colors, but the minimum is 300, then you need to order 600. Second, both orders of 300 can be priced at the higher price if they are treated as two separate orders of 300 instead of one of 600. It’s not uniform across all plants and everyone I know wants to do right by the artists, but the incentives work in favor of variation, not consistency and sound quality.
I agree 100% I’d rather see the visuals on the album artwork than the vinyl itself. Clearly there’s a lot of pressure to do all these different colour variants as they tend to be ridiculously popular, especially among Gen Z fans. There’s also this whole “instagrammable” element which gets on my nerves. A record is beautiful, full stop: it doesn’t have to come in funky colours.
I mostly buy old pressings in the resale/second hand market but I will occasionally get some new vinyl, and one thing I’ve noticed is sound quality in some new pressings has overall improved (or I’ve got really lucky) compared with, say, 7 or 8 years ago.
What prompted me to dig out my vinyl collection was a local brewery that does vinyl night every Wednesday where you can sign up for a 20 minute set and spin your records! Once a month they do a theme. What got me was a female themed night last summer. It’s always interesting and sometimes challenging to see what kind of set I can put together with what I have. I’m not going to lie- I’ve definitely bought a few records just to spin them on a theme night. 100% of them are records I would want in my collection anyway.
This month’s theme is to spin a set all from the same year! This was one where I had to do some serious pairing down! My record collection is mostly 1981-1989 (aside from newer stuff, which is all over the place release year wise)
I decided on 1985 because all of these are 40 years old this year! Some of my most loved ones look it too 🤣
Thank you, Kristin! Your vinyl themed nights sound like a lot of fun. Do you play each song in its entirety or do you have to do some sort of megamix?
1985 is a great year to choose records from. Whitney’s debut, Robert Palmer’s Riptide, A-ha’s Hunting High and Low, Grace Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm, and plenty more!
Yes!!! I have a-ha’s Hunting High and Low! I really had to pare down because I have too many great ones from 85! You get to play a song in its entirety, of course you could mix it into the next one if you are skilled 😂 they have two turntables, so you get to queue the next one up.
I’ll come back with my playlist in a bit lol It took me all morning to figure out what to play! I pained over it! 😂
That’s awesome! I can imagine it can’t have been easy, but that’s a good sign in my opinion. Enjoy!!
It was SO HARD! 🤣
My set list:
Camper Van Beethoven- Take the Skinheads Bowling
New Order- The Perfect Kiss
Vitamin Z- Burning Flame
The Cure- A Night Like This
The Dream Academy- Life in a Northern Town
What else I wanted to play: a-ha, Simple Minds, Simply Red, Blancmange, Tears for Fears, The Colourfield, Dead or Alive, something from Catching Up With Depeche Mode… lol
Geez how could I forget about Simply Red when I mentioned artists and records earlier?! One of my favourite bands.
Great selection!! I bet it will be popular!
I loved this so much! Loved your perfect blooper. And between this product placement and the newest TuneTag, I finally ordered a mug! Purple of course!
Funny, someone above mentioned 1989 as when they tried to do away with vinyl. I just catalogued my collection on Discogs, and until my purchases over the past year, the last year I had vinyl from was 1989.
I sold off a lot in college to eat and pay rent, but not before downloading them from Napster and burning them to CDs 😂 But, there was at least one crate that I would never sell!
I love that vinyl made a comeback and I can share the love with my kids. The sound is SO MUCH better!!
Thank you, Kristin! I need to up my camera skills, but I do realise my lack thereof can be a source of entertainment! 🤣
Sooo glad you ordered your mug! I seriously can’t get enough of it. It’s gorgeous and very nicely done. Enjoy!
Interesting what you say about 1989, but it makes a lot of sense. That’s roughly the year when vinyl started to wind down.
For me, the vinyl revival was a game changer. I was born in 1988, for context, so you can imagine I only knew “of” vinyl but never actually held a record in my hands before I was 20! Crazy when you think about it (it’s my reason of being these days!) 🥰
Hahaha I graduated high school in 1988!
That’s a funny coincidence! I wish I had “experienced” the 80s properly. I’m an old soul!
Your face when you read that last “what other people asked question”! Hilarious!! Tell us what you really think without saying anything. Then you had to refocus and find your Zen moment. Hahaha, love that!
I wonder how much the “is vinyl a fad” questions are driven by people that are thinking about getting into vinyl but wondering whether they might be getting into a format that won’t be supported in the future. Just a thought.
I personally can’t see vinyl going away given how established it feels like it’s become. Plus there’s literally millions of old records that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Love the product placement for the Tune Tag mug!!
Thank you so much, Mark! You're a very keen observer, or I am a shit liar, or both: when my husband watched this video, he pinpointed that very same instant as a true reflection of when I get angry (well, in his words, when I'm about to tell him off 😂). I think it helps that I don't really have a script per se but rather a rough outline in my head of what I want to say, but I let things run freely so as to keep it spontaneous and real.
I agree with you that vinyl is unlikely to fade again (at least, certainly not in the way it "faded" 35 years ago) and it is indeed very possible some are testing the waters based purely on popularity or the prospects of it being "viable" in the long run.
Ha! Those product placements are a lot of fun--thanks! I'm left handed as you may have gathered but the spot I like to record these in (thanks to good lighting) means my desk is on the right, so I'm trying to get a bit more "adroit" when moving things around!
Thanks a lot for watching and commenting!
First off, best use of the shit-and-flies metaphor across two different ideas. Really, a bravura performance.
Second, media is so LAZY that anything resembling an "trend" or a "vibe"—absent any kind of data beyond opinion—is a "story."
They should be called out for this, so: well done!
Thank you so much, John. These are huge compliments and I’m really humbled. Truthfully. Thanks a lot for watching and for your kind words.
Exactly—this sensationalist trend, particularly after covid, with pretty much everything being either smoking hot or burning down in flames, devoid of any context or critical thinking, is truly sickening.
Thanks again for being here.
The people who still like it will still buy it, the tourists will move on to something else as they always do. But I guess we'd have to thank the tourists a bit for helping build vinyl up although I don't think it's dying in the least.
Thank you! I agree with you that it’s not dying per se, but some people seem to be sounding death knells again.
We should indeed be grateful to the tourists and all those who helped bring it back into the mainstream.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
What an absolute joy to listen to. There's so much to digest and what you said that I find it hard to pick a starting point.
First off, I didn't know jumping from one pile of s*** to another pile of s*** was even an option. I've always been one that if you're passionate about something, you're passionate about it and you don't change course easily. I started collecting vinyl when I was young and I've never stopped. The amount of albums that I purchase per year has increased and decreased according to changes in life and where your money is spent.
Second, if all of the wannabes jump to a new pile of s***, hopefully the price of existing vinyl will come down a little bit so I can afford to grab some of the stuff that I've always wanted.
Third, well let's just not worry about all the... Other people.... That don't get it.
Thank you so much, Bob! I’m really glad you enjoyed.
Sadly some people behave as if jumping from one pile of shit to the next. Fortunately there are collectors like you who have always stood firmly by vinyl’s side, not letting any of this shit come between you and the music. I’m of a younger generation but I connect a lot more with your approach than with the approach of many of my contemporaries.
Thanks a lot for watching and commenting and above all thanks for being here!