The Price of Vinyl

[BMD]

The last vinyl LP I bought was Innuendo by Queen in 1991. It cost me £7.50 ($8.70), which at the time I thought was ridiculously expensive.

 

To buy this very same vinyl album new would now cost me just over £35 ($40.60).

 

(The CD is £9.99 ($11.59) brand new.)

 

Is there any justification for this? I mean, vinyl is a pretty poor music delivery system, is it not?

 

 

Edit: Requiescat in Pace, your Majesty

[RABid]

Justification is the short runs, limited sales and large product size. CD's are smaller and cheaper to manufacturer. Music downloads have no physical cost, just storage space and bandwidth charges. LP's are a specialty product for collectors. If they did not charge that much, production would not be worth their effort. Hopefully as the collectors base grows and runs get bigger prices may drop. At the very least it will add downward pressure on the used market.

 

By the way, I paid $40 for the Peanuts Christmas album with blue vinyl imbedded with white snowflakes. Gave it to my great-nephiew for Christmas. I bought his the CD version 20 years ago. 

[Dave Bryce]

52 minutes ago, RABid said:

By the way, I paid $40 for the Peanuts Christmas album with blue vinyl imbedded with white snowflakes. Gave it to my great-nephiew for Christmas. I bought his the CD version 20 years ago. 

 

I bought the green vinyl copy last year.  I, too, have had the CD for at least two decades, probably more .  I don’t feel the slightest bit bad about it.

 

I like my records a whole lot.  It’s simply not the same experience - sonically, physically or temporally - as playing a CD, or putting my AV system’s dedicated Mac mini on shuffle.  ☺️

 

dB

[Anderton]

Vinyl also weighs a lot. Shipping and warehousing is an issue. And, you need to factor in the price of mastering and cutting. I don't know a lot of bedroom studios with vinyl cutting lathes tucked away in a walk-in closet, let alone people with the expertise to use them.

 

I do agree that vinyl is an inferior delivery medium, but CDs are an inferior experience, and streaming takes the experience down yet another notch. Maybe I'd feel different about streaming if I subscribed to one of those services that offers 24/96 files. 

[analogika]

The cost of pressing vinyl has about doubled (IIRC) over the past two years. 
 

One factor is that one of two lacquer manufacturers worldwide burned down; another is that prices for raw materials have massively increased, as well as shipping costs etc. 

 

Compared to 1991, the numbers are TINY, while the number of presses is a fraction of what it was back then, but then, you have shit like Adele or ABBA or an EIGHTEEN VINYL BOX from some legacy superstar band buying their way into a queue that independent labels and brokers have spent A WHOLE YEAR waiting on. 
 

We press 300 copies and wait over six months, and Adele comes along and has 500,000 pressed, and suddenly everybody else is waiting another six months. 

[Ivan May]

When my parents were growing up, vinyl records usually cost $6.98, unless you were buying a 2 record set, which was $11.98.

 

I recently bought a used Jean Pierre Rampal album for $1.00 at Value Village last week.

[Jeff Leites]

On 9/10/2022 at 3:54 PM, IMMusicRulz said:

When my parents were growing up, vinyl records usually cost $6.98, unless you were buying a 2 record set, which was $11.98.

 

I recently bought a used Jean Pierre Rampal album for $1.00 at Value Village last week.

Back in the day a Stereo LP was $1 more than the same LP in Mono.

[KuruPrionz]

People are going to buy what they are going to buy. Different people, different value systems. 

I've done the vinyl thing, 3 times not counting the time my brother went deep on it. 

Long since done and gone. The last records I bought new were decades ago when Tower Records was closing in Fresno - Abba's greatest hits. I don't have any records now. 

 

As a child I spent hours late at night with a small tube radio, surfing 2 popular music stations that were next to each other and listening to all the popular songs of the 50's and 60's. 

The radio had one 4" speaker and AM radio broadcast sounded like crap compared to what we have now. I didn't care, I loved the songs. 

 

Now I listen to maybe 30-40 random minutes of other people's music per month and spend a fair bit of time working on my own recordings. 

I've got a couple boxes of CDs I bought at thrift stores but I don't even have a system hooked up right now to listen to them and I don't know if/when I'll get around to it. 

 

A quality vinyl record played on a quality system has a sound. It's 100% analog, 16 bit at 44k (CDs) doesn't have the same sound. I'm not saying better or worse, there are advantages and disadvantages to both systems. 

 

If nobody bought records, nobody would produce them. Do what pleases you and enjoy!!!! 😬

[BMD]

On 9/10/2022 at 9:57 PM, Anderton said:

Vinyl also weighs a lot. Shipping and warehousing is an issue. And, you need to factor in the price of mastering and cutting. I don't know a lot of bedroom studios with vinyl cutting lathes tucked away in a walk-in closet, let alone people with the expertise to use them.

 

I do agree that vinyl is an inferior delivery medium, but CDs are an inferior experience, and streaming takes the experience down yet another notch. Maybe I'd feel different about streaming if I subscribed to one of those services that offers 24/96 files. 

 

Pardon my ignorance, but what are 24/96 files?

[Notes_Norton]

On 9/10/2022 at 4:57 PM, Anderton said:

I do agree that vinyl is an inferior delivery medium, but CDs are an inferior experience, and streaming takes the experience down yet another notch. Maybe I'd feel different about streaming if I subscribed to one of those services that offers 24/96 files. 

Every medium has its compromises.

 

The best I've personally heard was the short-lived SACD format. Sadly, it didn't take off, because most people don't care as much about fidelity as we do. They just want to hear the music and sing along with the words.

 

I like the sound of vinyl better than CDs or mp3s. But I don't fool myself to thinking it's realistic. It just has a more pleasant to my ears type of distortion. That is, until it develops the surface noise of pops and clicks, which I find very distracting. So I mostly use CDs or purchased downloads that I burn to CD.

 

It's a matter of picking the type of distortion that you agree with the most.

 

And as others said, more labor, higher production costs, heavier shipping weight, and the all important collector value makes LPs much more expensive. I have a lot from the pre-CD days, but I won't be buying any more.

 

Notes ♫

[Dave Bryce]

16 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

The best I've personally heard was the short-lived SACD format. Sadly, it didn't take off, because most people don't care as much about fidelity as we do.

 

I have a bunch of them, both stereo and surround.   As long as I have a working player I’ll keep using them…

 

dB

[Anderton]

21 hours ago, Notes_Norton said:

The best I've personally heard was the short-lived SACD format.

 

I agree, and I'm not a prissy golden ears type. It sounded clearly better to me. Better definition, more clarity.

 

Whether that's because the people re-mastering for SACD had a functioning brain, I don't know. But I do think the medium has inherent technical advantages, like not needing an ultra-hardcore reconstruction filter.