Vinyl Sales Plummets 33% After A Decade Of Rapid Growth

[Sneaky Oliver 21,197]

Maybe because the vinyls were considered like a rare collector’s item and something special now there are vinyls of everything, a massive production and multiple variations of the same record, they feel more of a cash grab now 

[dracomalfoy 643]

everyone's saving their money for LG7 milky clear variants 

[Auther 22,055]

16 hours ago, killme89 said:

Blame Taylor swift and Adele 

Poor Adele catching strays. 

[RAMROD 103,965]

53 minutes ago, Agunimon said:

Poor Adele catching strays. 

She deserves that strays. At least Swifties actually making sure none left on shelves so it won't  be found at Goodwill still sealed & mint for $2 like Adele's 

[Dadru 2,273]

I mainly buy a vinyl if:

1. I love the album as a whole

2. I really like the artwork (for displaying)

3. I collect albums from an artist

4. It's an iconic, must have, album

 

If you just like some songs of an album, don't buy it. You won't ever play it and it's way too expensive for that.

[suchheights8 221]

18 hours ago, HelloHangoverz said:

The fact is, vinyl looks cool on the internet. Then you try it for yourself: firstly, it's expensive. Then, it's a pain in the ass to listen to because you've got to get up and change it round every 20 minutes. It's all for show in my opinion. My Chromatica trifold vinyl is gorgeous and has pride of place on my shelf, but I've never listened to her. Vinyl is a big fad that will pass and yes I will die on this hill. Roll on the CD revival.

I mean it's been around for almost 100 years and has had a resurgence. I doubt it's going anywhere anytime soon...

[HelloHangoverz 15,542]

2 minutes ago, suchheights8 said:

I mean it's been around for almost 100 years and has had a resurgence. I doubt it's going anywhere anytime soon...

Yes, i am aware the format itself is unlikely to entirely cease to exist in totality 

[HIM820 1,747]

14 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

The most major is The Tortured Poets Department. Taylor was, no joke, putting out new variants every week at one point with no new tracks, just acoustic versions of existing tracks and voice memos. And her fans continued to buy them to support her, which is why she remained at #1 for weeks on end. It became a thing where she was accused of deliberately blocking younger female artists whenever they had a new album out as well (most notably, Billie, Charli and Chappell). It sold 700k vinyls in the US in the first week alone and it's the bestselling vinyl record this year. To date, it’s sold over 859k in the US. Worldwide, it must be well over a million by now. That doesn't even include the sales of her 1989 re-release. Those 2 albums alone bolstered vinyl sales incredibly. As for other artists, vinyl sales are also really huge for Arctic Monkeys and Lana Del Rey. 

Tortured Poets has 5 vinyl variants. You’re talking about digital editions she released on her store. Maybe they were made into cds too, but all those acoustic live versions were not pressed on vinyl. 

[Cavadour 2,008]

At the risk to sound like an old geezer again:

My first record player in 1968 had 45, 33 and 78 rpm settings. In my first car in 1973 there was a 8-track cassette player. I still own a couple of thousand vinyls bought between the 70's and the 90's. Then, I collected another thousand of CDs. My old Sony TC-D5M cassette deck is still working great, such as the top notch JVC VCR I bought in the 90's to tape countless VHS, still packed in a pile of banana boxes, along with commercial VHS releases and a generous amount of DVDs. In parallel i owned the first SONY Walkman (cassette), many iPod models... So believe me, after decades of piling collections of physical stuff (not mentioning here, pulps, magazines, books...) I fully embraced, after a short period and some drawers full of burned CD and DVD, the availability of movies, TV series and music in DEMATERIALIZED format (not counting here that my packrat habits made me collect hundreds of TB in HDD format...)

Now about vinyl. In the early days of the CD, there was no comprehension of the format outside of its 'compact' aspect. Early AAD CDs just can't compare with vinyls of the same era in a matter of sound. Vinyl had decades of knowledge under the belt, engineering-wise. But then in the 90's, besides DDD records sounding better, a major understanding of the need of a proper remastering technique for the re-releases finally appeared. Now, with lossless digital available since about twenty years, on a good audio setup, almost no music sounds better than the digital format.

I never understood, outside of the obvious financial advantages for records companies, the public lure for vinyl since the last twenty years. It's a trend and ultimately a passing fad. Witness the variants cashgrab nosedive. As many of you show awareness in the thread. Plus, one of my friends, who's deep in the vinyl business said : 'Nowadays vinyl products never equal the quality of originals. Today, a brand new disc already often has static and scratch-like noises or warping from the get go. Which never happened in the old days.'

Lastly, I put a break on selling my old vinyls cause they have lost a lot of market value. Whereas big old collector boxes of 90's computer games are just ramping up to incredible prices now. And guess what ? I still have a huge collection of rare ones of those too !

 

Edited October 15 by Cavadour

[Ophelia 4,409]

1 hour ago, RAMROD said:

Seeing the records lay flat on top of each other makes my skin crawl, even if they're worth 2 USD 

[RAMROD 103,965]

2 minutes ago, Ophelia said:

Seeing the records lay flat on top of each other makes my skin crawl, even if they're worth 2 USD 

Yeah, anyone working there must not know that it can't be put like that, since it can warp the records

[JazzGa 14,444]

I love collecting vintage records and will continue to do that, but I'm completely over buying overpriced collector's editions of new releases.I got a copy of Born to Die, an album where I have listened to every song thousands of times, and I can't even listen to it on my turntable because it's slightly too slow and Lana's voice sounds too low and it occasionally slows and bumps and the sound distorts and goes down in pitch. I know the songs so well that I can't put up with that crap! It's fine for an old-ass 50's or 60s song I've never heard before but I can't stand the sound quality variations for new pop records that I know intimately

[Auther 22,055]

2 hours ago, RAMROD said:

She deserves that strays. At least Swifties actually making sure none left on shelves so it won't  be found at Goodwill still sealed & mint for $2 like Adele's 

not adele making it to the bargain bin at 30!!! 

[Bronco 5,611]

5 hours ago, JazzGa said:

I love collecting vintage records and will continue to do that, but I'm completely over buying overpriced collector's editions of new releases.I got a copy of Born to Die, an album where I have listened to every song thousands of times, and I can't even listen to it on my turntable because it's slightly too slow and Lana's voice sounds too low and it occasionally slows and bumps and the sound distorts and goes down in pitch. I know the songs so well that I can't put up with that crap! It's fine for an old-ass 50's or 60s song I've never heard before but I can't stand the sound quality variations for new pop records that I know intimately

Yeah, and this is a similar case for all the vinyl collectors I know besides myself. 

I wish instead of getting 50,000 cheap and badly pressed variants we actually were getting more limited edition 7"s for certain singles. I'd much rather have the singles from an era on vinyl alongside the album as opposed to 5 copies of the album with a different bonus track on each

[AMRer 2,719]

22 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

Taylor was, no joke, putting out new variants every week at one point with no new tracks, just acoustic versions of existing tracks and voice memos

That's not true, those editions were not on vinyl. If you want to throw shade at Taylor at least do it with proper facts