Posted on 10/24/2021 5:01:40 PM PDT by DoodleBob
...Left for dead with the advent of CDs in the 1980s, vinyl records are now the music industry’s most popular and highest-grossing physical format, with fans choosing it for collectibility, sound quality or simply the tactile experience of music in an age of digital ephemerality. After growing steadily for more than a decade, LP sales exploded during the pandemic.
In the first six months of this year, 17 million vinyl records were sold in the United States, generating $467 million in retail revenue, nearly double the amount from the same period in 2020, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Sixteen million CDs were also sold in the first half of 2021, worth just $205 million. Physical recordings are now just a sliver of the overall music business — streaming is 84 percent of domestic revenue — but they can be a strong indication of fan loyalty...
Yet there are worrying signs that the vinyl bonanza has exceeded the industrial capacity needed to sustain it. Production logjams and a reliance on balky, decades-old pressing machines have led to what executives say are unprecedented delays. A couple of years ago, a new record could be turned around in a few months; now it can take up to a year...
...
Music and manufacturing experts cite a variety of factors behind the holdup. The pandemic shut down many plants for a time, and problems in the global supply chain have slowed the movement of everything from cardboard and polyvinyl chloride — the “vinyl” that records (and plumbing pipes) are made from — to finished albums. In early 2020, a fire destroyed one of only two plants in the world that made lacquer discs, an essential part of the record-making process.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
People download. Either legit and pay for it, or they torrent.
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Vinyl Is Selling So Well That It’s Getting Hard to Sell Vinyl
10/21/2021 7:55:15 PM PDT · by algore · 30 replies
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https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/4005695/posts
Oh nuts...search still works.
My bad.
I had albums i bought on vinyl...then 8trac...then cassette...then CD. Digital is all for me now.
I was being tested for learning difficulties back in the 60’s in Stanley Kaplan’s home office, and he had one of those. He showed it proudly, but me as a nerfy 14 yo could not be impressed. That was before he created nationwide franchises.
I would get some vinyl LPs, but they would require a good pair of speakers to get the most from, while I live in an apartment complex. I can hear the neighbor’s puppy leg bopping on the floor when he scratches his ear. At least I think that’s what it is.
I got rid of tons of vinyl, but I kept my “sacred” albums (first KISS album, rare punk/new wave, etc.) I’m not that much of an audiophile that I claim to be able to tell the difference between cd and record, but I do have a nostalgia for vinyl.
Downloading an mp3 just doesn’t have the same nostalgia factor that buying your first record did (which was David Bowie’s Scary Monsters lp, 1980.)
I went laserdisk and never looked back.
The problem is there is good old vinyl was good. Especially in the sixties. The late seventies had light flimsy discs that often warped and ruined the songs especially the first few outer tracks.
I had that same model when I was much younger. Use to use the “simul-sync” to create guitar tracks. You use to have to set the switches near the tape heads depending on what you were doing. The bottom opened up and the circuit cards were hinged so you can perform calibration if you dare. Forty years later I now have unlimited capabilities and effects on my laptop
I have a very large collection of vinyl LPs of the Beatles, most of which have been on a turntable only one time.
—> Digital is all for me now.
What?????
You’re not upgrading to holographic, then quantum, then 4th dimensional formats??
What kind of consumer are you anyway?
...and to think I tossed my Garrard Linear Tracking turntable.
I adore that machine.
Have 8-tracks come back yet?
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