Galliardist
Major Contributor
There are quite enough vinyl LPs being produced that they have recently, yet again, taken up another large chunk of the space previously used for CDs in the two physical stores that I still visit.
Through the 20 years I've been here in Australia, I've spent thousands of dollars on digital discs in these stores. People like me, buying imported and rare discs, and with a genuine interest in keeping physical stores going, have been their major customers and kept them in business during that time. Our reward seems to be that what we have been buying has been displaced by a far more limited range of vinyl. The stores that used to be busy are now practically empty, but it seems that selling 20-30% by volume of vinyl records (a proprietor's claim, not mine) with a low wholesale price and an inflated retail price, makes these stores the same profit for less work. LP sales have also overtaken CD sales by volume in key markets so there's no guarantee that these stores would have any more customers anyway.
I can't really begrudge them, nor do I want to put forward an anti-vinyl rant, but I find the concomitant reduction in physical music sales and the range of music available to buy, disappointing to say the least. Since they aren't interested even in taking orders from me, it's no longer worth me supporting these businesses. I remember that in the late 1980s there was a simlar narrowing of the range of music available in stores and it was if anything worse then.
Given also that I seem to be unable to get online orders of physical discs delivered to my home address - I have no interest in traveling for an hour each way to a courier depot afterwards, and the local post office has often to turn away the volume of undelivered packages (my wife has watched from our balcony as those "delivering" drop a card into the letterbox and sneak away - I guess it's digital downloads and streaming only for me from now on, outside of the occasional purchase at classical concerts.
As for vinyl, I don't think that the record companies themselves really believe it will last for much longer. It seems that the LP is stuck at a point where it is just about viable for some new capacity to be introduced. LP buyers deserve better than they are getting: if it stays as it is now, then the idea of it being a fad will become a self-fulfilling prophesy that will take down the remaining physical media market, and we know that that would be a bad thing.
I cringed though at the end of the article and all that talk about "magicians". It seems you just can't get away from that nonsense anywhere. Even pressing records has to be set out as something magical and special. No, what we are talking here is competence.
Through the 20 years I've been here in Australia, I've spent thousands of dollars on digital discs in these stores. People like me, buying imported and rare discs, and with a genuine interest in keeping physical stores going, have been their major customers and kept them in business during that time. Our reward seems to be that what we have been buying has been displaced by a far more limited range of vinyl. The stores that used to be busy are now practically empty, but it seems that selling 20-30% by volume of vinyl records (a proprietor's claim, not mine) with a low wholesale price and an inflated retail price, makes these stores the same profit for less work. LP sales have also overtaken CD sales by volume in key markets so there's no guarantee that these stores would have any more customers anyway.
I can't really begrudge them, nor do I want to put forward an anti-vinyl rant, but I find the concomitant reduction in physical music sales and the range of music available to buy, disappointing to say the least. Since they aren't interested even in taking orders from me, it's no longer worth me supporting these businesses. I remember that in the late 1980s there was a simlar narrowing of the range of music available in stores and it was if anything worse then.
Given also that I seem to be unable to get online orders of physical discs delivered to my home address - I have no interest in traveling for an hour each way to a courier depot afterwards, and the local post office has often to turn away the volume of undelivered packages (my wife has watched from our balcony as those "delivering" drop a card into the letterbox and sneak away - I guess it's digital downloads and streaming only for me from now on, outside of the occasional purchase at classical concerts.
As for vinyl, I don't think that the record companies themselves really believe it will last for much longer. It seems that the LP is stuck at a point where it is just about viable for some new capacity to be introduced. LP buyers deserve better than they are getting: if it stays as it is now, then the idea of it being a fad will become a self-fulfilling prophesy that will take down the remaining physical media market, and we know that that would be a bad thing.
I cringed though at the end of the article and all that talk about "magicians". It seems you just can't get away from that nonsense anywhere. Even pressing records has to be set out as something magical and special. No, what we are talking here is competence.
