Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

[antcollinet]

Cassette was the number one format prior to the introduction of CD, not LP.

Not round here it wasn't

 

[mhardy6647]

I think celebrity endorsements are driving LP sales, at least in North America.

Needless to say, I shall offer no further comment on this image.

 

[antcollinet]

maybe we need to consult Kamala Harris on this! She now has her own vinyl record holding generator:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1816791943461908700

Generator here:

Kamala Holding Vinyls

Well, that is fun...

 

[board]

I might add that 25 bucks for that record is the steal of the century if it's the original .

 

[MAB]

Not round here it wasn't

Nor in the USA, cassette overtook vinyl about 3 years after the introduction of the CD.

Source:

U.S. Music Revenue Database - RIAA

The RIAA provides the most comprehensive data on U.S. recorded music revenues and shipments dating all the way back to... Read More »

www.riaa.com

Cassette sales were clearly rising as a proportion of overall sales, but certainly not the number 1 format. The fact that cars at this time universally had cassette decks was a major reason for robust cassette sales in the USA. Perhaps cassette becomes the leading format in 1982 if you include recordings made by the customer. Possibly better to say that it was a tie, but even that is a bit misleading.

 

[restorer-john]

Nor in the USA, cassette overtook vinyl about 3 years after the introduction of the CD.

Your graph shows otherwise and it's only precorded cassettes! Even your graph shows, just one year after CD's US introduction, with no CD sales of significance, pre-recorded cassettes were way in front. And what about the countless billions of cassette tapes sold for people to record on?

What do you think people were carrying around in their pockets, playing at the beach, listening to in their cars, high speed copying on their radio/cassettes for mates, recording their dictation or distributing demos on, huh? Not vinyl. LOL.

The facts of the matter are compact cassette killed the vinyl record and CD just drove the last nail into it.

It was October 1981 when the "home taping is killing music" campaign along with attempts to get blank tape taxed were pushed by the record industry world wide. People had virtually stopped recording vinyl, they were copying cassettes to give to their friends- and at high speed.

Of course, us "serious" audiophiles (a small part of the market and really just a blip) still bought LPs, up until the same thing appeared on CD, but what were we doing with them? Recording the mint record onto cassette...

 

[Timcognito]

Of course, us "serious" audiophiles (a small part of the market and really just a blip) still bought LPs, up until the same thing appeared on CD, but what were we doing with them? Recording the mint record onto cassette...

To play in our cars and make mix tapes with all our favorites and none of the duds on the LPs.

 

[antcollinet]

Your graph shows otherwise and it's only precorded cassettes! Even your graph shows, just one year after CD's US introduction, with no CD sales of significance, pre-recorded cassettes were way in front. And what about the countless billions of cassette tapes sold for people to record on?

What do you think people were carrying around in their pockets, playing at the beach, listening to in their cars, high speed copying on their radio/cassettes for mates, recording their dictation or distributing demos on, huh? Not vinyl. LOL.

The facts of the matter are compact cassette killed the vinyl record and CD just drove the last nail into it.

It was October 1981 when the "home taping is killing music" campaign along with attempts to get blank tape taxed were pushed by the record industry world wide. People had virtually stopped recording vinyl, they were copying cassettes to give to their friends- and at high speed.

Of course, us "serious" audiophiles (a small part of the market and really just a blip) still bought LPs, up until the same thing appeared on CD, but what were we doing with them? Recording the mint record onto cassette...

OK - if you mean cassettes of all kinds, I'd agree. I was assuming you meant pre-recorded cassettes. Of which I never bought any - and knew no-one who bought more than one or two. They were seen as too likely to be eaten by cheap players to invest more than the cost of a blank tape in.

Though I've not been able to find any UK based data along the lines of the chart shown above.

 

[deweydm]

I get the impression that the survey was limited to vinyl collectors. Let's face it, collectors are usually so biased, about the thing they are collecting, that they wouldn't entertain suggestions that the thing being collected doesn't do its job very well.

The reported result, of 15% disagreeing that vinyl sounds best, sounds suspiciously high.

Bias automatically creates ill-informed opinions.

So those who don’t collect vinyl should have been included in a survey to gather data intended to explain why people started collecting vinyl?

“…promises of high fidelity encouraged only 31% of today’s collectors to get into vinyl.”

 

[MattHooper]

Well, that is fun...

View attachment 383673

This was mine:

 

[Newman]

So those who don’t collect vinyl should have been included in a survey to gather data intended to explain why people started collecting vinyl?

“…promises of high fidelity encouraged only 31% of today’s collectors to get into vinyl.”

Collecting is not the same as owning. For example, I own numerous CDs but am not a CD collector.

 

[Robin L]

Your graph shows otherwise and it's only precorded cassettes! Even your graph shows, just one year after CD's US introduction, with no CD sales of significance, pre-recorded cassettes were way in front. And what about the countless billions of cassette tapes sold for people to record on?

What do you think people were carrying around in their pockets, playing at the beach, listening to in their cars, high speed copying on their radio/cassettes for mates, recording their dictation or distributing demos on, huh? Not vinyl. LOL.

The facts of the matter are compact cassette killed the vinyl record and CD just drove the last nail into it.

It was October 1981 when the "home taping is killing music" campaign along with attempts to get blank tape taxed were pushed by the record industry world wide. People had virtually stopped recording vinyl, they were copying cassettes to give to their friends- and at high speed.

Of course, us "serious" audiophiles (a small part of the market and really just a blip) still bought LPs, up until the same thing appeared on CD, but what were we doing with them? Recording the mint record onto cassette...

I was working at Tower Records Berkeley in the mid-1980s. Initially, I was in charge of the Classical Cassette department - hard to believe that we sold as many of those as we did. When Melvin Jahn took the Classical department down Telegraph and left me behind at the pop store, I wound up with accessories. In other words, while CDs were being introduced, I was in charge of blank cassettes. Those were selling like hotcakes at the time, and I made sure we always had a big stock of TDK SA on hand at all times. I made a lot of mix tapes back then. This eventually led to professional work involving disc to tape transfer, which led to recording concerts using digital gear a few years later. But in the mid 1980s, cassette was king.

 

[MattHooper]

Collecting is not the same as owning. For example, I own numerous CDs but am not a CD collector.

I feel similarly.

I have a lot of records, around 1000 or so.
Does that make me a record collector? Perhaps by some peoples lights, but not my own.

I buy a record strictly on the music I want to listen to.

but I do not have what I think of as a “collectors mentality” - which to me boils down to the desire to own the object itself as an object. And this collectors mentality with manifesting ways such as owning albums that are sealed that you will never unsealed because “it’s a collectors item.” Or being a completist for the sake of the collection, like one has to get every edition of an album for the collection. Or just generally seeking out or collecting objects because they are deemed valuable among some collectors community. That kind of thing just holds no appeal to me.

 

[deweydm]

I'm not sure that it was limited to vinyl collectors, but certainly the method used to find survey respondents was biased towards certain dealers who have collectors as their customers. It doesn't make the paper completely useless, though: It just confirms a part of the story rather than all. Maybe a wider ranging PhD thesis is in the offing.

No, I was only aware of it because he solicited survey participation via a thread on the Steve Hoffman Music Forums. May have seen his solicitation for survey participants on twitter and/or reddit too.

 

[MAB]

Your graph shows otherwise and it's only precorded cassettes! Even your graph shows, just one year after CD's US introduction, with no CD sales of significance, pre-recorded cassettes were way in front. And what about the countless billions of cassette tapes sold for people to record on?

What do you think people were carrying around in their pockets, playing at the beach, listening to in their cars, high speed copying on their radio/cassettes for mates, recording their dictation or distributing demos on, huh? Not vinyl. LOL.

The facts of the matter are compact cassette killed the vinyl record and CD just drove the last nail into it.

It was October 1981 when the "home taping is killing music" campaign along with attempts to get blank tape taxed were pushed by the record industry world wide. People had virtually stopped recording vinyl, they were copying cassettes to give to their friends- and at high speed.

Of course, us "serious" audiophiles (a small part of the market and really just a blip) still bought LPs, up until the same thing appeared on CD, but what were we doing with them? Recording the mint record onto cassette...

Of course I only included pre-recorded! Also, I included all vinyl; LP, EP, and single. They out number pre-recorded cassette at CD's introduction. I didn't include blank cassettes, that is apples to oranges, and blank tape sales is an odd stat to quote in a conversation about the actual sources of pre-recorded material.

But yes, cassettes were trending in the early '80s, as were automotive cassette head units. And those cassette sales were constant until the mid-1990s, when car CD players became affordable OEM options.

 

[MAB]

OK - if you mean cassettes of all kinds, I'd agree. I was assuming you meant pre-recorded cassettes. Of which I never bought any - and knew no-one who bought more than one or two. They were seen as too likely to be eaten by cheap players to invest more than the cost of a blank tape in.

Though I've not been able to find any UK based data along the lines of the chart shown above.

Yeah, now way I would have thought including blank media in a discussion of "where did my master come from?"
Would be interested to see the trends in other countries. For sure, cassette was significantly driven by car audio here.

 

[Robin L]

Yeah, now way I would have thought including blank media in a discussion of "where did my master come from?"
Would be interested to see the trends in other countries. For sure, cassette was significantly driven by car audio here.

But don't forget Walkmen. That trend of creating mixtapes eventually led to streaming and customized playlists.

 

[restorer-john]

Cassette was the number one format prior to the introduction of CD, not LP.

My statement was cassette was the number one format. More people listened to music on cassette than anything else by a huge margin. One cassette could play in many situations. An LP could not. They had gloveboxes full of cassettes in their cars, walkmans on their belts, ghetto blasters at the beach, radio cassettes in the kitchen, restaurants and bars played cassette, airports and shopping centres played cassettes. Your kids got a AM/FM portable cassette recorder as birthday presents- hopefully a twin deck. Where the content came from, whether it was bought pre-recorded, dubbed from another cassette, recorded from the radio didn't matter.

LPs were still being played at the teen parties I was going to, until about 1984 when some kid's dads had bought CD players (we had our first few in 1983), but CDs were hard to get and expensive. Cassettes were king at most parties- you could bring the latest Spandau Ballet/Wham/MJ album in your pocket.

Even in the mid 1970s, when cassette decks started to become quite good, the writing was on the wall for LP.

I love all kinds of music carriers, but LP was usurped as soon as people got a compact medium they could record what they wanted and take it anywhere.

 

[levimax]

Toole has described the situation when CD first came along, that a distressingly large amount of studios had only kept the so-called Vinyl Master of albums, so, when it was decided to re-release the album on CD, that was all they had to work with!

They were dreadful because they were vinyl masters, not because the copying (A/D digitising) was dreadful. It's a myth that early A/D conversion for CD was audibly problematic.

From what I have read, and of course it is hard to verify but things written by mastering and remastering engineers, is that Toole is correct. In many cases only the Vinyl Masters were kept by the studios as that is all that was considered valuable (they also often kept the original individual track tapes used to mix the vinyl masters). I believe the "myth" is that the subtle changes needed for the LP master tapes "sounded dreadful". In many cases the "mastering moves" including reverb, EQ changes, and flying in extra sounds "improved" the original master tape. The "degradation" happens when a tape is used to cut an acetate and then a mold is made from that and then the pressing die is made from the mold and then a piece of vinyl is pressed from the pressing die. The main degradation happens during all these physical steps to mass produce vinyl albums. As @atmasphere points out a direct cut acetate can be objectively better than any analog tape recording machine.

The other big "degradation" happens because it can be decades from when the master / cutting tapes were originally created and the transfer to digital took place. Tapes are perishable to a lesser or greater degree depending on formulation, storage, use, and abuse.

 

[Zog]

Sure, those may be bad sounding. But there have always been better and worse sounding recordings. There still are. On the other hand there are many great sounding digital recordings from the early digital era. How do we know that the bad sound of your examples results from bad ad conversion?

We don't. More pertinent, the implied criticism is a straw man. The point is the fact of the poor quality rather than the cause.