CDs are just digital files plus waste. Vinyl is a musical ritual.
CD is still the only way to buy a digital popular music in most countries.
Don’t forget digital music stores like Qobuz and www.bandcamp.com.
Artists get more money when you buy their music outright instead of stream it.
Bandcamp was bought by Epic Games, who fired half the staff and sold off the remainder to some kind of nebulous music licencing platform. I wouldn’t cheer them on much longer, I see dark days ahead.
Seriously? Fucking hell, that’s depressing.
It isn’t owned by epic games anymore, it was bought by Songtradr. https://www.songtradr.com/blog/posts/songtradr-bandcamp-acquisition/
Yup that’s the “nebulous music licencing platform” I was referring to
Vinyls break easily and sound kinda meh, even with decent equipment. CDs have fairly good quality and are easy to store and handle. Honestly I get why people like vinyl, big discs are fun and tinkering with analog stuff is its own hobby, but when it comes to collecting I prefer CDs.
I like old vinyl because these are my grandparents’ and parents’ records which I have heard myself a few times in my childhood.
I don’t get recording digital data, then writing it to an analog medium which is then sold 15 times more expensive than it historically was.
No one can take the music on your CD’s from you. I bought loads if sings and albums from Google Music and they are all gone now
This is a reason to avoid DRM, not digital files in general.
(My condolences for being bitten, though.)
Google Music had DRM free downloads, so the DRM wasn’t the problem - it was that they didn’t download them before Google Music was shuttered.
No one can take my flacs either. 🐷🧇
RIP
🐷🧇
😢
I’m glad I saved my CDs, as I was able to rerip them to FLAC and undo the mistake my juvenile self made of ripping to WMA. I still keep the CDs to play in my car from time to time
CDs are digital files plus ownership.
Once you download a music file, nobody is taking it away from you.
And CDs can have DRM just like any other digital media.
No, a CD that carries the actual CD logo cannot have DRM. It is true that the music industry has often pushed ‘enhanced’ formats that look like CDs that do; SACD, for example.
Ownership is different to possession, and I want to actually own my music, not just possess the files.
No, a CD that carries the actual CD logo cannot have DRM.
Is this true? If so, I’m guessing it’s purely due to limitations in the hardware, rather than lack of will? I can’t imagine CDs coming out these days and not having some sort of DRM.
Nintendo was able to figure it out with GameCube games…
You can definitely put DRM-protected content onto the physical CD media - that is exactly what SACD is. But then it isn’t an audio CD, even if it will play on a regular CD player. Search for “nonstandard or corrupted” on the Wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio .
It’s my understanding that only conforming CDs can carry the CD logo. It’s usually on the case, not the disc itself, and it isn’t always there, particularly when the case isn’t a jewel case. All the same, I think that most things that look like CDs are conformant.
Yeah, but I imagine that CD logo is a “stamp of quality” of sorts that tells you that the disc inside fits an agreed upon, unified set of standards. And one of those standards is “no DRM.”
Point was, if that standard was created or updated today, there’s no shot that they wouldn’t require DRM.
Maybe I’m wrong though and that’s not at all what the CD logo means.
That’s true, but they did already try it and it didn’t catch on. There’s a section about it on the Wikipedia page (“Copy protection”).
That section also mentions that Philips stated that these discs couldn’t have the CD logo on them. Since Philips was behind SACD, together with Sony, you’d think they wouldn’t have imposed that restriction on themselves if they had the choice.
I download my MP3 and FLAC files and then I own them and play them on any device I want.
There certainly are some services where you can legally download MP3 and FLAC files. Bandcamp, for example. If you download your music like that then, yes, you do own it.
But I’m not aware of anywhere you can get music from the major music labels nowadays (Amazon used to sell MP3s and so did Google Play Music, but neither does any more). If you do, I’d love to know.
On the other hand, you can still - although it’s getting harder - buy CDs for major label artists and then you own the music (that copy of it).
True, CDs are the most reliable way to get the digital file.
7digital is a site where I’ve bought major label music and get the files. If it’s not on bandcamp it’s often on 7digital. They don’t have everything though.
Thanks for the tip - they do seem to have a lot. I had assumed that the labels had made it unprofitable for that type of service to exist. I guess maybe it’s simply that there is more money to be made from streaming.
Amazon does still sell digital music files, you just need to find the “digital music” section in Movies, Music and Games if that link doesn’t work for you.
But you’re right about google music, it got turned into youtube music and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t allow purchasing and downloads. I’d imagine apple also still lets you buy music, but I’ve never actually used them before and don’t plan to start now.
What is everyone’s opinions on the sound quality of vinyl?
I understand the collectibility of physical media, and the novelty of owning a vinyl and the machine that plays them. The large art piece that is the case (and often the disc itself). Showing support for your favorite artists by owning physical media from them.
Those are great reasons to collect vinyl.
But a lot of my friends claim vinly is of higher audio quality than anything else, period. This is provably false, but it seems to be a common opinion.
How often have you seen this and what are your thoughts on it?
Technically CD quality digital is superior, but the recording and mixing can have a lot to do with it. For example, it could be that an decades old Dark Side Of The Moon on vinyl (played on proper equipment) could sound better than a modern remastered CD with maximized loudness (See the “loudness wars”).
It’s not impossible, although the loudness wars are pretty much over nowadays. All major music services and players have volume normalisation, many by default, so there’s not much point to it any longer.
Also it’s pretty tough to find a decades old record still in mint condition, and the sound quality of vinyl gets worse every time you play it.
and the sound quality of vinyl gets worse every time you play it.
If you handle them correctly, it will not happen to any noticeable degree in any of our lifetimes or the following generations. It is durable material.
Higher audio quality than CD? No, that is demonstrably false.
More pleasant to listen to than CD or other digital formats? Yes, that I agree with. It’s entirely subjective, but I’m definitely not alone in the feeling. The fact it is hard to quantify is why lots of people don’t “get” vinyl until they’ve sat and heard it on a decent system. Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.
So I guess it’s a bit of a philosophical question. If CDs technically sound better, but vinyl sounds more pleasing: does the vinyl then sound better? People tend to chase pleasure, and in the time it takes someone to explain how much lower the noise floor is on CD or how we can only perceive so many samples, etc, etc – you could have been chilling with multiple records and had a great listening experience.
If it was just about the sound, then you could get the exact same results by recording the vinyl player directly to a lossless format and playing that back, but it wouldn’t be quite the same. Big part of it is just the fact that you are using a vinyl player and these huge fragile disks that makes it an enjoyable experience by itself.
Of course. There is no doubt that the ritual of handling the record and playing it on the turntable is a huge part of it. Personally it makes me appreciate the music more because it is kind of an effort to get it playing in the first place, and you just want to listen to the record in a session, instead of just having it as a backdrop which so much streamed music is.
Yes, totally agree. Vinyl rips still lack something. A lot of it is about practice, which makes it harder to quantify.
Something about it is pleasing. As another commenter mentioned, it might just be the imperfections.
I think it’s the slight hissing sound you hear as the needle drags. That faint, slightly pink noise isn’t dissimilar from white noise people use to go to sleep, and I think human brains like that sort of sound.
IMO is just placebo effect. In a blind experiment, all else being equal, I doubt you would be able to tell the difference between a vinyl and a CD. That’s my two cents
I know for a fact I would hear the difference – but primarily because of the imperfections in the vinyl, as well as the different bass response. I can rule out placebo.
I know it’s not highest quality.
For me, the imperfect sound is what makes a nicer experience. Slight hum, little pop once in a while, teensy skip, etc.
Not to mention that I’m far more inclined to listen to an entire album because of the need to interact with the vinyl to set the needle and flip sides.
Vinyl has a slow progression in quality degradation due to friction that creates a certain kind of sound warmth that is pleasing to our ears. This can also be relicated digitally, but the imperfections and feelings associated with the physical ritual actions of loading a record can’t.
Vinyl just has more engagement going on despite the sound quality being lower. Kind of like how some people have fondness for fireplaces despite central heating being technically better at maintaining a warm temperature.
Some people confuse the extra engagement with sound quality because a lot of people just don’t think things through.
A new record sounds pretty good when played on a good turntable with a good cartridge, but it’s not as good as a properly mixed CD or lossless audio file. A worn or dirty record sounds like crap. A cheap turntable will also sound like crap and a ceramic cartridge wears out records fairly quickly.
With a CD, there is very little difference in sound quality between the cheapest player you can find and a high end player. The CD will always sound the same until it’s too worn out to play at all.
I like to buy older albums that were mastered for vinyl, like Steely Dan, some prog rock like Yes or Pink Floyd. It gets a lot closer to listening to how the artists would have been hearing their product
Either 0 difference from digital or worse due to skipping/bad record quality. Rap records are especially bad and I stopped buying them.
Personally, I buy them because my internet is unreliable, it makes for some nice decoration and it’s nice to actually own something in 2024 (especially since Spotify keeps deleting random artists/songs from my playlists).
I enjoy the warmer sound of vinyl but I buy the albums I love on it because of the lack o convenience. I can’t shuffle and I have to actually interact with it every 20ish minutes to flip or change discs. It makes me actually listen to music, track order, mix, and properly enjoy the work that went into the whole album making process.
So I use streaming when I just want something on in the background and vinyl when I want to properly listen to an album.
First problem would be defining what “quality” means. On one hand vynil just has a continuous grove which needle follows. For this reason it’s infinitely precise, as there’s no interpolation or sample frequency. But on the other hand if master was digital and of shit quality, then benefits of analog mean nothing. Also widely used 44KHz sample rate is no accident, it’s exactly double of what human hearing can perceive. So even if you go higher, average listener wouldn’t be able to hear the difference.
Music is also mastered differently for vynil. Base is centered and audio is processed to reduce chances of skipping tracks. This is why decent phono amplifier is needed to revert those changes. Digital stays good or shitty no matter how many times you copy the file.
Overall sound quality is good, in both digital world and analogue. I have both high quality FLACs and some really great records which people would struggle to figure out if the sound they are hearing is digital or not. Personally I prefer vynil because the centered base. It makes other instruments more pronounced and you get to experience same music in a bit of a different way. Vynil being manual as it is also forces you to listen to entire side since it’s not easy to change tracks and authors by clicking next.
Not an audiophile, but had experience with vinyl and CDs while growing up in the 90s and imo vinyl COULD sound better if you spent a lot of money on high end equipment. But with the equipment us normies had, the cds sounded much better. It had a much lower barrier if you didn’t have a large amount of time and money to invest. I’d suspect things are similar now.
Vinyl sounds good, but has too much noise to be the best. Although that could just be my cat’s fault, realistically - i spend a lot time removing hair from records.
Too much noise? Older records sure. But new stuff? On mine you can’t tell the difference. There’s no hum, no crackling, no noise. It is recommended to brush your records before playing though. Perhaps that’s the problem?
The records are new, and I brush them before each use. I’ve used different carts so that’s probably not the issue either. Maybe I just got all bad records… Maybe I could hear a difference on yours. Who knows at this point
Odd. But yeah, many factors.
I read somewhere that about 50% of vinyl owners don’t have a player. Presumably that 50% only have very few records and bought them for the looks, but still.
Vinyl records sounds great despite their technical inferiority to CDs and streaming (with the right equipment of course, but that applies to all formats). They do not necessarily sound better, but there is an element of customisation with them which you can’t get with CDs or streaming. Most importantly the cartridge on your turntable. Different cartridges have different soundscapes. There is of course an element of quality connected to price of cartridge, but over a certain price you are not necessarily buying a better sound but a different sound. Many vinyl record listeners, especially audiophiles, have different cartridges which they can switch out on their turntable, based on which kind of sound you want coming out of your system.
I know it may be difficult to comprehend for people who haven’t personally listened to such differences themselves, but I assure you it is not audiophile snake oil, it is a very noticeable phenomenon. That is a pretty unique capability of vinyl which I can’t really compare to anything with other formats.
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It’s good.
And I bet horse carriages outsold the Ford Model-T this year too
i wouldnt say vinyl is comparable to horse drawn carriages.
Because CD is a medium for data shrinking in popularity and vinyl is a token of being cool growing in popularity, of course it does.
I knew piracy was eating into music sales but poor artists and distributors only generating less than $2 of revenue in the US per year? That’s like 1 CD in a clearance sale. They should start a charity.
I want to know what “other” is that is also clobbering CDs. Can’t say it’s streaming because it’s physical media. The article mentions that half a million cassettes were sold, but that doesn’t really answer the question. That “other” takes up a lot of space relative to CDs so I’m pretty curious.
I dug into the RIAA Source PDF the article references for what “other” means:
“Includes CD Singles, Cassettes, Vinyl Singles, DVD Audio, SACD”
Ahh, perfect, thanks, I genuinely appreciate it. I should have done that myself, shouldn’t I?
Eh, I have a lot of questions after articles, few are worth going down the rabbit hole for unless others show interest, no worries!
I’d assume it is for digital downloads.
If I am not purchasing LPs, I try to purchase MP3s/FLAC that I can copy and move around as I please.
Hm, digital downloads count as physical media? I might? be able to see the merit in that classification but I’m not entirely convinced.
I should comment AFTER I read the article.
If it is for physical sales only I would have to guess we are looking at things like cassette, USB drives and limited releases on other obscure formats like minidisk.
I think of this clip every single time Chris Pirillo pops up in pop culture somewhere.
If you’re curious, nearly half a million cassettes sold last year, too, according to Billboard.
I’m more curious about who’s still selling music on cassette and who’s willing to buy it.
Prisoners.
Someone else told me that. What bullshit. “You can’t have audio technology that was developed in the 1980s” is a fucking stupid punishment. Why not just make them listen to Edison cylinders?
I’ve seen a few bands release a limited number of cassettes recently. For example, Rancid is selling Honor Is All We Know on cassette.
https://rancid.store/product/17864/honor-is-all-we-know-cassette
I guess it’s just a promotional thing then. That makes sense.
I see a lot of folks on bandcamp who sells cassettes for instance
Do you know why they choose to sell cassettes rather than or maybe along with other formats?
Cheap to produce and stand out for folks getting into some bands.
Not for sure, but I have a few leads.
I’ve heard and discussed with artists who mentioned that producing vinyl was very expensive compared to cassettes, which are cheap and easy to DIY.
Then I’d add that cassettes have a retro appeal nowadays. Lastly, they are an analog format, opposite to the CD which is the 1:1 copy of the downloaded FLAC album downloaded from Bandcamp.
Analog, sure, but very low quality. 1/8" tape is not enough to reproduce sound accurately and there’s a lot of tape hiss. There’s a reason why professional analog multitrack studios use 1" tape.
Ehh, all those 1” tape machines are 8-tracks and designed for editing, not playback. Magnetic tape fidelity has a lot more to do with medium, bias and processing than the width of the tape itself.
Hell, plenty of analog shops use four and eight track machines that run 1/4” tape!
Compact cassette also has the potential to sound very good. If you would like a demonstration, look up the vwestlife yt channel or listen to a good tape on a good tape deck.
Cheap short runs. National will do 50 unit orders and you can sell em at 5-7$ and you’re still doubling your money on tour tapes.
But do enough people still have functional cassette players?
idk how many people have functional tape decks but you can still buy new production component and portable ones and there’s a healthy used market.
I think there was a 99% invisible podcast episode about that, it’s prison inmates. For some never-changed rule they are only allowed music on cassettes, so they are probably the target audience mainly.
Just a few years ago I had an old car with a cassette player/radio, and from time to time I enjoyed the cassette player with some leftover stuff, but in most cases I just used an FM transmitter
The prison system sucks in so many ways. Legal slavery with archaic rules that would be considered hate crimes or human rights violations if they happened to people in the U.S. who aren’t incarcerated.
As far as old cars with cassette players. Like you said, you can use an FM transmitter, but I also remember having a fake cassette with an aux cable so you could plug it into a CD player headphone jack. I would bet they have a bluetooth version these days, so you don’t have to listen to cassettes even in those cars.
That reminds me of something though. When I was a kid, we had a Toyota Corona station wagon with an 8-track player. My father had this converter device that you plugged into the 8-track and it had a little tray that you laid a cassette into so you could play it. I don’t remember if the sound quality was worse than playing a cassette in a player designed for it.
Sure, there are transmitters without Bluetooth. I somehow preferred the SD card, as it would hold a few Gb of music and needed no internet connection. The only downside was if I was driving short trips only for a while, and it stuck with a 20-min long Deep Purple concert track every time :)
I had a friend with the cassette adapter for his 8 track player. I just brought my boombox with me in high school. It sounded better than the shitty stereo that came with my dad’s 1972 Mercury Capri.
some bands, and their fans. you can make a cassette look pretty dope.
and i’ve heard prisoners often only have access to cassettes.
Wow. What is that ‘other’ physical medium? Is MiniDisc also coming back and beating CDs?
Some artists in the punk scene are putting out cassettes.
There are things like Super Audio CDs and MACDs etc… I believe there may even be some blue ray audio releases.
Those are kind of rare, though; can they really be outselling CDs by so much? Or maybe the author mislabeled the key and ‘other’ is supposed to be the sliver on top?
I don’t know how widespread it is outside of metal, but I’ve been seeing more and more bands offering tapes. Sometimes a release is only on tape, other times the tape might be $6, the CD $15 and the LP $25, so there are different ties available for those who want a physical copy. I probably got 10 tapes or so within the last year.
Tape makes a lot of sense audio-quality wise especially for people who insist on analogue for some silly reason, the prices don’t make sense, though: Tapes are expensive to manufacture. CDs and vinyl are pressed whole while tapes need to be run through a machine, centimetre by centimetre. Though maybe for small runs it does make sense as you don’t need a physical master.
You hit the nail on the head. Even ten years ago people would use national audio and get the shortest run possible (50 units).
I never got below $2 unit cost, but there’s good money to be made selling short runs of tapes after a set.
Vinyl, which tends to be pricier than the newer format, also far outstripped CDs in actual money made, raking in $1.4 billion compared to $537 million from CDs.
Vinyl is definitely overpriced these days. I do love all the art and care that artists seem to put into their vinyl releases, but typically I’m spending $30-$50 on a new vinyl release. But what am I going to do? Not buy that limited edition colored vinyl gatefold with art and lyric pages?
Well, you could always just download the music, art and lyrics from the internet, since it is the year of our lord 2024
Yeah, at this point you’re paying because it’s a collector item, or to support the artist, not for the actual content of the package.
I also just really like the physical media. Putting on a record is ritualistic at this point.
I buy mine from the merch stand at the artist’s show, they usually go for 20€-30€, even the limited edition ones.
I view vinyls as collectors items, not something you actually listen to. I still buy CDs because I hate the idea of subscription services.
Depends really. Seller am buying from has for example AC/DC records for 26$ a piece or 16$ a piece for CD. You simply can’t compare the two and the difference is 10$. They of course have 50th anniversary edition for 42$, but that’s up to you.
I’d buy the vinyl as a collectors item, but the CD to upload on to my phone.
yeah, because if you buy something digitally, it will get stolen from you.
CD’s are real objects and not digital goods.
That wasn’t the point being made.
Please explain. I’m still not seeing the point. Vinyl is outselling CDs because… digital goods will be stolen from you? I don’t get it.
The comment above ignored the article and is just talking how digital media can be revoked.
Then why did it start with “yeah, because…”?
I always thought it had more to do with the aesthetic of vinyls rather than any sort of ownership dilemma. A good chunk of my friends own multiple vinyl records but no record player. I also wonder what the production rates are like for vinyls vs CDs, are we producing about the same quantity of them?
For some people it’s definitely the aesthetic/collectible nature of vinyl. Anecdotally, for me, it’s for the listening pleasure. I’m no audiophile. I’m listening on potato speakers on a sub par turntable, but I like listening to records like I did when I was younger.
I do also love the much larger album sleeve artwork, but my primary drive in purchasing an album is to listen to it on my turntable.
Me too…I hate it when a band releases a record and they don’t do anything to the jacket though.
Yo…I love vinyl but just because it’s nice to have an analog physical copy…it doesn’t sound “better” or worse. I just enjoy records.
I listen to lots and lots of streaming on bandcamp.
Vinyls are great, but I can’t copy them to my phone so I still have to buy a CD with it.
I still reminisce about my Oink ratio. Seeded Rosetta Stone on a university connection. Access to the school’s radio station’s library.
Probably the closest I’ll come to generational wealth, my grandchildren could have leeched music on my account and I’d still be positive.
What used to have staff picks where the download amount wouldn’t count negatively towards your ratio, but the upload amount would. When the Beatles remasters came out in 2008 or 2009, they put the entire collection on there, including the FLAC version. It was like 9+ gb I think, all of which was free in terms download amount. All it took was uploading for a few hours and I got my ratio into double digits. Basically made it so I never had to worry about it ever again.
It’s not true that I cannot copy my vinyls to my computer? Okay how do I do that then? It just has the red and white left and right cables going to an amp, and then my receiver. Kinda new to vinyls over here
Maybe try Google? As I said, I downloaded them I didn’t rip them myself. There was this person with the username “PBTHAL” that always had to best lossless vinyl rips, if you do a search that includes that name, you might find alternate download sources for them. I think they ran their own site where they posted all of their rips outside of what, but don’t know if it’s still there. They were also very thorough while explaining the process, equipment, cables, etc. for each and every rip. This person was really a perfectionist, and boy did it show. There were albums that they ripped and then refused to upload because they didn’t feel their rip was perfect enough.
Absolute fucking legend.
I even have FLACs of reel-to-reel versions of all Zeppelin albums, as well as, Bowie, Dylan, et. al. and they sound fantastic. Don’t ask me how it’s done. And given the pedigree of that website, these people took the ripping process incredibly seriously.
Haha nice, that’s an area of music collection as a hobby that I’ve never explored., and I can really appreciate that level of dedicstion. Thanks for letting me know, I’ll see if I can even find my type of metal on there
You might be able to find some dedicated metalheads ripping vinyl, but my experience was that it seemed to be done more with albums that were released prior to the rise of digital music. I feel like it makes more sense when the album was written and recorded with vinyl in mind, otherwise you’re taking a digital recording and putting it on a record so I’m not sure you’re going to get anything that sounds better by ripping the vinyl over just ripping the CD. If that makes sense.
I could be wrong though…
Yeah, and with the style of the few albums I do have on vinyl, the vinyl rexord sound kinda goes with the sound of their subgenre so I do enjoy the vinyl listening experience there, and they do sound different than on Spotify.
But when I own my own copy of an album, I want to remove it from Spotify and have my own copy of it on my own device. So if I’m just doing it to be able to listen to music that I paid for on vinyl on my phone when I’m not home in front of the turntable, then that’s good enough.
I notice now, some new vinyls on Bandcamp come with digital download, which is cool, but not if I bought it at a show.
There are usb turntables that let you rip your vinyl, but theyre usually not the highest quality turn tables. I like vintage tables because it adds to the atmosphere and there were fewer corners cut. You could probably get some separate equipment that would let your turn table talk to your computer.
TIL, thanks for pointing out the thing about quality. The table I’ve currently got sounds pretty nice (for never really having used anything else), so maybe I’ll check out ones with USB and at least keep it around for copying!
Man do I miss what cd. I love RED. But what will always have a special place. I still have tons of merch I bought from what. T-shirts, coffee mug, koozie and so many rippy stickers. I still wear the shirts in my regular rotation
Such an amazing resource that was, not only did it have the albums available, but several different pressings, source media, and versions of each one. Something no commercial entity can come close to offering at any price.
I own a USB turntable with an ADC in it. It’s got a USB cable sticking out the back. I can rip vinyl to whatever digital format you want.
ION TT-USB master race!
My record player has a USB port…
Oh , mine doesn’t . I’m new to vinyl, and have less than 10 in my collection. My turntable was given to me by a friend.
So yours can copy to a computer via USB?
In theory, yes. I’ve never actually plugged it into a computer. It’s a Sony PS-LX300USB. Looks like you can pick one up used for less than $100. Might be worth it if you’re currently buying everything twice.
Sweet, thanks for the info! I’ll check it out
I have a audio technica AT-LP120-USB and it shows up in Audacity as an input source. my good speakers are hooked up to my livingroom PC + TV anyway, so playing back \ recording through audacity is the only way I’ve ever used the player.
Shiiiiit, okay I like that setup. My computer is connected to my tv which has ARC to th receiver, so I could totally do that too
I don’t really buy vinyl to listen to it, but for the larger cover art and liner notes
The only vinyls I buy are from charity shops or because I love an album so much that I want it as a collection (I’d also buy the CD to actually listen to)
Yeah, I haven’t bought a new record in a long time, and one of my most prized albums is a 1970 radio-played copy of The Kinks “Lola vs. Powerman and the MoneygoRound” complete with the dates and times they played Lola."
That is definitely something I loved about LPs. I used to have a big book of album cover art. I have no idea what happened to it unfortunately, but I used to pore over it. Liner notes are less of an issue with the internet, but the shrinking of art was a very unfortunate result of CDs.
I remember getting a copy of Jethro Tull’s “Thick as a Brick” that came with a whole-ass newspaper they made folded into the liner with lyrics and pictures. That’s something you can only do with vinyl.
Definitely. Similarly, Negativland’s album Escape From Noise came with both a bumper sticker and a booklet all about the history of Negativland.
One of my favorite things about vinyl is having to flip the record over. I think it demands more active and respectful listening.
Many albums, especially comedy albums, relied on you flipping over the record. They would have jokes that talked about things on the other side. There’s a Firesign Theater album where one of the characters says, “wait a minute, didn’t I say that on the other side of the record?” There’s a Monty Python album with a locked groove that says, “oh sorry, squire. I scratched the record.” Which is brilliant.
Edit: There’s another Monty Python album that has two sets of grooves and what you hear depends on which groove the needle hits first. Again, absolutely brilliant.
More famously, the end of the Beatles’ peak album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band contains a locked groove which was snippets of recordings mashed-up in a bit of short multi-track recording experimentation. The CD only repeats it 2 or 3 times. The record was designed to play indefinitely.
So yeah, CDs took that away from recordings, but on the other hand, it’s a lot harder to damage a CD and get an unintentional looping segment.
I love that on the CD version of Full Moon Fever they added a bit to the end of Running Down a Dream telling CD listeners they’re going to take a break so that people on vinyl and cassette can switch to the other side.
This is only new vinyl, right? In my town, used records are king, by far. In fact, I probably buy 10+ used records for every new record.
I wish this was true for me, but I only have one record shop within 45-minute drive of my house (and their prices and selection are far from competitive), so I wind up buying pretty much all my records online through Discogs. Frequently, the new represses are just flat-out cheaper than the vintage vinyl, especially for a lot of the more esoteric albums I buy. For instance, even though they’re not really hard to find, for Black Sabbath’s first four albums I paid just as much for mediocre, water-damaged copies of Sabbath and Volume 4 as I did for brand-new represses of Paranoid and Master of Reality. If you actually buy your vinyl to listen to, buying used online can be a pretty big gamble as far as quality, so for the same price, I frequently wind up consciously choosing the new vinyl over the used copy.
Even though I do frequently manage to package one or two cheap used albums with each new album purchased to take advantage of that sweet “media mail” shipping, it’s not even close to a 10:1 used:new ratio.
Edit: I suppose now that I think about it, I’m starting from a pretty decent used vinyl collection from my days in the early 2000’s as a hipster music snob before used vinyl got nearly so expensive, so my collection overall has much more used vinyl than my current buying habits would indicate (I probably have 200 albums, of which 30-40 were purchased new in the past 3-4 years)
The only record store I ever go to is actually a front for a weed store lol . Even though weed is legal in Canada the legal stuff is the worst and most expensive.
Even though weed is legal in Canada the legal stuff is the worst and most expensive.
Give it time. I’m far from a connoisseur, as these days I mostly just partake in edibles 1-2 times per week, but California has some pretty sweet weed prices, at least compared to my college/grad-school days. I saw an ad on a billboard just yesterday for 10 USD Eighths at a pretty reputable shop in my town, and I think I usually pay 35 USD for a pack of 10 2-dose THC:CBD gummies (compared to 40 USD for an eighth of mediocre bud in the early 2000’s).
As people get less paranoid about enforcement and local governments ease up on restrictions, the price should come down and the quality should go up (although this probably depends a lot on local government, so who knows, really)
I hope so. Right now I can get 3.5 grams of shatter for the same price as 1 gram at a legal place . And 500 mg of edibles for the same price as 50 mg . It’s crazy high prices, mostly only casual users by from a legal source where I live and its been legal since 2018 .
