vinyl and the under 25s - Music - Forums : Best Ever Albums

fisher60

I was curious to know what some people under 25 think of vinyl. Its unfair when many people say they are only interested in iPods and don't want any hard copy. With vinyl making a gradual resurgence, and with the classy packaging that vinyl albums offer, i,.e. Gatefold sleeves, colour vinyl, there must be lots of people in this bracket that would be thrilled to own vinyl by their favourite acts?

benpaco
Who's gonna watch you die?

Age: 27
Location: California

Pros of having vinyl:

Sounds considerably better than a cassette to my ears

Sounds "warmer" than digital

Adds a certain hiss and special touch to certain records (esp. folk, in my experience)

Colors, patterns, shapes, etc. can be an art form in and of themselves

More directly support the artist than digital in some cases (not many, but the story behind several of my vinyl, frankly)

Cons of having vinyl:

They're large (storage)

Scratches

Price (both resale [Hopes and Fears goes for the low low price of $312] and new [especially the Record Store Day exclusives!])

The fact that a large number of vinyl for a large number of bands end up going to people who just want to have it to say they do, and then hard to find albums get even harder to find (see: Deja Entendu until the newest press)

Variant collecting
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fisher60

To benpaco. You made some good comments

Kool Keith Sweat

This would fit well in the music forum.

Even though I'm 26, I'll answer because... close enough.

There are several reasons I buy vinyl. Vinyl is still the only physical medium of several releases I'm interested in, and there's just something that's not as appealing as finding it digitally and burning it to a blank CD (no liner notes, no artwork, no hunt). Several musicians intended their music for vinyl and structured their albums based on ~20 minute sides, including musicians through the '90s, like Slint and Autechre, and I'm sure beyond; those musicians' intentions are only fully realized when the structure of sides is present. I don't buy vinyl online; I receive vinyl during Christmas and my birthday from my girlfriend that's bought online, but the rest is done by me personally, picking through records at local stores, and I believe that adds to the value you give those obscure discoveries. I listen to records I have on vinyl more frequently and sometimes more intently than I do records I stream in most cases. The Southern Lord treatment of ~200 gram vinyl, with thick gatefold sleeves, occasional extra artwork goodies, and cool color variations (I mean, like an Indica and a Hasheeshian version of Dopesmoker) is pretty rad. Also, there is this zeitgeist about it that vinyl is cool and back in style, and it doesn't help that I live in a top 5 hipster metropolis Austin, TX.

That said, I fully support streaming/downloading and attribute the majority of my listening depth and breadth to those services. I also don't believe vinyl sounds warmer than CD, and I know for a fact it doesn't sound as accurate as CD; on top of that, typically surface noise is annoying, and doesn't add character to most albums. Probably the last and most important factor in my buying vinyl is that I don't have any other hobbies that really require material things, so as an American adult with disposable income, I need to spend that money on something before I actually consider financing or donating it.

cestuneblague
Edgy to the Choir

Location: MA/FL

Kool Keith Sweat wrote:

so as an American adult with disposable income, I need to spend that money on something before I actually consider financing or donating it.

Don't Brag.

Anyways while Im pushing 30 and perhaps not the target for this question, there are three reasons I don't buy vinyl: One, because I as an adult pretty much have always had the nomadic mindset that I have to be able to just pick up my things and go if need be (and given I bounce around a lot between homes in Austin anyway), and it's not easy to transport Vinyl constantly, so for the most part the hassle of having to move Vinyl around & around eliminates it as something practical to actually own. And second is the price, mainly while there are always good deals to be found for lesser known used records, which can be the fun in searching for Vinyl, for the most part it's completely obvious how much record companies and vinyl distrubators have recognized the surge in Vinyl popularity over the last decade and the price in new records have shot up considerably, even as they've become more widely available (also rarer and out-of-print Vinyl can be marked up quite a bit as well).

So really it's just a matter of the individual, I would love to have a vast vinyl collection but for both practical and financial reasons it's a no-go on this end, and Im fine with just streaming for now. But for those who do, including my good hombre Kool Keith (who takes care of my sole vinyl record Past Life Martyred Saints), all the more power to them, it's a great medium if a bit more care & hassle than other ways of finding & storing music. I also have no fucking clue why tapes have surged in popularity, it was always a mediocre technology for hearing music (though better than some options in the pre-CD era) and it seems to be a product of Extreme Nostalgic-Hipster Syndrome.

Romanelli
Bone Swah

Gender: Male
Location: Broomfield, Colorado

Moderator

I would be more interested in what people of all ages think of the ridiculous pricing of vinyl. I think it's cool that vinyl is making a comeback and all...but you've got to be kidding me with the prices.
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benpaco
Who's gonna watch you die?

Age: 27
Location: California

Romanelli wrote:

I would be more interested in what people of all ages think of the ridiculous pricing of vinyl. I think it's cool that vinyl is making a comeback and all...but you've got to be kidding me with the prices.

I mean it totally depends what you're buying and where though. Been able to get pressings in really good condition of everyone from Simon and Garfunkel to Velvet Underground for $1 at my local shop. Even for new stuff, you compare the prices between the stuff at say, Newbury Comics, to the prices of stuff on smaller labels (or even the sort of big "small" labels, No Sleep and RFC and such), it's a big difference. Same with artist by artist - the /350 American Scene record I have cost me $10, the /430 Sainthood Reps record I have cost me $4, but Deja Entendu /???? (but at least several thousand) cost me $30. It depends so much on what you're trying to get.
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Lachapelle

Gender: Male

I'm 20.

I'm one of the only people I know with vinyl.. But I'll tell you something from experience.
Every single person I have played a record for, or let them pick something out to play has been amazed.
Now maybe I just have a really good speaker setup, but I own many albums in 3 forms (iTunes, CD and Vinyl) and through the exact same setup, the vinyl kills it every time. Many records are mastered differently for vinyl, and sometimes there are added intros or outros to songs that wouldn't be on the digital version.

I also find the listening experience much better. As someone who really enjoys to listen to an album as a whole, Vinyl is easily the best way to do so. The simple act of physically placing the record down and flipping it every few songs makes for a more immersive listen. Now maybe I'm starting to sound crazy.. so I'll stop. But I'm sure there are some people reading this who will relate.

Don't knock it till you try it.

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Romanelli wrote:

I would be more interested in what people of all ages think of the ridiculous pricing of vinyl. I think it's cool that vinyl is making a comeback and all...but you've got to be kidding me with the prices.

There are two albums I really wish I could buy on Vinyl... Achtung Baby and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness... they both sell for ridiculous prices with their re-release. Can't they make a poor man's version on vinyl?

http://www.amazon.com/Mellon-Collie-Inf...ness+vinyl

http://www.amazon.com/Achtung-Baby-Viny...amp;sr=1-1

I'm 31, but I am a person too Smile

.

For me I actually always owned Vinyl even when CD was the thing when I grew up because of my parents. They gave me original pressings of Beatles, Aretha Franklin, and Bob Dylan... and some things I'm afraid to say I own like Three Dog Night.

Anyway, I grew up with this thing in my house and listened to vinyl growing up.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Super sad we sold it at a garage sale for like $50...

Anyways for me Vinyl allows for a listening experience where your actually sitting down and listening to the music. Somehow the digital world made music so much less personal to me.

It's like economics... Only have like 50-75 albums on vinyl, yet 13,000 songs on my itunes... the value of my vinyl somehow is more important to me, even though the only difference is the medium.

As for quality, I just got Siamese Dream on vinyl and the treble sounds less tinny and more warm... other than that some of my records really sound terrible because I don't clean them.

Also my record player is old, and the time on it is only slightly off... for fun I played a record and something from a computer at the same time and my amp switched between the two with the touch of a button... the record player was playing the stuff a fraction of second faster.

Jimmy Dread
Old skool like Happy Shopper

Location: 555 Dub Street

Moderator

Romanelli wrote:

I would be more interested in what people of all ages think of the ridiculous pricing of vinyl. I think it's cool that vinyl is making a comeback and all...but you've got to be kidding me with the prices.

I think this has been discussed elsewhere in the forums, but a lot of it has to do with the sheer lack of pressing facilities (and demand on their services) compared to how it was when vinyl was in its heyday. Add to that the lack of vinyl 'professionals' (cutters, pressers and the like) in the industry meaning that the supply end can command top dollar with a massive upsurge of orders - especially around Record Store Day - and you can understand why vinyl now commands a significantly higher price once you've paid everyone in the production chain.

Don't blame the retailers for this either - one of my favourite record shops closed down recently because the owner just wasn't making the money to keep his head above water, despite selling LPs for £18-20 (what's that, just under US$30). I think he made £5-8 on every record he sold. After rates, bills and so forth, he would have had to sell shedloads just to keep himself afloat.

Record Store Day has definitely been both the shot in the arm and the stab in back that vinyl needed/could've done without. All of a sudden wax is suddenly back en vogue (although you could argue for house/d'n'b/garage/techno DJs it never went away) but because of the 'collect-ability' that limited pressings such as those made for RSD now command collectors/chancers are snapping them up long before fans get the opportunity, then sticking them on eBay/Discogs/whatever for stupid money, thereby inflating prices for specific releases artificially and affecting the general value of vinyl on the re-sale/second hand market as a whole. Labels get this, which is why you get all these fancy-nancy coloured, 3LP editions which (and contrary to a previous comment) make enjoying the whole album as an experience nothing but a faff.

What strikes me is how vinyl has gone from being the most utilitarian of formats to something the complete opposite. It's far more impractical than a CD, sure, and if you don't take care of it you'll screw it up. I don't buy the 'sound quality' argument either, especially when your 'remastered from the original tapes' vinyl repressed you ditched your CD copy for is pressed from a CD master and missing all the dynamism that can make vinyl listening such a rich experience. Unlike the 60s and 70s, owning a record on vinyl is decadent rather than a necessity - you could easily stream it or burn it onto a CDR - and maybe that's the point. If you passion is music, music is art, ergo why not lavish your hard-earned money on something tangible and fetishistic rather than a data file, or indeed a CD which you could not only make yourself but that likely will depreciate by 80-90% the minute you take it out the wrapper and that could easily end up dropped down the side of a car seat or filed in the wrong case or whatever. For some reason, owning a record on vinyl just feels right, to me at least.

As an active participant in the so-called 'vinyl revival', I can tell you that you don't need to spend the earth on buying records, especially represses of albums which you could get the original of with relatively little effort and expense. if you hunt hard enough there are bargains galore, and nothing can beat finding a record at a Car Boot Sale or charity shop/goodwill for a quid. This also allows you to take a punt on something with beautiful artwork or packaging, which in turn can lead you to not only discover something amazing on an artistic level, but also an LP that's worth a pretty penny too (such as when I found original UK pressings of Fela Kuti's Shakara and Fire Of Love by The Gun Club for a buck a piece). You take the record home, you clean it up, you glue the sleeve back together with UHU and some bulldog clips, you listen to it, you stick your headphones on, you melt away. Probably the same range of emotions someone who restores classics cars goes through, but on a vastly simplified scale.

Truth be told, if I didn't have the space for it or the spare £s I could never have justified buying vinyl again, but after years of living in flats and small houses it was almost a decision born out of my personal circumstances and contentment. For me such readiness to indulge in buying it represents the fact that I've ticked all the 'responsible adult' boxes (wife, kid, house, job, car, pinball table) and can finally after all these years revisit the halcyon days of spending entire mornings browsing in record shops on the weekend without any worries or hang-ups. If I'm totally honest with myself having a 500+ LP collection is as important a status symbol and reflection of my personality as someone who's car-mad owning a Porsche or whatever. It's a hobby, but fundamentally a obsession, and an essential link back to my youth when I spent all my pocket money/Saturday job wages on music. Part midlife crisis and part nostalgia, but 100% for the love of the music. And for that reason, there's little more satisfying than the sound you get when the needle hits the groove as you slump back in your easy chair reading the sleeve notes from a gatefold sleeve with your headphones on your bonce. Bliss, unless what you're listening to is shite.