Not defending vinyl costs but you are just discussing manufacturing costs, then there is the cost of making the music, of selling the music and of all the taxes involved.
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What the thread title doesnât tell you is that all format sales have dropped, CD by 19.5%, digital by 8.3% and other whatever that is by 28% which equated to 23.8% across all formats.
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Youâre right. Artists deserve to be payed. But i was talking about âgreat namesââŚ
What i think is that they made fashion of vinyl and, for what i see around (not here btw), many people buy records to fill and fit the sitting roomâŚ
I try to pick up second hand vinyl as close to mint as I can get, but it is still expensive even pre-loved.
My local record store sent an e-mail round a couple of weeks back to say that they are reducing their stock of new vinyl due to margins and quality of pressings, they also commented that they cannot match the buying power and promotions run by the like of HMV, so they intend to focus more on pre-loved LPâs.
Shame as I have tried to use the independent rather than HMV to help local business.
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Yes, it gets silly. I bought that LP new last week here in New Zealand for $54 (ÂŁ27).
A while ago at a record fair I wanted a used copy of Led Zeppelin 3, they wanted $80 for it, and it wasnât in good condition, and wouldnât budge on price. So, I bought a new one on-line, delivered to our house, for $50.
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HmmâŚand on what basis was that assertion made, it sounds a bit suspect for me.
Streaming services donât restrict content, itâs the distributors and publishers who make content available to cloud streaming companies, like shops, and generally as much content as possible is provided for monetisation, unless the copyright owner doesnât wish their media to be distributed to a particular streamer or retailer for a particular reason.
My distributor and publisher has a lengthy online form with all the major streaming outlets that I can opt in or out of for a release for a period of time.
If you have multiple distributors for different geographies you may find some tracks canât be streamed in certain regions because of agreements you have setup.
To the OP, the decline might be US specific, in the UK there has been impressive growth continuing in 2024. 2024 H1 vinyl album sales were up 13.5% to ÂŁ86.3 million, while CD sales were up 3.2% to ÂŁ57.9 million.
In 2023 the UK was the third biggest recorded music market after the US and Japan.
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When vinyl sales were âsoaringâ some people leapt on it as though some universal truth had been revealed and they had been âright all alongâ. In reality it was easy to claim huge percentage increases year on year when sales themselves were but a fraction of vinyl sales first time round and CD sales were naturally declining as downloads and then streaming started to emerge. Iâve previously asserted that vinyl has a natural upper limit because itâs not especially green and the sales are largely focused on heritage albums and a few big selling modern day ones. I stab]nd by that. Itâs a minority sport and always will be.That said, a 33% decline strikes me as unlikely for multiple reasons. Not the least of these is that a significant portion of annual sales are RSD sales and weâve had that. If the day had been a disaster weâd have surely heard by now.
Have to say that the record store owner quoted above was clearly having a laugh at the posters expense. It surely doesnât need explaining why?
Hmmm 33%âŚ
Isnât this also about the increase we saw in one go in vinyl a year or so ago?
Cause and effectâŚ
Actually I was shown a publicity for the release of a set of CDâs on improved CD format during a much longer, chat about how music is being sold. I have known him for more than 30 years.
We were talking about vinyl. He tells me it is still selling well and the amount of Vinyl in the shop has increased. He has told me in the past that CD sound quality is better if well mastered, and the vinyl revival is mostly pure marketing.
He was explaining that the record companies would like to do a similar thing with CD. There is in fact a manufacturing process used for some CD releases in Japan, that is said to have superior sound quality. It is probably being introduced into the US/EU/UK markets. The gist of the conversation was that having got peoples used to high vinyl prices, people will be prepared to pay more (âŹ25) for a CD, and still think they have won on price.
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Whatever was there has been throughly exploited by the labels/distributors, they just got too expensive, too ridiculous in terms of reissues, repackaging existing material again.
So will there will be a boost to the Vinyl 2nd hand market in a few years? I did so well before in the 1990âs, when people where selling off their Vinyl collections to buy everything on CD.
How is a âSuperCDâ going to be different to having a HiRes FLAC copy - or is the music industry looking to retain physical formats?
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I think the UHQR releases may have had an impact, they promised much and delivered little at a huge price premium. Personally I like shopping for used CDâs at World of Books, got some good ones there. Iâve also been appreciating the higher resolution albums with my new system and I see that Qobuz are now pushing DSD on their download store. I think the best value for money at the moment is Bandcamp where I like to order the vinyl and have the (hopefully) high res download.
I do get the occasional really good vinyl album from my local used outlet, last time I got Lou Donaldson - Blues Walk, pretty much mint for ÂŁ12.
Tim
Iâm sure thatâs what he means. Excuse my simplistic paraphrasing.
G
Ok - but then they are under contract of the copyright owner. So if somebody wants to limit a release of their work for whatever reason - then they do have the right too. But I canât imagine many doing so as many artists need what income they can getâŚ
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and the Beatles can start re-mastering all over again.
I agree with all of what he says but realistically CD will continue to gently fade and itâs unlikely that the market will grow. Much more likely that a niche for slightly higher quality CD might be developed which might appeal to those with a fetish for small replica covers (yes, that was me). I do think itâs very unlikely though. Weâve had DVD-A; SACD; HDCD etc. Bottom line is that few want any kind of new silver disc. Thereâs enough of the standard type selling.
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It plays on standard CD players, so it is pretty much an invisible improvement, to justify premium prices.
Good job mine is all in storage 
if streaming goes the way of Amazon Orime where I pay a subscription for Film but cannot watch because every 5 minutes they have now introduced advertising. This would be horrendous when streaming music to have such interruptions ä. In fact my Amazon Prime I have only used for the delivery service and not watched anything since this advertisement business which they say is to reduce the subscription cost.
I never understood the resurgence in popularity of placing a piece of plastic on a rotating lathe and applying a diamond cutting tool in order to âenjoyâ musicâŚâŚ current turntables cost the same as a decent machine shop lathe today. Obviously the record companies see significant value in selling the customer multiple copies of media which will inevitably wear through normal use.
I ceased buying records when I went to uni in â73, student flats being inherently record unfriendly, moving on to cassette tapes, then to CD and eventually to digital streaming/downloads.
If the analogue experience is so great, how come thereâs no interest in reviving that nice Mr. Edisonâs wax cylinder phonographsâŚâŚ?
Iâll get my coat 
.
ATB, J
Well I do think the SuperCD is possibly smoke and mirrors⌠from what I can see it looks like SHM-CD.
SHM-CD (Super High Material Compact Disc) is a variant of CD which replaces the standard polycarbonate base with a proprietary material. It was developed by Universal Music Japan and JVC.
SHM-CDs are fully compatible with CD, and are said to offer higher reading accuracy⌠but as CD-Audio contains inherent error detection and recovery there is no evidence that the difference is audibly relevant or detectable⌠other than one can speculate that the digital noise profile from certain CDMs might be different to when itâs recovering errors compared to when it isnât. In which case such sonic differences would vary between CDP models, with perhaps lesser quality designs perhaps exhibiting more of a difference.
I do think the CD master is the most obvious difference in sound however⌠and that can be applied to polycarbonate CD, SHM-CD, download or stream.
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I had that experience with the cling film warping the record absent back a particular one twice then gave up think it was a Rod Stewart album
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