Del75 wrote:Vinyl it seems is no longer a guarantee of higher quality sound though.

That interview with Bob Weston posted elsewhere on EA was certainly an eye opener in regards to it being fairly common practice amongst other mastering engineers to use the 16 bit cd pre master to cut the vinyl.

If that is the case then seriously what is the point? I cant imagine anything more redundant than buying an LP simply because its vinyl but in reality sounds no way superior.

Very true. Something to look out for. I know for sure when we master our stuff, we master for what it's going on: CD/digital or Vinyl. Never skimp at the last step!

Off topic, we're talking to Bob about making our lacquers.

caix wrote:Independent labels are not so huge they can't move agile enough to react to consumer demand. But you get a small company that can recognize the value in vinyl (mostly because they are fans themselves or they're right there on the ground floor with the fans) and can react quickly enough to the demand.

Actually, I get pretty shocked when something doesn't come out on vinyl these days. I'm usually buying new vinyl from the smaller labels.

One factor for small labels with limited funds is the cost per unit price or CD vs. vinyl. A run of 1,000 CD’s with full packaging is never more than 1.5 K unless you include a huge booklet whereas a run of 500 12”s with full color jackets and such is usually around 2 K, more than twice as much per unit cost. As a result vinyl is hard to accomplish more than breaking even with your manufacturing costs and labels have many more expenses to cover than manufacturing such as office rent, promo mailings, web fees hosting and otherwise, shipping materials, advertising, paying someone to do your taxes, PO Box, etc. With limited resources it greatly crimps the number of releases you can put out even though they are way cooler than CD projects.

I do agree that putting CD-Rs in with a 12” are totally the way to go. Without that in there, I often times choose CD because I want to rock that shit at work and in my car where turntables are not available.

Yeah, costs go up, but I think selling mp3's off your own site or using eMusic or iTunes services can level out the cost difference. Hosting is relatively cheap, distribution costs are low because there's no storage other than a harddrive somewhere on the net and there's no shipping fees to pay.

I still say the death of the CD will come when the PR business figures out how to send/receive albums via the interwebs or at least gets used to the idea of mp3 only albums being mailed as CDRs.

The death of CDs will come when someone comes up with a better way for me to listen to music in my car. Until then I'll keep them alive my goddamned self, if I must.

Dude, they print one of these articles every week. Vinyl is COMIN BACK', man! CDs are dead! Did you know that 130% of US teens buy vinyl now?

AAAAAAAARGH wrote:Dude, they print one of these articles every week. Vinyl is COMIN BACK', man! CDs are dead! Did you know that 130% of US teens buy vinyl now?

Drumbeat of death, I say.

caix wrote:Yeah, costs go up, but I think selling mp3's off your own site or using eMusic or iTunes services can level out the cost difference. Hosting is relatively cheap, distribution costs are low because there's no storage other than a harddrive somewhere on the net and there's no shipping fees to pay.

Sick Room has totally taken a bath on every vinyl project we have ever done. Simply stated, it costs 2-3x more per unit to produce, it has basically a non-existent margin, and a very exclusive, specialty market.

And then as far as legal downloads picking up the slack, yeah right. Or catalog (almost 50 releases) is up on over 60 different outlets, and it generates maybe a couple hundred bucks on a good month. Thank god for those people who actually buy the stuff, but honestly it takes almost no effort to find music online for free.

I still say the death of the CD will come when the PR business figures out how to send/receive albums via the interwebs or at least gets used to the idea of mp3 only albums being mailed as CDRs.

You are probably right about that. out of our usual 2000 unit initial press run, 600-700 (30-35%) end up being sent out gratis to press and radio. I think the real reason a lot of folks insist on retail-ready CDs is because they want to turn around and sell them.

Yeah, imagine all the money you saved not having to ship out press releases. Last time our label did it, it cost about $1600 per release, about 300 copies each.

I know the margin on vinyl is next to nil, though. There's gotta be a better way to make money on it. Perhaps that structure will change when the only physical material will be vinyl?

ironyengine wrote:The death of CDs will come when someone comes up with a better way for me to listen to music in my car. Until then I'll keep them alive my goddamned self, if I must.

You can buy a car stereos that have USB ports in them. That way you can hook up an Ipod, mp3 player, or just use a usb thumb drive to store music. I got a new car stereo with that option for 70 bucks new, although "good" brands are generally twice as much. I keep all my car music on a little 2-gig thumb drive. No more scratched CD's. No more CD binders. No more skipping if I hit a bump too hard. No more fumbling around with CD's if I'm trying to find something to listen to. Just a little thumb drive I can easily stick in my pocket. If I'm sick of an album, I just hit a button until I find a new one. I'm in my car most of the day as part of my job and have not missed CDs at all.

you could put a usb turntable in your car now!

but seriously, chris, i buy vinyl and so do almost all my friends and we're all above 30. some of them have been collecting for years. one of them has been collecting only vinyl since he was a teenie bopper.