Comments on: My Love of Vinyl Records, Some Thoughts on McLuhan, Neil Young on Analog

By: The End of The Music Album as The Organizing Principle | pampelmoose Dave Allen of Gang of Four's Music and Media Blog

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:29:48 +0000

[...] My Love of Vinyl Records The End of the CD and CD Retailers Puddlegum – Top 5 Reasons Why Vinyl Will Outlive CDs David Byrne Tells The Record Labels to Embrace The MP3 How Killing the CD Single Killed the Recording Industry How Bands Can Make More Money By Not Pricing Their Merchandize at Shows [...]

By: Tynan

Tynan — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:12:38 +0000

I’m pretty young at 22. I just started collecting vinyl within the past year. I’m a huge fan of music. I grew up with a father who was a musician so I always looked at music very truly and deeply. Of course, I was the perfect age to get started on MP3s right away. First starting out on Napster and such, then making my way through the different ways of getting music online. As a kid, I used to collect CDs, but over time with changing technology, I had less reason to own them. I owned the first MP3 player in the US, and multiples after it. Eventually it became harder and harder for me to buy CDs because I knew the only use I had for them was either on my computer or on my MP3 player since my computer was the source of any entertainment center I had. I also had a hard time buying MP3s because I felt they had no physical weight to them, and I knew ways to circumvent that whole process. Vinyl has given me a reason to pay for music again. And I love it. Almost obsessed with it. Through all the albums I’ve obtained over the years, I’m finally getting to go back and buy them for the first time (or second time, depending.) In under a year I’ve collected 76 12″ records and I am just a struggling college student. I love the physical properties of vinyl. I own it. I can hold it. I can display it. It belongs to me now. It has made music personal again. And at the same time, made it social too. Often I will sit around with friends or my girlfriend and just listen to albums together. It’s a wonderful experience that very rarely would come out of the digital versions.

By: jragel

jragel — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:16:54 +0000

@Tim: Do you have Nick Cave’s ‘Do You Love Me?’ on vinyl? That is a sick sick song and as good as it gets.

No secret- I like vinyl quite a bit. I think there is a textural quality to it that lends itself to creating a time and place—another dimension or context for a recording to exist. An mp3 is 2 dimensional, which I actually think is better for dance music and other forms where you really don’t want a large dynamic range. The key is marketing all of these formats to whomever is enthusiastic about them. Buy one of my records? I’ll gladly email you a 350k zip file of the album. Buy a cd? Well, we all know about cd’s—they continue to sell at shows and are easy to distribute.

I think all of these formats are here to stay—the only change I see is a main stream digital format that satisfies the audio purists—something like a blue ray containing special artwork and several digital formats. It would be a boutique item with a price point right around where records are, and unlike records, it wouldn’t use an archaic EQ curve. Again, I love records but…

The fact that much of the industry took so long to embrace the digital format is what caused them to lose half a generation of fans. Now they need to push for 350k files to protect the art of recording and develop and commit to the format for the next century. Whatever that is…

Oh, and an ipod with decent D/A conversion would be sweet too!

By: Music Business Blog by Jason Feinberg » Thoughts on Vinyl and Analog

Music Business Blog by Jason Feinberg » Thoughts on Vinyl and Analog — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:29:46 +0000

[...] you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.Dave Allen has a fantastic article on his blog about vinyl, analog, digital formats, and tying it all together to a new generation. Real good [...]

By: Jason Feinberg

Jason Feinberg — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:09:41 +0000

fantastic article! vinyl has been my preferred format since day one, probably because most of my favorite bands are late 70s early 80s punk and there is just nothing like hearing music the same way it was originally heard. i love putting on an original Black Flag 7″ and hearing it in all it’s scratchy glory. my copy of Entertainment also sounds amazing on wax ;)

my preferred media for new releases is vinyl with a download card. i get the delicious analog sound at home, and have the audio easily available on my computer/ipod/phone/etc.

I’ve done a lot of digitization of my old rare vinyl, i am still tinkering with plugins and flow to get the cleanest capture and conversion. would love to hear people’s thoughts on this…

i’m such a vinyl nerd, i created a site to document one of my favorite band’s massive vinyl catalog – http://www.murdercityvinyl.com

jason

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:37:11 +0000

It’s interesting about vinyl…In the town I live in, I have seen a lot of music stores close within the past few years. The ones that are staying open are the ones that have a good selection of vinyl. It also seems that many of the Gen-Y and Millenial kids are getting into the format. The New York Times recently reported that record companies are producing more vinyl, and seeing significant sales growth. I am excited to see more stuff out on vinyl.

By: Freddie B.

Freddie B. — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:33:26 +0000

You’re preaching to the converted here, Dave, but given how good you are at fronting up interesting new downloads I hope you might make a few new converts to the medium.

Personally I think there’s a huge opportunity here given how much enthusiasm is out there at the moment for ‘real’ music, be that rock or roll or folk, say. mp3s are a great medium for pop songs driven by lyrical content – eg Artic Monkeys, MGMT, Amy Winehouse – but awful for anything with atmospheric depth – eg Joy Division, Brian Eno, Nightmares on Wax.

I’d have thought those manufacturers with an ongoing interest in vinyl – Technics, for example – would go out of their way to get this message across, with product demos, JVs with record labels, whatever. Because experience remains at the heart of musical fandom – you have to experience the music for yourself in order to fall in love with it. And right now, an entire generation isn’t even beginning to experience vinyl.

Right now I suspect it’s still viewed as a cost and space issue for the big retailers, but if they are serious about retaining any kind of bricks and mortar existence then they should think hard about re-investing in those things that simply cannot be done online.

By: Tim London

Tim London — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:29:03 +0000

Last weekend I DJ’d at the opening night of a new venue in Edinburgh (The Bowery), using my old 60s Dansette and a heap of 7″ records. The audience were mainly 20 something, nice young things, nary a chav among ‘em. A few were fascinated by the machine and there was a certain amount of respect for the vinyl; yes, it was truly as much a sight as a sound experience for some. And they stayed with me to the detriment of the DJs in another room. But equally, it wasn’t until I handed over to those DJs (who were using iPods, interestingly, going straight into the amp) that the crowd began to dance. Admittedly there was a volume issue – I had a mic in front of the Dansette speaker pushing the sound out through the PA, their iPods fed straight in. But even though they played the odd more up to date electronic track they essentially kept up the vibe I started of old rocknroll & soul & old R&Breggae & rocksteady, the squared sound waves making the songs accessible, removing the extra ‘noise’, the analog bits in between that Dave is eulogising above. And I find this in conversations with younger people, and in the way they dress: no fuss, no distraction and I wonder if it was always a generational thing or if it’s a new age thing…
The implications for making music are interesting, though. I love the idea of squaring the sound of a group recorded originally on a one or two track tape machine so it fits neatly into an MP3, the most appropriate medium for a pop song since the vinyl single. I’ve got to admit, the doo wop & rocknroll sounded irresistible & contemporary!
BTW, at the risk of blethering, that night I played the only record I can stand from Nick Cave, Release The Bats, still enough to get me giggling out loud. …oh, he’s such a bad man… a baaaad man.