More evidence that LPS are still alive

I live in the Pacific NW, and yesterday I was out on errands with my 21-yr-old stepson who wanted to get a CD at Fred Meyer. When we got there, lo and behold, there was a shrink-wrapped 2-disc LP of R.E.M.'s "Accelerate" release, leaning up against the music dep't's cash register. The clerk didn't exactly know why it was there, but since it had a price tag and UPC code, I could have bought it.

But after reading the link, now I know how it got there, and I may have to go back and get that one.

Fred Meyer selling vinyl in the Pacific NW is like Mervyn's (in CA) or Target (anywhere) selling vinyl. It can't get much more mainstream.

After 3 days of equivocating, I decided to take one more look at the R.E.M. LP at my local Fred Meyer, and guess what?

It's a 45-rpm release mastered on TWO 180g LPs! That was the clincher. Even though I'm not a huge R.E.M. fan, I wanted to celebrate the experience of buying a new shrink-wrapped vinyl album of a mainstream artist from a mass-market department store in 2008.

Even though it's 45rpm on 180g vinyl, don't expect it to sound like an Analogue Productions release. Even so, it is very quiet, reasonably dynamic, and sounds pretty good, though I'm aware of its digital roots. It also comes with the CD. Not bad for $26.99.

06-17-08: Tgrisham
In the future, bands will only release online, by download. ... I downloaded a sampler from HDTracks. The quality is excellent. They will soon have 96KHz/24 bit downloads, DRM free. If you want a hard copy, burn a disc.

If they start getting the writers and graphics artists involved, they could offer a pdf of cover art and liner notes and recapture something we've lost from the LP days.

That arrangement would be the best of both. I like the sound of 24/96 or 24/88.4 as MLP on my humble Oppo DV-980H. I can't abide 16/44.1, but 24-bit dynamic resolution and 88K or 96K sampling I can live with.

Besides near infinite resolution of LPs, their other big advantage was the visual experience. CDs shrunk that to illegible miniaturization, and downloads eliminated it. If you added in quality commentary and graphics to accompany hi-rez downloads, you could approximate the album experience with the download advantages of portability and robustness.