Sound right before song begins on vinyl, what is it?

Maybe it's the band warming up.

I don't believe this has anything to do tape bleed through explanation when applied to vinyl. Tape bleed-through usually causes a fixed delay 1.8 seconds for a 7.5 ips tape not the very short delay like the fractions of a second heard on vinyl. The ghost sound on vinyl mostly occurs just before the actual sound, almost like a preview of the track which surely indicates a vinyl specific artefact not tape bleed through. A more likely explanation Groove Pre-Echo which is a vinyl mastering artefact. These ghost sounds are often cut into the vinyl itself, especially in the lead-in groove or between tracks.

It’s kind of easy to understand how this happens; when a loud transient like a snare hit is cut into the groove, the vibrations can slightly modulate the adjacent groove wall — especially the one just before it. This causes a mechanical pre-echo: the stylus picks up a faint version of the sound one revolution earlier about 1.8 seconds at 33⅓ RPM.

Some of the causes of pre-echo can are “hot mastering” or cutting grooves very loud, soft lacquer or vinyl formulations, wear and tear on the stamper wear or even pressing equipment wear although the latter less likely as these machines are usually built like the proverbial brick Sh*thouse!

We store master tape with the tales out (ending of tape to the outside of the reel) to keep this effect to a minimum. It's unavoidable but this helps.  At least you know you are getting a 100% analog recording.  

I remember back in the tape days, a rule of thumb was to never use fast-forward or rewind before storing your just-played tape. just let it keep playing 'till the end. Don't remember why, exactly. But it was a rule for hard-cores.

I'm going to have to pay more attention the next time I hear this phenomenon to measure the duration etc. It makes the most sense to me to think that this is a tape related problem. I have trouble understanding how the vinyl flaws could sound the way this does. I'm not saying anything is wrong, I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. Interesting stuff. Thanks all.