Why vinyl?


Here are couple of short articles to read before responding.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2007/10/listeningpost_1029

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=755

Vinylheads will jump on this, but hopefully some digital aficionados will also chime in.
ojgalli

Showing 2 responses by tomcy6

Why do vinyl lovers feel that they have to disparage cds and people who listen to them? Michael Fremer started this trend and it has been adopted by too many of his followers.

As others have said, there are good and bad sounding lps and cds. If you prefer vinyl that's great, but as we know no two people have the same preferences for much of anything in audio. So enjoy your vinyl and let people who enjoy cd do so in peace.

People talk about the resurgent popularity of vinyl but it's still just a tiny fraction of cd sales, even among audiophiles, I would guess.

The sound quality of cds and cd players is steadily improving and will continue to do so for many years. Audiophile digital downloads will offer even better sound quality eventually, but I will wait for that technology to mature a little.

Maybe the vinyl lovers can answer a question I have. How do you enjoy listening to 45rpm vinyl when you have to get up every 10 minutes to flip, clean and tweak? I'm sure the albums sound great but the ratio of listening time to time spent fooling with your lps and gear seems a little low to me.
Digital is still in its infancy. I think that digital, maybe not cd but maybe 24/96 downloads or whatever comes next, will surpass the best sound quality available today in the not too distant future.

As far as sales numbers go, there's a January 10, 2008 Time magazine article about the resurgence of vinyl that has the 2007 numbers.

According to Nielsen SoundScan, of total album sales for 2007:
vinyl makes up about 0.2%
digital downloads are 10%
cds are 89.7%

The article says that Nielsen SoundScan may undercount vinyl since they don't always include sales at smaller indie shops where vinyl does best.

The 0.2% equals 990,000 vinyl albums sold in 2007, up 15.4% from 858,000 units sold in 2006.

So let's say they missed half the vinyl album sales, if we double the vinyl sales for 2007 we are still under 2 million sold for the entire year and have an increase of only 264,000 units over 2006.

The real growth is not in vinyl, downloads or cds. Video games on dvd are by far the fastest growing home entertainment product.