Vinyl Back in some major chains?

[Cellotron]

all at a time when most folks will probably have less discretionary income due to their own energy/gas bills going up.

As the price of music goes down, tangible music can become a luxury market, in which case inefficient and expensive production becomes a plus.

Hard to see how much of a "plus" this will be in terms of allowing existing vinyl pressing plants to continue with their current capacities.

Here's a list of plants that have closed down in the past 4 years:
Europadisk - NYC
Universal - New York
33-1/3 (aka "Music Connection" - the former WEA / "Specialty Records" plant) - PA
Hub Servall - New Jersey
MMS - Canada
Acme - Canada

These closings are in part of what has enable the plants that have continued to remain vibrant - their all getting bigger pieces of a slowly diminishing pie.

While the "resurgeance" of vinyl has been receiving a good amount of press the fact remains that the numbers being made are still far far below what was being made unit wise not that long ago. A lot of the bigger players that were keeping vinyl alive through out the 90's and into the early part of this decade - the house, techno and hip-hop scenes, are simply pressing less orders and less units per order. Leaving an increasing amount of shorter run indie rock and reissue stuff to fill the void - but still - plants in general are seeing more shorter runs - which leads to increased downtime.

The stark fact remains that by every gauge it seems global oil production has peaked this year - meaning that demand will start exceeding supply by increasing amounts from now on - meaning that price for petroleum products will keep markedly increasing. At some point PVC makers have to start passing on their increased costs to vinyl pressing plants or they'll go out of business. At some point the pressing plants will then have to pass on their increased costs from this to their customers or similarly they will go out of business.

SO: At what price point do indie labels and music fans no longer keep buying vinyl records? Currently $20 is a lot for me to handle to purchase an LP and would make me think twice before getting it (I love browsing for old & used vinyl records for well less than that though).

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[toothpastefordinner]

Pressing 3 oz. of PVC into a record along with a thin paper sleeve and a 100# process-printed jacket has a negligible environmental impact. A gallon of gas is 128 fl. oz of petroleum distillate - that's a lot of records.

I think it's counterproductive to try to find the downside to retailers bringing vinyl back... the article even noted that indie record stores would carry the genres of music that Best Buy isn't gonna touch (reggae, punk, et al.) If people start buying vinyl, it could solve the "death of the indie record store" problem as well as push CDs out of the market.

When people are only buying CDs to dump onto their iPods, they're expensive and redundant (many digitally-downloadable albums only cost six bucks.)

[T-rex]

Pressing 3 oz. of PVC into a record along with a thin paper sleeve and a 100# process-printed jacket has a negligible environmental impact. A gallon of gas is 128 fl. oz of petroleum distillate - that's a lot of records.

I think it's counterproductive to try to find the downside to retailers bringing vinyl back... the article even noted that indie record stores would carry the genres of music that Best Buy isn't gonna touch (reggae, punk, et al.) If people start buying vinyl, it could solve the "death of the indie record store" problem as well as push CDs out of the market.

When people are only buying CDs to dump onto their iPods, they're expensive and redundant (many digitally-downloadable albums only cost six bucks.)

Bingo! Of course there are a ton of negatives. I have long ago accepted that most things I love are bad, but they feel so good. . .

[sears]

SO: At what price point do indie labels and music fans no longer keep buying vinyl records? Currently $20 is a lot for me to handle to purchase an LP and would make me think twice before getting it (I love browsing for old & used vinyl records for well less than that though).

I was talking $100, or $1000 for deluxe hand-numbered, artwork, etc.

[Cellotron]

Pressing 3 oz. of PVC into a record along with a thin paper sleeve and a 100# process-printed jacket has a negligible environmental impact.

I'd say environmental impacts for an activity need to be measured relative to available options. So - vinyl pressing's environmental impact relative to say, the running of a coal burning power generation plant is indeed as you said pretty darn miniscule. But - when the materials, energy and waste costs of producing and shipping a vinyl record are measured against the impact of generating a digital download or even producing and shipping a CD - then you can see that the vinyl record is the most energy intensive and environmentally impacting audio product currently being produced in any decent amount of units.

As far as specific impacts:
anyone who has ever witnessed carbon cleaning of an electroplating tank (which are used for creating fathers/mothers/stampers) knows the waste products are pretty darn toxic.

As far as the environmental impact of PVC manufacturing - one of the things that forced the closure of Keysor-Century in 2003 (at the time I believe the largest USA based record grade vinyl makers) was a major law suit by the EPA that found them guilty of exposing their employees to toxins and the polluting the regions' public waters -
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.ns ... D8005E1654

I think it's counterproductive to try to find the downside to retailers bringing vinyl back...

Counterproductive to what? Internet forum chatter doesn't matter a hill of beans to what will actually happen in market place trends. But geology - i.e. the current peak of global oil production - and politics - i.e. the current rebalancing of economic hegemony to the remaining oil exporters and away from a nation that has crippled itself with excessive debt - without a question will make impacts. In other words - the resurgeance in vinyl record production might continue for a year or two but will more than likely not be able to sustain itself beyond that.

the article even noted that indie record stores would carry the genres of music that Best Buy isn't gonna touch (reggae, punk, et al.)

But this has always been the case.

If people start buying vinyl, it could solve the "death of the indie record store" problem as well as push CDs out of the market.

I count myself very fortunate to be in an area (Brooklyn) with a lot of great indie stores stocking vinyl records (used and new), and will continue to support these cool places.

As far as the vinyl resurgeance being some kind of savior of a scene though - I think people need to be aware of the real scale of what is going on - i.e. vinyl record sales increased by 300,000 units to 1.3million last year - vs. 511 million CD's sold last year. Again - CD's are indeed showing marked market loss every year and vinyl showed a significant bump up versus the previous year - but in actual size CD sales are still over 393 times what vinyl sales are.

When people are only buying CDs to dump onto their iPods, they're expensive and redundant (many digitally-downloadable albums only cost six bucks.)

I agree. I personally don't use an iPod though and still buy CD's myself because being old school I still like tangible products and the better sound quality they offer relative to most digital download offerings.

Again - people should not get my post wrong as I actually LOVE vinyl in that it has an amazing "vibe" and sound - and I even derive some of my income from doing a bit of pre-mastering for vinyl releases - but I just am trying to put the actual size and true ultimate impact of the "resurgeance" into better perspective.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Cellotron]

SO: At what price point do indie labels and music fans no longer keep buying vinyl records? Currently $20 is a lot for me to handle to purchase an LP and would make me think twice before getting it (I love browsing for old & used vinyl records for well less than that though).

I was talking $100, or $1000 for deluxe hand-numbered, artwork, etc.

Yeah - I can see vinyl pressing remaining for a long time as a small niche run by a few small devoted plants (doing it just as much for love of the art as they are actually trying to make a profit) that only the truly rich can afford to purchase. Not exactly an appealing prospect to me though.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[ledogboy]

Hey Steve,
Thanks for your well thought out and carefully crafted posts! I really enjoy them. Cheers,
Ryan

[Cellotron]

Just checked the 2007 RIAA report - http://76.74.24.142/81128FFD-028F-282E- ... A46388.pdf - besides showing increase of LP sales from 900,000 in 2006 to 1.3million in 2007 - they also show a larger decrease of vinyl single sales - down to 500,000 in 2007 from 1.5million in 2006!

Granted - RIAA probably is missing a some indie releases in these numbers - but it does give a very good idea of what the majors plus the larger indies that report to Soundscan are moving.

So - looks like albums are picking up to the detriment of singles - which kind of confirms my thoughts that indie rock is increasing while the client base that did the bulk of the work in the 90's (dance/techno/house/hip-hop) is decreasing.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[kepnerb]

I'm 17 and have really dug vinyl for awhile. A few years ago I got my dad to dig out his old record player...it now sits in my room and I had a few of his old records to listen to. I just got back from going to a small Jazz Festival in Columbus , Ohio and I went shopping around town for vinyl. The thing I love about vinyl and I think more younger kids are getting into it is because you can buy all these classic records for a few dollars. Out of 10 albums the most I spent on one album is 4.99 that weekend. I picked up a lot of records that I love and albums that were never released onto cd for a few bucks a piece. I think that is the real draw is that used vinyl is sooo affordable for younger generations. The only problem is that there aren't alot of used stores around. I live in a small town in Indiana and do not know of any used vinyl stores near me at all. There are a lot of obscure artists that I like and their stuff hasn't been released on cd . I'm welcoming a vinyl revival with open arms!

[AstroDan]

Steve,

Would you know if there are any possible developments for an alternative to petroleum for making records? It's really awesome they're gaining favor, but would really be annoying* if Best Buy started stocking trillions of copies of the new Hannah Montana while gas soared to $6 a gallon.

*(unless Saga was her backing band.)

[Cellotron]

Steve,

Would you know if there are any possible developments for an alternative to petroleum for making records?

Well - guess you could go back to using shellac!

From http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=516 -

Early disc records were originally made of various materials including hard rubber. From 1897 onwards, earlier materials were largely replaced by a rather brittle formula of 25% "shellac" (a material obtained from the excretion of a southeast Asian beetle), a filler of a cotton compound similar to manila paper, powdered slate and a small amount of a wax lubricant. The mass production of shellac records began in 1898 in Hanover, Germany. Shellac records were the most common until the 1950s.

The big disadvantage of pressing records on shellac is higher surface noise, it's very brittle, and currently much more expensive than vinyl.

More info on shellac at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellac

It is possible to make plastics through gasification of coal - a technology already proven to be feasible back in the 1930's but right now economically not that viable. Right now afaik there is absolutely no research or development on figuring out replacement substances for record grade vinyl though. It's just too small of a niche industry with too poor of a profit margin to warrant the effort and I think most people involved with it just don't have the type of capital or the interest (or the awareness of petroleum depletion issues) to fund such an r&d. Most likely research into economically producing plastics from other materials will greatly increase in the next decade - whether this funnels into a still living record pressing industry then is anyone's guess.

I want to add an amendment to my previous statements - talking with folks who send orders to vinyl pressing plants seems the remaining plants are doing very well for themselves right now and running at or close to their full capacities - and many are not currently accepting new clients or are quoting slow turn times. Based on this I think the existing plants will be able to keep going at current material and utility costs. It's also very possible based on this that RIAA's figures were indeed low by a few hundred thousand of the true number of units being produced and that 2008 will show another marked rebound in vinyl record production.

Again - if petroleum production depletion rates continue at current levels against current demand growth then I can see among (probably the least of) our worries is some vinyl pressing plants being stressed to keep their operations open. As far as I can tell this could happen in anywhere from 2 to 20 years from now.

Best regards,
Steve Berson