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Comment by big_chungus | Hacker News Reader

Would some one please enlighten me as to what on God's green earth is going on with vinyl? It's less dense, lower-quality, degrades with use, and is more expensive. It's probably less environmentally-friendly, too (though I'm not sure what it's target demographic is, so I don't know if that means much). Why is vinyl popular, all of a sudden? I had to rip all my grandmother's vinyl records, once, and it was a pain in the be-hind. I'm not sure why any one would willingly subject himself to that when better alternatives exist. I thought it was dead as of long ago.

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As someone who only buys physical music on vinyl, it’s not just one thing but a whole ritual around it. I love having bulky gatefold albums to explore while the record’s playing, I love the intricate precision needed when dropping the needle down, I love the many limited edition pressings I have that come in ridiculous psychedelic colours, I love the overly expensive setup I have that sounds incredible, I rarely buy used records but I still love peering through endless dusty records in second hand shops. It’s timeless. I’m sure audiophiles will show up and talk about the exact sound qualities of it vs digital copies, but I don’t particularly care about that side of things too much. I enjoy it the same way some people enjoy the ritual behind drinking whiskey.

You are looking at this as a CD vs Vinyl battle. Vinyl found a niche and never died entirely. Now CDs are dying because of downloads and streaming and you're saying "why the resurgence vinyl?"

There is no resurgence, perhaps a Renaissance in vinyl, but what you're really seeing is just the fall of CD down to vinyl's levels.

Go to https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/ and select only LP/EP and vinyl single. Or just LP/EP.

Including both and just looking without inflation, it’s above 1989 levels and could hit 1988 levels eventually. It’s 5x higher than mid 90s through late 00s. Almost 4x since 2010.

Take out vinyl singles and the increase is absurd. It’s 9x to 40x+ increase from any year between 1991 and 2007. 8x from 2008. Almost 2x from 2013.

And this is all for 2018 figures. 2019 will bump things up even more. Though the pace has slowed a lot.

Even if you add inflation, the resurgence is still there. IE for LP/EP, 2019 will beat out 1989. After a low of nearly 25x less in 93 and 05-06.

> Even if you add inflation, the resurgence is still there. IE for LP/EP, 2019 will beat out 1989.

I'm having trouble viewing those graphs on mobile but it looks like in 1989 vinyl only had >4% market share and 34.6 million units, where as in 2018 it had >3% with 16.7 million units.

It's not nothing and it's not a large part of the overall market. It appears to be smaller than 30 years ago when it was considered a dead format.

I can be convinced otherwise as statistics isn’t a strength of mine, but those two numbers are by units.

Unit share doesn’t seem to make sense as a comparison point to me. A single or ringtone shouldn’t be given equal respect to a full collection of songs. Downloaded singles are 75% of the unit market share but only 5% of the revenue market share in 2018. 2018 will be the last year downloaded singles have a greater revenue share than vinyl.

To me this looks like a resurgence because of how its revenue share has been. Its collapse of market and revenue share from ~83 to ~92 and being dead by 89 (with 3.3% revenue share, less than the past 5 years if including 2019). Having a revenue share of 0.1% from 93 to 07. Yeah, for 25 years it’s revenue share was 0.1%. Then ~1.5% for the next 5-6 years and ~4.5% for the past couple of years.

It’s not a crazy resurgence, but compared to 93 to ~2012, a 25 year span, it’s many multiples higher and not looking to let up for now.

I agree that unit shares don't make sense, I was referencing the volume % which seems less absurd. The % of volume that LP had in 2018 was similar to the late % in the 80s. My point was that in the late 80s vinyl was "dead" and it's still "dead".

But it’s not dead in the same way. The resurgence has it stabilized and growing a bit still. In 89 it was on a 5 year drastic downtrend.

Now it’s on a tear compared to 93 to 07 and beyond.

There’s active communities online and in real life of people who like vinyl and are buying it. Though there were always enthusiasts. The buying part wasn’t happening from 93 to 07. If you can run a successful business off something that isn’t trending down, without the biz being too crazy, then the thing isn’t really dead. It’s niche sure. But dead wouldn’t make sense. Cassettes are dead. Paying for ringtones are dead. Those two aren’t close to vinyl.

Vinyl didn't die entirely because it was the latest development in mass produced analog media for music (tape was impractical and too costly outside of control rooms or rich people living rooms, and cassettes were too inferior), therefore it defined an era. The CD is dying because it's not the latest development in mass produced digital media for music, and it's just being substituted by other means of doing the same thing, so that it's not going to hit the same memories. Panta Rei and history repeats, so one day we might experience a new paradigm shift, for example if we'll record our music -plus the induced feelings of it- on implantable organic neural networks, so that someone will say "hah, those kids and their inferior analog implant... I'll rather go get some old compact discs to feel how it sounded the real thing!".

I listen to vinyl because a lot of the music I like never made it to digital.

I have at least 30 albums that simply do not exist as downloads, streaming, or any other digital medium. And there are people today who are still putting out new music in analog formats that will never get a digital release.

And I'm not even much of a music buff. If I have 30 "lost" albums, there must be tens of thousands more out there that simply do not exist to people who restrict themselves to digital formats.

I really don't understand why some people choose to limit themselves to digital. That's like deciding to only eat tacos for the rest of your life.

Indeed. So many people seem not to realize that there will not be one final best source of music.

> I really don't understand why some people choose to limit themselves to digital.

I can't afford the physical space for physical goods and the expense involved with moving them.

Nostalgia and appearance. Old cars drive like crap and are unsafe, but popular for the same reason.

I understand that, but old cars are a hobby of a limited number of people, not of "Joe Average". This would be like old cars out-selling new ones.

Digital recordings still vastly outsell vinyl; it’s just that CDs are declining in favor of MP3s and streaming, whilst demand for vinyl among enthusiasts/collectors holds up.

In this analogy 'new cars' (CDs) have already largely been antiquated by the new technology of personal teleportation (audio files distributed over networks.)

The market for new cars still exists because some people don't like teleportation. Some people worry that teleportation recreates you imperfectly on the other side and thus prefer a new car. But that demographic is shrinking. Teleportation is simply so convienent that the overwhelming majority of consumers think the price worth paying.

"Some people worry that teleportation recreates you imperfectly on the other side"

Teleportation could recreate me perfectly, imperfectly, or better than perfectly - the issue is what happens to the original me. Rumor has it that after scanning your body the origin portal drops you into a trash compactor.

The CD standard as the "Joe Average" is quickly changing. Anecdotally, as a younger person (recent college grad), people my age don't buy CDs out of necessity nearly as much anymore as they used to. We've gotten to the point where the vast majority of devices (car stereos, home systems, etc) have at the very least, an aux port. Adding on to this, the prevalence of phones as speakers and music players means that you hardly every "need" a CD. CDs are quickly going the way of records and cassettes.

We can see this pretty clearly looking at consumer reports[1], where you'll find that vinyls, compared to CDs, are actually being propped up largely by generations (18-44) that never properly experienced them. CD usage, on the other hand, is generally supported by older generations that are slower to adapt to modern streaming. Vinyl is almost vicarious nostalgia- most vinyl users I know (generally from the same age bracket) enjoy it as a deprecated technology that feels exotic. CDs aren't necessary for us anymore, and since we grew up with them, they aren't as enchanting and romanticized as vinyl.

[1] http://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/MusicWatch-Co...

It would be like - in a world where everyone used Uber, public transport etc - 5 old cars outselling 3 new ones.

Vinyl is way more popular than old cars.

What a weird thing to say. The analogy was vinyl : digital :: old cars : new cars. Obviously cars are way more expensive than music, so it doesn't make sense to directly compare their popularity in an absolute sense.

It's pretty clear if you think it through a bit.

You can buy Pet Sounds, a classic album recorded in 1966, on vinyl:

- Distribution: you can buy it from Amazon, the same distribution channel as more modern media

- Price: for $18 (very small premium over digital media in absolute terms)

- Condition: in perfect, newly manufactured condition

- Substitutability: a functionally perfect substitute good for the artifact manufactured in 1966 (even available in original mono!)

- Supply: from a growing supply of records (record company always reissuing classics!)

- Maintenance: with the same maintenance requirements as an LP of a 2019 album

Consider the equivalent for a classic car, say a 1966 Corvette:

I want a 1966 Corvette. "Old Corvettes have a soul that new Corvettes lack, there's just some ineffable quality I prefer, y'know?", yadda yadda yadda

- Distribution: Can I walk into a Chevy dealership and buy a 1966 Corvette? Nope!

- Price: Can I buy a mint condition 1966 Corvette for substantially the same price as a 2019 Corvette? Nope! DDG says perfect 1966 Corvette value would be $82k, 2019 Corvette would be $55k and I suspect the difference would be even greater tbh. $30k+ price difference!

- Condition: Can I buy a newly manufactured 1966 Corvette at all? Nope!

- Substitutability: the 1966 Corvette is substantially different from the 2019 Corvette

- Supply: the number of well-maintained 1966 Corvettes is constrained. They aren't making any more!

- Maintenance: Entirely different beasts. No common parts.

So if I want a conversation piece in my living room, I can buy a $100 record player and spend $8 more for the LP

Well sure, if you’re just getting vinyl as conspicuous consumption, it’s a bad investment. I recommend against that. There are perfectly rational material reasons to prefer vinyl that don’t involve a midlife crisis or greenhouse gases. Anyone who spends $55k on a car clearly has very different values than most people.

There's a lot of albums that aren't mastered correctly for digital. They end up clipping outside the dynamic range because they're too loud. Vinyl doesn't really clip in the same way. And this isn't an old phenomenon, it's getting worse in fact.

You can see some of that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Additionally, bands will typically get better margins on vinyl (although that's starting to disappear).

I'm sure there were early cases of bad audio engineers introducting digital clipping during the digital mastering process.

You mention that "it's getting worse", but it's unlikely that you'd be able to find a release mastered/remastered with noticable digital clipping within the last decade.

As one example of how basic a concern this is for digital mastering, Apple's "Apple Digital Masters" (formerly "Mastered for iTunes") program strictly limits it, recommendeds testing for the existence of clipping both pre- and post-encode, and provides tools (afclip, AURoundTripAAC Audio Unit) for helping to do that.

Generally, "loudness wars" refers primarily to dynamic range compression, which can easily destroy a track (in the musical sense) even if there is zero clipping.

AFAIC, dynamic range compression is very nearly as bad as clipping. It just curves out the signal so you don't go straight off of a cliff, but you're still trying to fit 10 lbs of potatoes into a 5 pound bag.

You don't understand it then especially with modern 24 bit and up sampling available in flacs and other standards. clipping is almost always going to be worse than dynamic compression except under the worst edge case conditions in 16 bit and above (standard CD limit)

I'm literally a engineer who does DSP, so yeah I do understand it.

24-bit doesn't tend to matter, because somewhere in the mastering pipeline will inevitably be 16-bit nine times out of ten.

And the compression they use in 16-bit to try and have their cake and eat it too has more noticeable than the issues with vinyl IMO. Yes, there's technically plenty of room in there for the signal without compression or clipping, but like I showed above there's systemic reasons why they don't use the bandwidth effectively.

I think it's a mix of aesthetics, nostalgia, and some elements of the experience. Vinyl albums have big. often interesting art. Browsing a collection of vinyl has an element of serendipity as well, who knows what you may and on. Additionally, the listening experience is different because it's hard to skip around, songs bleed into one another.

It's a case of worse is better.

I think it's mostly nostalgia because if you listen to music a lot in album form you'll ruin them, if you have kids you'll ruin them, if you have friends you'll ruin them, if they're near a window you'll ruin them, your record player can ruin them, an earthquake can ruin them. This is a music format with moving, degrading parts.

I think LPs are bad for our environment compared to digital. I don't need tens of kilograms of plastic to enjoy music even if I would enjoy the process more than digital music players.

I don't need tens of kilograms of plastic to enjoy music

What brand of computer, MP3 player, or phone are you using that isn't made of plastic and filled with minerals that come from strip mines and processed with chemicals like cyanide?

You're totally right that there's a massive environmental cost either way.

Digitally the price per song of is offset by the sheer number of albums you can have. I have 1,926 albums and I can overwrite them with new artists on the same storage and I can add 10x more to the same storage. Or I can reuse the storage for something else. This versatility is called "re-use" and it's a pillar of environmental sustainability.

If it wasn't a malleable plastic, and I've read of metals being used, then perhaps it would be different. But even then density and permanence and shipping still make it incredibly inefficient to distribute data in this fashion - an LP only holds about 200 - 300 megabytes of write-once data.

The marginal negative environmental externality of one more digital song is very low. That of a record is essentially constant.

Make a record and the environmental damage is done.

Steaming music continues environmental damage for as long as the server is on.

There's a ritual involved in playback. The format is conducive to browsing a collection like a library. They're easy to trade.

Most (new) physical records I buy come with a download code to get high quality drm-free recordings. It's like getting the physical book and the e-reader copy.

We are reaching a point where digital delivery is objectively the best way to consume music. It maximizes each of quality, price, convenience and availability. No physical media, including CDs, can compare.

There is only one thing digital delivery can't do: satisfy the collector's itch. There's no rarity or difficulty. You can't keep it on a shelf and take pride in your collection. You can't trade or barter. You can't get it signed by the band or buy it at a show. You can't browse it in a shop. You can't pass it on to your children. There's no romanticism about it, and it doesn't engage any other senses.

It turns out however, that vinyl is great at all those things. It seems evident that its resurgence is because everyone who wants to collect music is consolidating on vinyl as a format, while those who just want to listen to music stick with streaming services. It's highlighting the fact that music consumption is actually highly bimodal, and delivering a product optimized for each modality.

I always see the degradation argument.

I look after my vinyl with a properly calibrated turntable.

I will degrade faster than my records!

I have few vinyls that are from late 70's and it keeps playing like the first time. And I don't have a great turntable.

Unless you have one of those laser ones then that is physically impossible as there is always wear with each play, even if it is just a minute amount because there is always friction and degradation of the vinyl over time

I like to collect vinyl for a few reasons. I like having a physical copy, it supports the bands I love, and it comes with the digital copy.

There's a lot to be said about the imperfections in vinyl playback combined with the analog output.

I find that I crave that sound. It's subtle changes, often the mastering is a little different, but most of it is just how the vinyl is flawed. Each play is special, like you hear it that time that way, never again.

Some People are starting to grow sick of the all digital access off the post-iTunes MP3 era, now the streaming era. The physical connection to the album is lost - and if you’re a music nerd, and want to have a physical connection to the music, Vinyl is a superior format. Often the artwork is much larger, intricate, and gatefolds are beautiful, not to mention limited color releases and picture discs. It’s something you can frame or display on a shelf, and feels more vintage than a CD. Rarely would I say people listen to them as much as collect and display them.

This 2013 article explores it

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/29-does-vinyl-really-sound-be...

It’s a pain in the ass to change the music so it’s easier to focus on it. Just my perspective.

Vinyls are better objects to handle: they are bigger, they have better artworks and usually richer booklet. To play vinyl is like a beautiful ritual, full of little gestures.

It's not about technology, of course, it's about fun. Like analog photography.

I wonder at some point if film cameras will outsell digital ones

I don't think so. One of the big drivers of vinyl is the collectible aspect of it.

if we mean stand alone cameras then I could see it happening at some point as phone cameras get better and better.

Go smoke some weed and drop the needle down onto Dark Side of the Moon. You’ll understand.

Truth

Have a good friend to share the experience with?

Recommended.

People like it.

And that's the only reason that really matters.

This is also true for books. Although books are actually more fidelic to the author's work unlike vinyl and actually do have a higher quality, comparing text resolutions

Hipsterism

The quality isn't necessarily worse. Vinyl is analogue, and so good quality vinyl has a different sound to the same audio played from a CD. That isn't to say that all vinyl is better, just that the best vinyl is better than the best CD recordings.

Worse is a subjective assessment, but it is necessarily lower fidelity.

No it's not. If there's a digital recording of a band and you can either listen to that exact set of bits encoded losslessly, for example from a flac file from a cheap usb key, Vs whatever the hell happens when you convert those bits into analogue and press them into some plastic with demonstrably worse track separation, distortion, and which physically degrades during each play even in optimal circumstances and where slightly moving the little box doing the playback can cause permanent damage to the vinyl then clearly the choice isn't based on sound quality.

It depends what the digital recording is mastered for, really.

I dunno about that...I've recorded some of my acoustic guitar playing, and some electronic pieces. Some mastering exists which would make the recordings sound better than a 100% unaltered digital playback?

If you're playing in a noisy environment like a car then some dynamic range compression will make it sound better.

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