Vinyl sales continue to rise in UK despite coronavirus crisis

By Tom Skinner

 

CREDIT: Getty

 

Vinyl sales have continued to rise in the UK despite the coronavirus crisis causing significant problems for other areas of the music industry.

 

According to the Official Charts Company, last month’s Record Store Day – the first of three socially distanced events scheduled for 2020 – resulted in a 3% rise in vinyl sales, with 2.7 million units sold so far this year.

 

The new figures come from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), who manage Record Store Day in the UK.

 

This continuing rise comes in spite of UK music retailers and record shops being forced to close their doors in March until June as a result of the national lockdown. During the intervening period, however, many stores set up delivery services or a click-and-collect option in a bid to survive.

 

Full Story: https://www.nme.com/news/music/vinyl-sales-continue-to-rise-in-uk-despite-coronavirus-crisis-2758893

I still have some scritchy scratchy vinyl up in the attic maybe  time to sell ? 

Why anyone wants their music on an old format with wow & flutter, scratches, groove noise, and which degredates each time you play it, impossible to play in the car, and inferior sound quality to say flac, I do not know.

13 hours ago, stouricks said:

Why anyone wants their music on an old format with wow & flutter, scratches, groove noise, and which degredates each time you play it, impossible to play in the car, and inferior sound quality to say flac, I do not know.

Has to be the covers. 12" square albums were works of art (or something like art....).

I had a triple album "Lotus" by Santana, live in Japan and quadraphonic. The inserts, etc were a bit over the top as only Japanese could do (see photo). CDs can't come close.

Or maybe people in lockdown think getting up to flip records is at least some form of exercise...

Yeah, I had all the kit to try to minimize "dust as music" problems with vinyl: record vac, diskwasher, etc etc.

1 minute ago, Emdog said:

Has to be the covers. 12" square albums were works of art (or something like art....).

I had a triple album "Lotus" by Santana, live in Japan and quadraphonic. The inserts, etc were a bit over the top as only Japanese could do (see photo). CDs can't come close.

Or maybe people in lockdown think getting up to flip records is at least some form of exercise...

Yeah, I had all the kit to try to minimize "dust as music" problems with vinyl: record vac, diskwasher, etc etc.

You could use flacs or CDs, and Google the original covers to look at on your 4K screen.   LOL

1 hour ago, stouricks said:

You could use flacs or CDs, and Google the original covers to look at on your 4K screen.   LOL

As an “all digital” guy myself, my SACDs sound better than my Tidal Hi-Fi (flac) which sounds better than my CDs.  Most of it depends on the mastering.  My gear is relatively high end and have had equipment from Bryston, Electocompaniet, Hegel (for amplification) B&W, Vandersteen, PMC (for loudspeakers).  Have also listened to much higher end systems than mine on various occasions.

 

That being said...all my digital didn’t come close close to the “holographic” presentation I heard when a friend played some MoFi pressings (of some music I already had) when played on his high end vinyl/tube setup.  I’m still all digital because to reach that level of vinyl is not only super expensive (US$100k+ system), but the tweaking and relentless search for the best pressings is just too much of a PITA imho.

Edited September 24, 20205 yr by Airalee

15 hours ago, stouricks said:

Why anyone wants their music on an old format with wow & flutter, scratches, groove noise, and which degredates each time you play it, impossible to play in the car, and inferior sound quality to say flac, I do not know.

If you don’t know why you never will, obviously not a music junkie. There’s many an artist that will only have 200/500 copies made. For those with a more discerning taste in music than the mainstream garbage.

43 minutes ago, Wavel said:

If you don’t know why you never will, obviously not a music junkie. There’s many an artist that will only have 200/500 copies made. For those with a more discerning taste in music than the mainstream garbage.

Hey, you cannot call someone a music JUNKIE, according to the many Hendrix fans on another thread.

I am a very discerning music listener having played various instuments professionally for over 50 years.

I much prefer digital versions of older albums, as there is better quality, sonic detail and no needle noise, and very difficult to damage or wear out.

You say there are many artists only have 200/500 copies made. That's probably all they will sell.   LOL 555

1 hour ago, Airalee said:

As an “all digital” guy myself, my SACDs sound better than my Tidal Hi-Fi (flac) which sounds better than my CDs.  Most of it depends on the mastering.  My gear is relatively high end and have had equipment from Bryston, Electocompaniet, Hegel (for amplification) B&W, Vandersteen, PMC (for loudspeakers).  Have also listened to much higher end systems than mine on various occasions.

 

That being said...all my digital didn’t come close close to the “holographic” presentation I heard when a friend played some MoFi pressings (of some music I already had) when played on his high end vinyl/tube setup.  I’m still all digital because to reach that level of vinyl is not only super expensive (US$100k+ system), but the tweaking and relentless search for the best pressings is just too much of a PITA imho.

You seem to know what you are talking about, so please explain why a mint, virgin pressing of a vinyl LP is recorded via very hi-end, high resolution AD converters and dogs-<deleted> turntable & stylus, into say a wav should it not sound EXACTLY the same.

I do remember seeing a video of a meeting organised by some top audio/ music company, and played the same pieces of music as vinyl, wav, flac & mp3, asking the audience which they preferred. mp3 won!   Cheers.

1 hour ago, stouricks said:

You seem to know what you are talking about, so please explain why a mint, virgin pressing of a vinyl LP is recorded via very hi-end, high resolution AD converters and dogs-<deleted> turntable & stylus, into say a wav should it not sound EXACTLY the same.

I do remember seeing a video of a meeting organised by some top audio/ music company, and played the same pieces of music as vinyl, wav, flac & mp3, asking the audience which they preferred. mp3 won!   Cheers.

In the competition, the lowest fidelity possibly won because the original master recording might not have been very good, therefore, the higher resolution mediums brought out all the flaws.  GIGO.

 

With regards time a cd or other digital medium not sounding the same as analog is, from what my ubernerd friend told me (masters in some kind of o-chem and engineering from Berkeley and Stanford just to clarify his level of nerdness) that the analogue recording produces the full sound wave.  I can only imagine how good the original reel to reel master recordings would sound on serious audiophile quality machines.
 

When he explained this kind of stuff in detail, it was so far over my head that I would have to ask him to dumb it down and pretend he was explaining it to a 5th grader.  Unfortunately, he was not able to do this.  The one song that really blew me away was when he played Sympathy For The Devil.  I don’t know which pressing it was (the vinyl geeks will know the best between US, UK etc pressings and which years) but the hearing the sound of the maracas, it was as if I could hear the beads roll around in such a 3 dimensional sense it was uncanny.

 

Granted, I do feel that some newer stuff would probably sound better with an SACD as many of the sounds are digitally made so the dynamic range of an LP won’t capture the extended highs.  For example, Beck’s “Sea Change”...considered to be a reference quality recording for SACD...probably wouldn’t come close to sounding as good on vinyl.  But for most of the stuff he played for me, it was freaking incredible.
 

For myself, I wish that SACD had caught on more than it did.  When I do an A/B of Tidal (set at the highest resolution) and SACD for Roxy Musics “Avalon” (another so called “reference recording”) There is no contest...the SACD blows it away.

 

Now...back to the original article...I’m willing to bet that 99% of the people buying LPs now are doing it because it’s “retro” and aren’t buying the $100 rare as hens teeth pressings nor playing them on high end rigs either.

On 9/24/2020 at 8:20 AM, stouricks said:

You could use flacs or CDs, and Google the original covers to look at on your 4K screen.   LOL

What are "flacs"? I don't have 4K eyesight anymore, so save money with plain old 1080 res TV. I'm also old school in that I like to hold things, take up floor space with things like this. Prefer paper books over kindle. Real women over porn videos. A dying breed... and glad to go ????

1 hour ago, Emdog said:

What are "flacs"? I don't have 4K eyesight anymore, so save money with plain old 1080 res TV. I'm also old school in that I like to hold things, take up floor space with things like this. Prefer paper books over kindle. Real women over porn videos. A dying breed... and glad to go ????

Free Lossless Audio Codec. It is a way of compressing an audio wav file without losing any quality as in an mp3. I agree with all your preferences, but not always practical.

Vinyl sucks.  Snap, crackle and pop.  Though I still love the sleeve artwork and tactile experience.

 

CDs suck.  They deteriorate with age.  My CDs date back to 1983 and many are now unplayable.  Maybe something to do with this climate.  The reflective backing breaks up.  And those stupid boxes!

 

MP3s were laughably poor in a back to back comparison with CD.

 

I will look into FLAC.  Thank you for mentioning it.

On 9/24/2020 at 1:09 PM, Airalee said:

In the competition, the lowest fidelity possibly won because the original master recording might not have been very good, therefore, the higher resolution mediums brought out all the flaws.

You cannot add something to the original master recording if it wasn't there in the first place.

Did you take a hearing frequency test? No good having gear going up to and above 20kHz if your ears only go up to 11 (as mine do) ! I have blown my Paradigm tweeters trying to hear more treble.

 

4 hours ago, stouricks said:

You cannot add something to the original master recording if it wasn't there in the first place.

Did you take a hearing frequency test? No good having gear going up to and above 20kHz if your ears only go up to 11 (as mine do) ! I have blown my Paradigm tweeters trying to hear more treble.

 

I never said anything was added to the original master recording.  I’m just saying that not every master recording is a good one.  The low-res medium will hide the flaws better than a high-res medium.  Regardless...the most important component is your room.  Not really sure what your argument is here.

10 minutes ago, Airalee said:

I never said anything was added to the original master recording.  I’m just saying that not every master recording is a good one.  The low-res medium will hide the flaws better than a high-res medium.  Regardless...the most important component is your room.  Not really sure what your argument is here.

Headphones do not take the room into account.

I cannot understand how say mp3s will 'hide' flaws in an original recording.

14 minutes ago, stouricks said:

Headphones do not take the room into account.

I cannot understand how say mp3s will 'hide' flaws in an original recording.

I usually don’t use headphones but just tried 3 different online frequency hearing tests with a pair of NAD headphones.  Each test, however accurate they may be has me around 16khz.

 

If you can’t understand how low res mediums and low end stereo systems can hide flaws in a recording then good for you.  You’ll end up spending much less money on a system that makes you happy.

2 minutes ago, Airalee said:

I usually don’t use headphones but just tried 3 different online frequency hearing tests with a pair of NAD headphones.  Each test, however accurate they may be has me around 16khz.

 

If you can’t understand how low res mediums and low end stereo systems can hide flaws in a recording then good for you.  You’ll end up spending much less money on a system that makes you happy.

My system of a Soundblaster ZXR card, Arcam Alpha 8R amp and Paradigm 20S speakers have been keeping me very happy for many years, so a new one is out of the question. After over 45 years as a performing musician my hearing is down to 11kHz, but it is the actual musical content which gives me most pleasure. I will not say which I do like though. Cheers. 

On 9/26/2020 at 10:14 AM, In the jungle said:

Vinyl sucks.  Snap, crackle and pop.  Though I still love the sleeve artwork and tactile experience.

 

CDs suck.  They deteriorate with age.  My CDs date back to 1983 and many are now unplayable.  Maybe something to do with this climate.  The reflective backing breaks up.  And those stupid boxes!

 

MP3s were laughably poor in a back to back comparison with CD.

 

I will look into FLAC.  Thank you for mentioning it.

Amen to deterioration. Sorry you've got that too.... used to be called "laser rot" (happened to a laser I got in Japan of Kate Bush at Hammersmith). Only one I can recall from living in USA.... here, fairly regular.

I've noticed it is more prevalent among CDs I play (or played) more often. Oh, some DVD's too (Beatles "Love" for Cirque got the rot in 5.1 audio DVD, but not in accompanying CD...). I wonder if the spinning heats up a disc enough to encourage microbes (or whatever it is) that loves to put holes aluminum (or aluminium) sandwich.