Death of the music industry?

[Kumapix 0]

http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html

 

awesome article

[spook 0]

yup, very good well thought out article.

thanks for the link

[Hokkaidough 4]

Whoah nice read.

 

Got to sympathise with people who suddenly face huge threats to their livelihood.....

[rach 1]

That was really interesting actually. Thanks.

[rach 1]

"They see that Gwen Stefani's latest musical turd sold millions...."

 

[frannyo 2]

Interesting

 

Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin

 

As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl -- the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles -- is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.

 

Talk to almost anyone in the music business' vital indie and DJ scenes and you'll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.

 

"I'm hearing from labels and distributors that vinyl is way up," said Ian Connelly, client relations manager of independent distributor alliance IODA, in an e-mail interview. "And not just the boutique, limited-edition colored vinyl that Jesu/Isis-style fans are hot for right now."

 

Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today's music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.

 

"For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release," said Matador's Patrick Amory. "The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music."

 

Because these music fans also listen using portable players and computers, Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Amory called the coupon program "hugely popular."

 

Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs.

 

Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.

 

Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary.

 

"The digital world will never get there," said Chris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the country's largest record pressing plant.

 

Golden-eared audiophiles have long testified to vinyl's warmer, richer sound. And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand.

 

Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he's not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: "new albums, reissues, majors and indies ... jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock."

 

Turntables are hot again as well. Insound, an online music retailer that recently began selling USB turntables alongside vinyl, can't keep them in stock, according to the company's director, Patrick McNamara.

 

And on Oct. 17, Amazon.com launched a vinyl-only section stocked with a growing collection of titles and several models of record players.

 

Big labels still aren't buying the vinyl comeback, but it wouldn't be the first time the industry failed to identify a new trend in the music biz.

 

"Our numbers, at least, don't really point to a resurgence," said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America's director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.

 

But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don't really know what they're talking about. The RIAA's numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don't include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay -- arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.

 

Vinyl's popularity has been underreported before.

 

"The Consumer Electronics Association said that only 100,000 turntables were sold in 2004. Numark alone sold more than that to pro DJs that year," said Chris Roman, product manager for Numark.

 

And the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD.

 

San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files.

 

"Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound," said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. "The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder."

[gerard 6]

 Originally Posted By: frannyo

Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin .....

--I'd call that 'irony' for sure, but it seems to make sense.

Some hiphopish/'alternative' songs have a scratchy vinyl sound in the background imitating a record. I wonder how they do that.... --weather they just add a sample track to get that effect, or whether they actually press the completed track onto a record and then digitize it from there. The latter would give a much more authentic vinyl sound. Either way, those types of songs never actually sound like a record when they're played in digital format.
Anyway, I still can't see vinyl being any more than a niche market. I've got heaps of vinyl stored (improperly) in a basement in Canada but I don't think I'll be buying a turntable anytime soon.

[Oyuki kigan 0]

My favorite record label, G7 Welcoming Committee records, has recently stopped selling CDs, DVDs, and records. All their current and future releases are now digital.

 

their reason?

 

"Like the stupid dodo bird and the idiotic long-horned bison, we happily announce the systematic extermination of the landfill-filling, toxic chemical-creating, warehouse shelf-sitting G7 CD. That’s right, in recognition of our 10th anniversary, we are officially phasing out the compact disc as a medium for delivering our exclusive brand of extraordinarily ordinary music to the masses (all 50 of you).

 

This includes the entirety of our current catalogue of shiny plastic discs, which will be placed in a giant pile in the middle of Albert Street 1 year from now (on April 4th 2008) and burned in a funeral pyre. Or, if that proves environmentally questionable, we’ll put the entire inventory - along with concomitant CD reproduction rights - up on eBay.

 

All future G7 releases will be available via remote viewing, cave paintings, and I suppose via high-quality digital downloads if neither of the first two are convenient."

[tripitaka 0]

The pops and cracks that you hear are likely to come from vinyl. Naturally, it will be a sample from a record. In the manner you describe, I doubt you will get a more authentic sound that is audible to human ear.

[gerard 6]

 Originally Posted By: tripitaka

In the manner you describe, I doubt you will get a more authentic sound that is audible to human ear.

Really? I'd have thought that you could copy the vinyl sound fairly closely by digitizing information from a turntable using professional equipment. Adding in a scratchy sampled track to the rest of your digital tracks on the other hand might be good for effect, but I don't think it makes it sound like the music is being played on a record.