The Americana and roots music authority
a digital realist rethinks the future for vinyl
Since this site became active over a year ago, I recognize that I'm somewhat of a lone wolf when it comes to my feelings about listening to music digitally. Oh, there's quite a few of you who embrace the mp3 and can see the cloud technology coming at us on the horizon, but for the most part we have many readers and posters saying that they won't let anyone pry their dead cold fingers off of their CD collection, or will only listen to 180 gram Japanese-pressed vinyl. And there's still one or two of you who romanticize the mini-disc and one inch tape any chance you get.
For me, I've finished uploading most of the old stuff. The new stuff that lands on my desk gratis from bands and label folk who are kind enough to keep me on their mailing lists immediately gets digitized. Downloads are purchased from Amazon, iTunes or CD Baby based on whoever offers the best price at the moment. And I've discovered many websites that offer free and legal music downloads...artists, label samplers, live archives, public domain, the aforementioned Amazon and more.
As far as sound quality goes: I grew up listening to broadcasts from WSM, WWVA, WMCA, WABC and CKLW late at night on a plastic Remco crystal radio kit I built, and the headphones were made out of cardboard. When I got older it was a transistor radio with a one and a half inch speaker. I saw and heard the Beatles, Stones, Rascals, Spoonful and every other sixties artist on Ed Sullivan through my parent's Dumont entertainment center with the teak finish. My old '62 Dodge had only AM radio and when I replaced it with an English Ford Cortina, I laid out the dough for an 8-track player. I skipped getting cassettes until a deck was thrown in for free with that new '86 Toyota and I didn't own a compact disc player until '91 when my boss at Capitol Records gave it to me as a gift because I was the only guy in the office without one and it embarrassed him. (Hey Vyto...did I ever thank you?)
The point being: I'm not a dog. I don't have ultra-super-fine hearing where I need to have the biggest, the best or the greatest. People complain that digital music is cold. That it's compressed. That it takes off the highs and messes with the lows. That it's not natural sounding and you can't touch it, stare at the cover or read the liner notes. (As if I had the time to do those last two things.) "Digital files can be lost!" they scream with fear...as if having multiple backups in safe places doesn't exist or that whatever is acquired can't be replaced. It can. Almost everything is out there in digital-land.
So to be clear, I like the sound of music that the iPod and laptop deliver. For me, it sounds great coming through my Shure Sound Isolating Earphones when I walk the dog or make it to the gym, or the Klipsch dock that I picked up at Costco which sits right here on my desk plugged into the laptop. I have lost interest in ownership of physical goods, and I spend more time listening to music now then I have since I ran a record store back in the early eighties. And while I know digital doesn't work for many of you here, it does for me.
Did you know that iTunes is now America's number one music store? Amazon (physical and digital combined) is tied for number two with Wal Mart (which I now boycott thanks to a "Grant rant". See dude...you do make a difference). Add in all the illegal downloads and file sharing (Spain reports that 96% of ALL downloads there are done illegally to give you an idea of scope) and what you got is a digital tidal wave. So although here in our little No Depression World y'all like your plastic, it's coming to a close eventually.
Or so I thought....because here is where we get to my new thought about vinyl. Finally.
Sort of. I need to meander for a moment.
I had 16s and 78s when I was a kid. I collected 45s starting when Elvis left for Germany. My first LP was a Ray Charles budget release with only one vocal and a bunch of piano solos. In '72 I had over a thousand albums and within eight years the collection was well over 15,000 . Twenty years later I sold off most of it so we could have a down payment for our first house and now all I have left are maybe three or four hundred titles of what might be considered "rare and collectible". They've been in my office closet along with a huge dusty unused sound system I received many years ago as part of a severance package.
My oldest boy has been hounding me for over a year to let him listen to my albums and I kept bobbing and weaving. Don't know why I felt so reticent but I kept putting him off. Last week he asked again and I looked over and said..."Why don't we take that sound system of mine apart and put it up in your room? And while we're at it, if you do the heavy lifting you can move the albums up too." And so he's been sitting up in his bedroom listening and enjoying and it's all cool with me.
Last Sunday we drove down to Venice for lunch, spent an afternoon at Amoeba Records in Hollywood and planned a night at the Grand Old Echo (which I had to unfortunately skip because this bronchitis thing is kicking my ass). For those who have never been to Amoeba, it is the world's largest record store and a force unto it's own. In addition to having the most titles you've ever seen under one roof, they have a huge, knowledgeable and approachable staff, great live performances, charity events, a clientele that runs the gamut from tourist to celebrity and I have never ever seen so many customers in one place. Ever. Even back in the heydays of record stores. I'll guess that there were roughly 500 or more shoppers there. There were fourteen cashiers on duty and the line stretched from the front to the back most of the time. It's simply amazing, and keep in mind this was a holiday weekend.
It's been a few months since we last visited and as we strolled in I immediately noticed there have been a few changes. When they opened years ago, the vinyl selection was small but over time it's slowly been taking up more and more space. Now it's been expanded, alphabetized, genre-ized and imports and new releases have been aggressively added in to the mix. They merchandise it along with the compact discs and people both young and old are browsing and buying.
Hmmm....despite that vinyl sales have steadily been increasing these past few years and last year sales exceeded 2,000,000 units of new product, I have often made fun of the claim that “vinyl's back!” because in the overall sales metric, it's just a drop in the bucket. But for what it's worth, I'm now thinking that there's something happening here that I didn't quite see.
The kid came in specifically looking for a limited 500 unit pressing from Canadian post-rock unit Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Just as he reached the section, three other kids came along and pulled all of the records out from under his nose. For the next hour he kept an eye on those boys and finally it paid off, as one returned it to the bin and my guy grabbed it. He paid $14.99 and considers it more than just an album. The cover is simple but handcrafted. Inside there are little slips of artwork that are unique and unusual, as well as liner notes. He views it as artwork as well as just music. You wouldn't get it in a download or a stream, and if it was a CD it would have lacked a certain visual that only an album cover can convey. So yeah...I get it.
A few weeks ago Mick Jagger made an interesting comment about the music business to Billboard Magazine (I think that's the source). To paraphrase, he noted that in the sixty or seventy years of the post-WW2 recording industry, artists have only had a relatively small window of about twenty years where they actually derived income from record sales. In the beginning they were just plain ripped off. Eventually they were victims of recoup-able advances and outrageous charges posted against their accounts. And finally as they started to see some income...the world started believing that music was either free for the taking or worth no more than $9.99 per CD. So sales slowed down, the record stores closed up and if you want to earn (barely) a living in music, the only chance you get is performing live and selling stuff from the merch table. And the point Mick spoke to was that in a digital environment where it's easy and generally accepted to copy files, an artist should no longer expect to make a buck from their recordings, and he's at peace with that notion. (Of course, he can afford not to be outraged at this point.)
While there is only one Amoeba (well three actually, but I specifically mean the big one in Hollywood)
and the concept wouldn't necessarily fly in Peoria, I am now thinking that there could indeed be a “back to nature” movement. Small indie record stores selling unique artist-made vinyl albums that will compliment what will no doubt be an almost all-digital landscape in the coming future. Artists selling them at shows and through their websites. And it won't be driven by sound quality per se, but the creative packaging and the feeling one gets in having an opportunity for ownership and connection. It's already happening to some extent (see Paul's Marah post) and I can see the growth chart.
It's a concept I lost sight of but it's coming back into focus.
For me, I've finished uploading most of the old stuff. The new stuff that lands on my desk gratis from bands and label folk who are kind enough to keep me on their mailing lists immediately gets digitized. Downloads are purchased from Amazon, iTunes or CD Baby based on whoever offers the best price at the moment. And I've discovered many websites that offer free and legal music downloads...artists, label samplers, live archives, public domain, the aforementioned Amazon and more.
As far as sound quality goes: I grew up listening to broadcasts from WSM, WWVA, WMCA, WABC and CKLW late at night on a plastic Remco crystal radio kit I built, and the headphones were made out of cardboard. When I got older it was a transistor radio with a one and a half inch speaker. I saw and heard the Beatles, Stones, Rascals, Spoonful and every other sixties artist on Ed Sullivan through my parent's Dumont entertainment center with the teak finish. My old '62 Dodge had only AM radio and when I replaced it with an English Ford Cortina, I laid out the dough for an 8-track player. I skipped getting cassettes until a deck was thrown in for free with that new '86 Toyota and I didn't own a compact disc player until '91 when my boss at Capitol Records gave it to me as a gift because I was the only guy in the office without one and it embarrassed him. (Hey Vyto...did I ever thank you?)
The point being: I'm not a dog. I don't have ultra-super-fine hearing where I need to have the biggest, the best or the greatest. People complain that digital music is cold. That it's compressed. That it takes off the highs and messes with the lows. That it's not natural sounding and you can't touch it, stare at the cover or read the liner notes. (As if I had the time to do those last two things.) "Digital files can be lost!" they scream with fear...as if having multiple backups in safe places doesn't exist or that whatever is acquired can't be replaced. It can. Almost everything is out there in digital-land.
So to be clear, I like the sound of music that the iPod and laptop deliver. For me, it sounds great coming through my Shure Sound Isolating Earphones when I walk the dog or make it to the gym, or the Klipsch dock that I picked up at Costco which sits right here on my desk plugged into the laptop. I have lost interest in ownership of physical goods, and I spend more time listening to music now then I have since I ran a record store back in the early eighties. And while I know digital doesn't work for many of you here, it does for me.
Did you know that iTunes is now America's number one music store? Amazon (physical and digital combined) is tied for number two with Wal Mart (which I now boycott thanks to a "Grant rant". See dude...you do make a difference). Add in all the illegal downloads and file sharing (Spain reports that 96% of ALL downloads there are done illegally to give you an idea of scope) and what you got is a digital tidal wave. So although here in our little No Depression World y'all like your plastic, it's coming to a close eventually.
Or so I thought....because here is where we get to my new thought about vinyl. Finally.
Sort of. I need to meander for a moment.
I had 16s and 78s when I was a kid. I collected 45s starting when Elvis left for Germany. My first LP was a Ray Charles budget release with only one vocal and a bunch of piano solos. In '72 I had over a thousand albums and within eight years the collection was well over 15,000 . Twenty years later I sold off most of it so we could have a down payment for our first house and now all I have left are maybe three or four hundred titles of what might be considered "rare and collectible". They've been in my office closet along with a huge dusty unused sound system I received many years ago as part of a severance package.
My oldest boy has been hounding me for over a year to let him listen to my albums and I kept bobbing and weaving. Don't know why I felt so reticent but I kept putting him off. Last week he asked again and I looked over and said..."Why don't we take that sound system of mine apart and put it up in your room? And while we're at it, if you do the heavy lifting you can move the albums up too." And so he's been sitting up in his bedroom listening and enjoying and it's all cool with me.
Last Sunday we drove down to Venice for lunch, spent an afternoon at Amoeba Records in Hollywood and planned a night at the Grand Old Echo (which I had to unfortunately skip because this bronchitis thing is kicking my ass). For those who have never been to Amoeba, it is the world's largest record store and a force unto it's own. In addition to having the most titles you've ever seen under one roof, they have a huge, knowledgeable and approachable staff, great live performances, charity events, a clientele that runs the gamut from tourist to celebrity and I have never ever seen so many customers in one place. Ever. Even back in the heydays of record stores. I'll guess that there were roughly 500 or more shoppers there. There were fourteen cashiers on duty and the line stretched from the front to the back most of the time. It's simply amazing, and keep in mind this was a holiday weekend.
It's been a few months since we last visited and as we strolled in I immediately noticed there have been a few changes. When they opened years ago, the vinyl selection was small but over time it's slowly been taking up more and more space. Now it's been expanded, alphabetized, genre-ized and imports and new releases have been aggressively added in to the mix. They merchandise it along with the compact discs and people both young and old are browsing and buying.
Hmmm....despite that vinyl sales have steadily been increasing these past few years and last year sales exceeded 2,000,000 units of new product, I have often made fun of the claim that “vinyl's back!” because in the overall sales metric, it's just a drop in the bucket. But for what it's worth, I'm now thinking that there's something happening here that I didn't quite see.
The kid came in specifically looking for a limited 500 unit pressing from Canadian post-rock unit Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Just as he reached the section, three other kids came along and pulled all of the records out from under his nose. For the next hour he kept an eye on those boys and finally it paid off, as one returned it to the bin and my guy grabbed it. He paid $14.99 and considers it more than just an album. The cover is simple but handcrafted. Inside there are little slips of artwork that are unique and unusual, as well as liner notes. He views it as artwork as well as just music. You wouldn't get it in a download or a stream, and if it was a CD it would have lacked a certain visual that only an album cover can convey. So yeah...I get it.
A few weeks ago Mick Jagger made an interesting comment about the music business to Billboard Magazine (I think that's the source). To paraphrase, he noted that in the sixty or seventy years of the post-WW2 recording industry, artists have only had a relatively small window of about twenty years where they actually derived income from record sales. In the beginning they were just plain ripped off. Eventually they were victims of recoup-able advances and outrageous charges posted against their accounts. And finally as they started to see some income...the world started believing that music was either free for the taking or worth no more than $9.99 per CD. So sales slowed down, the record stores closed up and if you want to earn (barely) a living in music, the only chance you get is performing live and selling stuff from the merch table. And the point Mick spoke to was that in a digital environment where it's easy and generally accepted to copy files, an artist should no longer expect to make a buck from their recordings, and he's at peace with that notion. (Of course, he can afford not to be outraged at this point.)
While there is only one Amoeba (well three actually, but I specifically mean the big one in Hollywood)
and the concept wouldn't necessarily fly in Peoria, I am now thinking that there could indeed be a “back to nature” movement. Small indie record stores selling unique artist-made vinyl albums that will compliment what will no doubt be an almost all-digital landscape in the coming future. Artists selling them at shows and through their websites. And it won't be driven by sound quality per se, but the creative packaging and the feeling one gets in having an opportunity for ownership and connection. It's already happening to some extent (see Paul's Marah post) and I can see the growth chart.
It's a concept I lost sight of but it's coming back into focus.
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Comment by Stina on June 3, 2010 at 3:08pm -
Drool (at the idea of your record collection and the Amoeba store)... lots and lots of drool. I was on the tail end of records and the beginning of cassettes myself. I had my own record player and my own small pile of records. My cousin brought a cassette over and I started to listen to them as well as more of the radio. Somehow, someway I tapered off from records. Thankfully after cassettes came the CD of which I own around 300. I kept my vinyl and throughout the years have added to my collection mostly just because I liked the picture or the artist. Last fall I awoke to the fact that vinyl was coming back through the new music I'd come to love that year (Ryan Adams, Whiskeytown, Jayhawks, Gram Parsons, etc. etc.). I ruthlessly went through my collection and kept only that which I knew I'd want to listen to. Anything with scratches went immediately. I actually want to do another run through so that only what I actually want will be kept. I was a Grease fan as a kid but seriously how many Olivia Newton John records does any one person need to own? One should do it - make it a greatest hits. Anyways - to get back on track - I've been purchasing records alot lately - including Ryan Adams, Hank Williams III, Jayhawks, U2, etc. It's funny because the reason I didn't like cassettes and records in the first place was that it was tricky to find the song you wanted and they damged easily. Records most especially. The only damage I've ever incurred to my CDs was to crack the cases. Lately though, it seems as though CDs are being made more fragile or players more delicate. More CDs have been skipping then in the past 15 years or so that I've had them. That brings me to digital. Have never liked it unless it was free. Then all the laws kicked in as did all the viruses - I got hit twice with viruses and had to re do my computer. Now I am download free unless it's itunes (spent $10 in random songs in the past two weeks.) Digital storage is less bulky and has less chance of being destroyed. Still... I like to have that little booklet in my hands. I like looking at the lyrics, pictures, etc. Now... if only they'd get rid of the cardboard cases - I hate them.
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Comment by Adam Sheets on June 3, 2010 at 7:43pm -
Great post. And look for my post on my latest vinyl find sometime in the next few hours.
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Comment by Jim Moulton on June 4, 2010 at 1:56am -
I don't own a computer and like you I am fortunate to get lots of great stuff in the mail, Cassettes were my favorite, I still have real nice tape deck to record Cassettes from CDS and also to play the cassette in my car. I am keeping more CDs now that they have figured out how to make them sound better by mastering.
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Comment by Kenny C on June 4, 2010 at 10:38am -
I love .mp3’s due to the flexibility and quality of the format. I can plug my .mp3 player into all my cars or stereos.. I have speakers set up in the garage for multi-hour projects. Biking, Beach, yard work, etc. etc. I have not listened to the radio in 5 years (except for traffic & news)
I use free tools to manage my collection.
Audiograbber to rip CD’s into 320 VBR mp3 format
CDBurnerXP to burn CD’s into traditional format (.cda) or mp3 format which provides me with, on average, 112 of my favorite songs
Foobar2000 player – very nice thin customizable application (you can use it without any configuration)
Every song I listen to I really like.. not half like..
I still own LP’s and love them .. I have a working Onkyo turntable, traditional receiver/amplifier attached to my 1973 Acoustic Research (AR2) speakers in my den.
My fear is losing the cartridge & belt.. I assume you can easily buy replacements? Any recommendations on sites for replacement parts?
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Comment by Jack on June 4, 2010 at 1:59pm -
Great post. I've probably 1000+ LP's and about as many CD's and am feeling the gravitational pull of electronically stored music; too convenient to ignore, entirely anyway. I don't need an extreme high end system either to enjoy music; my 15 year old Denon stuff suits me just fine. But I do recall when CD's first came out that some suffered by comparison with vinyl. I remembering buying Cosmo's Factory by CCR on CD because Ramble Tamble is one of the coolest songs they ever did and I thought it'd sound incredible on CD; it sounded harsh, almost unlistenable. That was a big surprise. I also had Joe Jackson's Big World double album on vinyl - recorded digitally - and it sounded wonderful. I bought the CD thinking it'd be an improvement over what was already excellent on vinyl. It was marginally better, not enough to matter to me. Another surprise. Back in the day, you could buy what I think were called "remastered" records on high quality vinyl and they sounded much better than standard vinyl. I till have a few of those and they compare very favorably with CD's. A few years ago, my wife and son bought me a Crosley turntable/CD player/vinyl to CD burner; nothing fancy, just modern guts in a retro looking cabinet with a hinged top. I get as much enjoyment out of playing vinyl on that with its half assed little speakers as I do from listening to my stereo set up. There's just something about vinyl that keeps drawing me back. I'm 50, clearly its a generational thing, but for kids today to be looking at old school vinyl says there's something inherently cool about how vinyl sounds and how that sound compares to CD's and MP3's, not to mention the allure of the artwork and overall look of a vinyl LP.
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Comment by hyperbolium.com on June 5, 2010 at 10:41am -
When you say "The new stuff that lands on my desk gratis from bands and label folk who are kind enough to keep me on their mailing lists immediately gets digitized," do you really mean encoded (as in ripped from CD to MP3), or are you getting analog vinyl recordings and digitizing them?
I think that most of the complaints about MP3s are about the specific parameters chosen for encoding commercially vended MP3s (such from iTunes and Amazon), not about the MP3 format itself. With a good encoder (such as LAME) and well-selected encoding parameters (e.g., these), you can create MP3s that most people couldn't distinguish from the original CD source, even on the best stereo system.
The archival problems of digital are not completely solved by multiple off-site backups. Everything's not out there on the Internet - many archival reissues only stay in print for a short time, for example. Worse, digital media appear to decay much more quickly than vinyl or tape, and the aural artifacts of this decay are much more disturbing. The legacy of digital-only master recordings isn't very clear.
I've converted my rare vinyl to digital for convenience in listening, with multiple off-site copies of the digital transcriptions for safety. But I still keep the vinyl as the archival master.
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Comment by Easy Ed on June 5, 2010 at 5:01pm -
Yes... I mean encoded and uploaded from CD to iTunes at just 256kbs. After I give it a listen and if I decide it's a keeper, I'll sometimes delete and bring it back at a higher level. And sometimes not...it depends on how motivated I get. I will read through the info you forwarded., so thanks for sharing.
Regarding things "being out there" digitally, it never ceases to amaze me that I anything I search for is available somewhere, sometime, someplace. It's not an absolute, but it's pretty good and seems to get better.
Regarding the decay factor, I'm clueless. But let's just say this...I still have quite a bit of vinyl that I bought 40-45 years ago that has been taken care and plays just fine. There are still a couple thousand CDs sitting behind me on the shelves...dusty...but still here. I'm 58 and frankly I think the music will surely outlast me.
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Comment by Kyla Fairchild on June 7, 2010 at 6:48pm -
I see a future consisting of streamed music from the cloud via subscription service and vinyl or even just art elements that fans can buy, essentially artfully produced liner notes without the cd. I predict that CDs and MP3's will be nothing but a blip in the history of recorded music.
I digress, but how about band/artist trading cards? I've been thinking the kids today who were raised with Pokemon cards would eat that up. Bands could sell them for $2 or $3 each or $5 for an autographed card. (Collect all 4! Trade with your friends!) It would give flat-stock poster artists a new venue to showcase their talents as well.
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Comment by Easy Ed on June 7, 2010 at 9:20pm
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Well let me go into the closet and pull out my set of Beatle's trading cards that I got in 1964. Still have 'em. But that's a great example of thinking out of the box Kyla in the new world. By the way, last week was the worst sales week in the history of CD sales as long as Soundscan has been around to keep the count. So "blip in the history" might be accurate.
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Comment by Adam Sheets on June 7, 2010 at 9:23pm
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I have some trading cards from the '80s with people like Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Idol, and Heart.
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