I know we have been here before on here, and I’ve been moaning for years about RSD and its creation of overpriced releases, but this article makes the case better than I can. A friend used to run a small indie record shop and he hated the whole thing – he was not allowed to sell beyond a certain price and had to watch buyers hoovering stuff to put it on eBay, so it did very little for his turnover and led to disgruntled regulars.
This also makes the case for all of this driving up prices generally, even in chazzas ….oh, and No Parlez gets a mention, so is the author an Afterworder by chance..?
Not much you can add to that really, except that the clever money has always been to do the opposite of what the industry pushes at you.
Buying CDs thirty years ago was expensive. Vinly was cheap.
Buying vinly now is expensive. CDs are cheap.
I bet they’re not selling much Rock ‘n’ Roll on vinlys.
I can’t see too many beards lumping on Johnny Burnette and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio.
Much better to buy a ropey pressing of Rumours or Hotel California for £30.
I beg to differ on vinyl being cheap 30 years ago.
Prices were increased way beyond the inflation rate, to discourage us from buying it and move us to over to CDs.
As someone who held out as a vinyl buyer, I recall single albums almost doubled in price from around £5 to £10 in about a year.
Yep, the tipping point came in about 1992 (when I finally relented and bought a CD player) when new release vinyl (if it was released/you could find it in a shop) prices overtook the CD.
The record companies were pretty sneaky on new releases. My local indie (Dr. Robert, long gone to the high street in the sky) would get the CD version on the Monday of release, but it would be 2-3 weeks before the vinly version was available.
Record companies also stopped giving anymore than the absolute minimum with vinyl.
The last new vinyl album I bought was Roger McGuinn’s Back From Rio.
There was no insert with production information/lyrics. Just the sleeve, a blank inner sleeve and nothing else. The back of the cover has the track listing and the producer names. Nothing more.
And any more than the absolute minimum of vinyl. Some of my late-80s/early-90s pressings are little more than thick flexi-disks. They’re almost translucent.
Dare I once again invoke the original UK LP of Three Feet High and Rising?
Not that I’m bitter. Thirty years on.
See also: Fear of a Back Planet.
Somehow, I knew we’d end up here. Which reminds me, I read a review of this compiled by Bob Stanley release on Ace Records:
https://www.acerecords.co.uk/the-daisy-age-1
Crikey, Fentonsteve, I briefly half-saw your post, spotted the words “Stanley” and “Ace” in it, and assumed you were writing about Kiss. Yikes!
Weird thing is the yellow vinyl edition of The Daisy age comp from Rough Trade stores was a fiver cheaper than the standard black vinyl edition.
its still 4 quid cheaper
https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/various/the-daisy-age-bob-stanley/lp-plus-x2
Coloured vinyl often sounds worse, though, so I’m going to throw my money at the black stuff.
I wondered if the phrase “Ace Records” would set an alarm bell ringing chez DFB.
Speaking of Ace, has everyone received their £4 copies of Horn Rock?
Whaddya think?
Nah the two brilliant Bob Stanley comps – State Of The Union’ & ‘Three Day Week’ are both on coloured vinyl and sound tip top. As does TDA.
Everything seems to have to be pretty colours these day of course the quality control is same as it ever was – random
@mini
Yes, came last Thurs, but, due to tedious family-related drains on my time, I’ve not yet listened.
David at the cafe was eyeing it up lustily – he’s a massive early hip-hop/sampling fan.
See also Paul’s Boutique. The 1989 vinyl is as light as a feather and about as robust as a paper napkin.
Feel free to invoke it, old telemetacarpal friend.
If I have read it, I have forgotten it.
I didn’t buy anything on RSD this year. I did later buy some RSD releases, but at less than half the original asking price. It comes down to what you think it is worth.
I am happy to pay £15 for a half-speed mastered album on black vinyl, made with care (e.g. Tori Amos, Peter Gabriel). I like vinyl as a thing, and I care about the sound.
I am less inlcined to buy similar at £25-30 because it was mastered at Abbey Road and has an Obi strip and an A4 “certificate of authenticity” inside, knowing it will be £15-20 in three months.
Or for a coloured vinyl pressing which sounds worse than the CD (e.g. Michael Kiwanuka).
“Hey, keeping CD prices artificially high for years was brilliant for the music industry right? Let’s do it with vinyl!”
etc
Over the last couple of months, I’ve spoken separately to a couple of shop owners who reckon RSD is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it pulls in the crowds – many of whom you never see until RSD comes around again – and it provides an uptick in sales across new and second hand stuff.
The economics of it are the curse – you have to pay around seven grand minimum for stock, regardless of what you actually receive – on a sale/no return basis. One chap told me he made approaching ten grand over the weekend and was happy with that but it was still pretty precarious with the danger that you ended up with unsold stuff that became very hard to shift once the fuss had died down. Overall though, both seemed committed to doing it.
Over the past year, I’ve been doing a few more record fairs to move stuff on. At most of them, there are a couple of dealers with boxes of new sealed vinyl at around the tenner mark – probably returned/bankrupt stock but seem to be some recent titles amongst them. As regards the “No Parlez” rule, it’s surprising what sells – what was your “pound box” stock – think Howard Jones/Level 42 – goes for five or six quid with Tracey Chapman’s first album the new “Rumours”, fetching up to £20. Elsewhere, it’s still a mature “got any Floyd?” crowd with a marked absence of the young “I love vinyls” hipster set.
Having said that, there’s been a welcome groundswell of interest in 80s soul – just as well, as I’ve got crates of the stuff.
Check out UK inflation calculator.
http://inflation.iamkate.com/
A record that cost 4.99 pounds in 1980 would retail for 24 pounds in 2018 when inflation is taken into account. Sounds like some records are actually a bargain these days (even RSD releases).
Likewise a CD costing 9.99 pounds (?) in 1989 would now be about the same price (25 quid). Who would pay that for a single CD these days?
CDs were more like £14 in 1989. So more like £35. Crikey.
Also worth noting that in 1980 tens if not hundreds of millions of LPs were sold, presumably with some economy scale in terms of both production and distribution.
Sorry to divert down a side discussion (although, isn’t that the raison-d’etre of the Afterword?) but a couple of vinyl-related side questions occur to me which don’t really warrant their own threads:
(1) What’s the most beautiful piece of vinyl you own? As in, cover art, quality of packaging, heft of the vinyl itself, quality of pressing etc?
—
– For me, I’d say it’s the 2016 reissue of Bert Jansch’s 1979 Avocet album. It’s just a gorgeous little package, with crisp modern (but not “trendy”) artwork to replace the original shoddy packaging. The album deserves a quality release like this.
(I haven’t even seen the 40th anniversary that just came out recently – white vinyl apparently? A bit tacky I say. The 2016 one is perfect as it is).
(2) When, do you think, in rock history, was vinyl at peak quality? In terms of excellence in mastering, pressing, quality of the actual vinyl, etc?
—
– My instinct is to say the period from about 1969 – 1973. I don’t have a scientific basis for concluding this, but it seems to be that just before that (up to about ’68) the mastering and EQ of albums lacked bottom end (due to fears of needles jumping?) and just after that (70s into 80s) vinyl starting getting thinner and didn’t sound as good (the oil crisis and the creeping modernisation of mixing/mastering processes?).
I suppose my benchmark is:
– Beatles’ Abbey Road
– Crosby Stills Nash and Young’s Deja Vu
– Paul Simon’s There Goes Rhymin’ Simon
Three albums which are a joy to play and fair leap off the turntable with power and warmth.
The oil crisis also saw more recycled vinyl being used in album production.
Very laudable, we would say these days, but it apparently did everything I have heard about it, suggests it did nothing for audio quality.
Something that I recall was that the island cheapo imprint with the HELP catalogue numbers, of which I have few, had sturdier vinyl than the full price.
Is it me or has the price of back catalogue cds in HMV jumped up recently?
Not only HMV – I’ve thought this about the dodgers too, but there is usually a second hand option which is loads cheaper and I have picked up some real bargains lately….obviously don’t let on though…
Also worth noting that in 1980 tens if not hundreds of millions of LPs were sold, presumably with some economy scale in terms of both production and distribution.