Why A Visit To The Record Store Isn't What It Used To Be
- May 4th, 2009
- 3 Comments
Today’s Youth Advisory Board post is from Michael Hayball, a college student/vinyl fan who hasn’t been stopping by the record store lately. I’ll let Michael explain why. Remember, you can communicate directly with any member of the Ypulse Youth Advisory Board by emailing them at youthadvisoryboard at ypulse.com…or just leave a comment.
Why A Visit To The Record Stores Isn’t What It Used To Be
Vinyl for recently released albums just costs too much nowadays. Even though I can walk into my local record store (big ups to Dearborn Music) and go through mountains of cheap old records, when I want to buy the latest Animal Collective album, it’s $25! Twenty five dollars for something that is half that price in CD format!
I can’t understand why records cost more than their CD counterparts. I mean, I get that there are production costs for the actual record/CDs, but why is it that they can’t lower the price to something that a normal person can afford? Right now, vinyl is limited to collectors and indie kids willing to spend extra for the street cred, but if the record is twice as expensive as a CD how can record stores ever expect to pull in the public?
Some might say that record stores are becoming irrelevant in today’s society because of the quickly rocketing popularity of digital downloads, and that there is no real reason for someone who only listens to the most popular bands to go into a record store. But then even popular artists are putting their albums out on vinyl. Kanye West put out 808’s and Heartbreak on vinyl, and Coldplay, an even more mainstream artist, put out Viva La Vida on vinyl a few months after the album launched. So, why is that?
The appeal of the vinyl versions comes with what’s included with the record. The obvious bonus to owning a vinyl version is the album art. I considered buying Viva La Vida on vinyl just to have the Eugène Delacroix painting on its cover hanging on my wall. Also, most records now come with either a copy of the cd or a code to download the album digitally, so that’s also a big bonus to buy the vinyl copy.
And it seems I’m not alone in my thinking. In 2008, 1.88 million vinyl albums were sold. That’s approximately 1.88 million more than people would have thought would be sold a few years ago. And when I went to my record store for Record Store Day a few weeks ago, the place was packed! Call me optimistic, but by the next decade, I expect vinyl to gain back much of the popularity it enjoyed before the cassette. That is, if the price is right.
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About Michael
Michael lives a simple life in Allen Park, MI. When he is not attending Henry Ford Community College for his Associates, he can be seen chatting and socializing around campus and the local coffee shop. He enjoys a good iced caramel cappuccino, or a regular coca-cola. Michael loves what he calls “The Blog Music,” and he was and still is raised on a steady diet of electronic music and old-school hip hop. Michael hopes to work for Spin magazine one day, and screams like a little girl every time a new issue comes to the local coffee shop.
Nice story.. I will tell you why.. GREED. Some see this as a way to make an extra buck, I think this did that already with the cd. Maybe we would not be in this mess if they would have lowered the prices in the 1st place. It’s cool but let’s not rip people off.
It’s easy to accuse the companies of greed in this case, but I think that more likely reason is simple economics.
At the moment it is MUCH cheaper to produce a CD than to produce an LP. Factories which used to produce LPs have long since been decommissioned and so the pressing capacity is less than it used to be. Economies of scale are not now applicable to LP production, whereas the are still applicable to Cd production.
The is the mirror image of the situation at the end of the fist vinyl era and the beginning of the CD era. In 1985/6,when CDs were still an exotic item, we heard the EXACT same complaint, just the other way around. “Why are CDs so expensive? Why would a person buy a CD at $15.00 when they can get the record for $9.00?” I well remember having the same answer for a person complaining to me over the record counter of the record store, “economies of scale”.
Of course, there is one small difference, the mean price has crept up a little ;=)
Forgot to say, LPs pressed today sound *way* better than they did in 1987… It is, after all, a boutique item now. If you want the price of an LP to fall these days, you’ll have to accept worse-sounding LPs on cheaper vinyl.