Comments on: Sugar Water: How I Messed Up Everything for Everybody

By: Sugar Water: Print, Profits, and “The Paper” | Popdose

Sugar Water: Print, Profits, and “The Paper” | Popdose — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:42:52 +0000

[...] record (even though I don’t own a record player), whether it’s my wish to hold on to my cassettes and CDs in the age of MP3s and iPods or how I like my legless SWF doms to be real, not virtual, but [...]

By: Sugar Water: Sorry Seems to Be the Easiest Word Once You’ve Run Out of All Other Options | Popdose

Mon, 12 May 2008 06:19:18 +0000

[...] once those jackals from the media start cross-referencing my various police reports? I admitted last week that Iâ€™m the serial killer who murdered 3,100 record stores over the past five years, but there [...]

By: rwcass

rwcass — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:42:53 +0000

I love the tangible product myself, but for people under 25, where are they buying their record players so they can listen to their new records? It seems like they'd have much easier access to CD players, like in their cars or on their computers. That's why I'm saying records might be a hip new collectible for a certain age group. You can only listen to them at home, really, and sitting down to listen to a record is hard to do in the age of multitasking. Or maybe it's just that I have trouble finding time to sit down and listen to CDs all the way through.

By: MarlboroTestMonkey7

MarlboroTestMonkey7 — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:30:56 +0000

I think there's a need for some “cred” for the younger music lover, given -as the article states- such a overabundance of sources, a tangible and dated format is a way to say, yes, i love this song and i prefer having it this way than lost somewhere on a hard drive.

Fetish? Definitive Maybe.

By: rwcass

rwcass — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:42:53 +0000

By: MarlboroTestMonkey7

MarlboroTestMonkey7 — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:30:56 +0000

Fetish? Definitive Maybe.

By: jack

jack — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:02:14 +0000

I can see how vinyl could be of interest to the "under-25s." The artwork is big, their parents probably have piles of them sitting around, and since their parents grew up entrenched in the rock n' roll era, they probably have records from bands that are either still recording today, or are the typical bands all teens discover when they start exploring for themselves (Beatles, Zeppelin, Doors, Stones, etc.). Vinyl has an appeal the same way classic sitcoms do. It's not like preferring an old b&w TV to a plasma. The appeal of vinyl transcends technology issues.

And compared to a used CD going for anything between $5 and $10 for anything popular, it's possible to pick up records at a buck or two each. That's how I got interested in vinyl. I'm 35, so I'm firmly in the cassette generation. I never bought a new record as a teen, and CDs first started getting popular when I started college, so vinyl still had a strange "days gone by" appeal I didn't experience the vinyl era was nearly extinct. But for me it was because when CDs first came out they were almost $20 each, while the same release was available as a used record for $2. The aural attributes weren't so much a factor.

The 15% rise in vinyl sales (which I assume refers to sales of new releases on vinyl) is likely attributed to older buyers getting nostalgic for the old ways. They're older, have more disposable income, and can afford the vinyl (which seems to cost a bit more than the CD format, I suppose due to being produced in much smaller numbers).

By: rwcass

rwcass — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:00:15 +0000

But how did vinyl for the under-25 set become popular? Is it just a hip fetish for them?

By: jack

jack — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:32:37 +0000

I suspect it's a little optimistic to assume CDs will still be produced in 20 years. What the music companies want, pray for, is the newest technology–whatever it happens to be–that will spur people into rebuying everything they already own (again), like they did with CDs in the “high on the hog, music executives wiping themselves with $100 bills” days of the 1990s.

Take a look at how generally crappy the music selection is at Wal-Mart. They have the latest top 20 hits, and a slim sampling of past hits from the '60s, '70s, and '80s… about what you'd get from the average ClearChannel radio station now. And that's the selection of the largest retailer of music in America!

A recent Rolling Stone article said 7 of 10 people under age 16 did not buy a single CD in the last 6 months. CDs have become the technology of adults.