#15

Yeah, I suppose that’s fair enough, I can see why they are so sought after and I understand why people want to collect them and the like. I have a few first pressings and I kinda have a mindset like “yasss, this is cool!” but at the end of the day I still play them, I buy records to listen to them. So I don’t really mind whether I have a first press (still cool) or repress, so long as I have the music. Totally not saying anything against people who keep em sealed, it’s just a different thing really isn’t it? Collecting vs listening. Like having rare stamps but not sending mail with them.

#16

Yeah, I guess I can see the difference there. A fair point.

#17

yeah, a lot of it is that I’ve not really wanted to listen to it. I like the album and all, but am seldom in the mood for it.

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#18

Way of the world, I suppose, but does leave a nasty taste in the mouth. Recordstore Day is ridiculous, people queuing at 6am to then get home and put their gains on eBay at seven times the price…
As for concert tickets, don’t get me started…

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#19

That’s why I collect music but don’t Collect it. Also why I prefer CDs as they’re so rarely subject to this fetishistic bullshit.

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#20

Almost hand in hand with vinyl becoming fashionable again, it’s become a collectable commodity just like beanie babies etc. I mean there has always been a market for collectible records, but it’s getting more prevalent. A lot of it is also driven by people who collect historically collectible things like prints for films now picking up all these soundtracks being issued by companies like Death Waltz and Mondo (who started with posters). The interesting thing for me is this. I see a lot of people searching for records on these forums not specifying music they want…but the actual medium. Just ‘records’ seemingly. So they aren’t after the music, so much as the product.

But yeah RSD is bizarre. It’s now a way to buy a £30 quid ‘limited’ reissue of a record from the 80s on spunk coloured vinyl that you can buy an original press for £1 down the road in Oxfam.

#21

Presumably the people playing 10x price are also getting it because its collectible rather than to listen it as well - nobody’s that desperate for the warmth of vinyl

#22

By ‘these’ forums I mean the print collectors. Not here, in case it’s not clear.

#23

Yep. Pretty much

Standard practice a lot of the time is a limited coloured sparkly variant followed by a black for the plebs.

#24

always find this a bit weird. i’ve never been the type of person to care about owning a rare valuable record, but i people who are more into proper ‘Collecting’ than me.

that was another point i meant to mention in the CDs thread, how another one of the common vinyl over CDs arguments people make is how vinyl holds its value and CDs tend to become pretty valueless - which is true but that’s not something i tend to think about i guess.

#25

Oh the one time I bought something with the immediate intention of selling it was when I found Levitate by The Fall in one of my local record shops for £12 when it normally gets insane prices on ebay. Was sure it was too good to be true though so had a google when I got home and turns out there’s been a spate of ‘fakes’, essentially an unauthorised repress from Germany with a couple of telltale signs on the label. Looks and sounds perfect though so was more than happy to keep it for myself. For £12 especially - a few people were fooled into paying loads for it online.

#26

controversial opinion:

vinyl is a commodity

#27

I buy it for the packaging and then put it on my shelf and listen to it on spotify. It helps reduce my guilt of killing the music industry :frowning:

I used to listen to the things, until I upgraded my set up in a way that rendered my record player obsolete, also digital sounds better.

#28

You’re a cold, cold blooded man.

(I do the same mostly, although we are listening to a long lived record for the first time at the atm)

#29

this has to be a joke. is this a joke?

#30

As someone who trusts his own ears and science I’ll say I’m very serious, vinyl sound “better” because the bass response is inaccurate in a way that makes it sound “warmer” but at the expense of detail. Also the high ends don’t shine as much, simply because vinyl has a much lower frequency response than digital. The whole vinyl sound better philosophy has its origins from old digital masters which sounded awful as people had no idea how to master for digital formats and people were obsessed with making everything sound as loud as possible as they now could.

A good digital source will beat vinyl everytime

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#31

i’ve always thought of the CD/digital version of a song as being how the song actually sounds in reality and the vinyl as being a bit of a distorted version of it - admittedly i’ve never had a really good record player so mine always sound a bit shit.

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#32

Yeah admittedly I’ve never had a great record player, but the fact you need to consider so much to get the ideal listening experience with vinyl it’s just easier to buy a good dac/amp and play from a digital source… cheaper too!

#33

Unlike gigs, which tend to unavoidably be a scarce resource as well as deeply affected by repeat plays (e.g. They might be able to play many more shows but it would drain them so the shows would change), there is no reason a record should be scarce, unless the popularity of the band is in question.

So this is already ethically dubious from the moment it arrived. You can hear the music digitally anyway and since playing a record also degrades it, most people won’t play them that much.

#34

Would be admirable if you sent on the profits to the original artist I suppose.

This kind of thing annoys me if I miss out - used to be the same with gig tickets - but that doesn’t happen much nowadays.

Even on Record Shop Day (sorry, I refuse to use the words “vinyl” or “store”) the things I want are usually still there at the end. I remember making a point of being early to get the Smugglers Way flexi-discs plus mags release from Domino about 5 years ago but could have just gone right at the end as there were plenty left. All the Arctic Monkeys etc. stuff had gone in two minutes and was available on e-bay with cunt tax added on.

Ultra-limited releases aren’t helping anyone though - One Up in Aberdeen still closed as, sadly, being full one day a year was not enough.