i don't buy that many LPs any more, but i've already bought a shit load of 7"s this year. me likes my pop punk singles.

I wasn't sure where to post this but this seems like a good enough place. I'm wonder if people have rules or guidelines on when they buy vinyl vs cds or mp3 downloads. I finally got my turntable hooked up late last year and have been on a big vinyl buying kick. I think I've probably bought close to 150 lps this year vs 2 cds. Its mostly been stuff that either was very cheap or never issued on cd or is out of print/hard to find/expensive on cd. I'm still a little torn on portability/storage on lp vs cd/mp3 when both are available. I lean lp when its cheaper or when its an old album issued from analog masters and appears to be in good shape and is close to the same price. Storage is eventually going to become an issue though and while my listening habits have changed so that portability is less of an issue than it used to be, its still an issue. Also, there's the whole issue Neil Young recently raised about new vinyl recorded from digital masters not sounding better than cds. So for new recordings, is there any real reason to pay more for the vinyl? How do you guys decide what format you want?

I really don't buy much music, period, anymore with Spotify. What I do buy is all on vinyl, but it's paltry. All day at work, it's spotify. At home, it's streaming KEXP.

CDs have lost a lot of value for me over the past few years, partly I guess because I have way too many, and partly because their perceived value everywhere has gone down. I'm under the impression that most cars won't be coming with CD players anymore before long. That said, there doesn't really seem to be a good portable non-streaming digital music option right now as the iPod classic is dead, and there doesn't seem to be a reasonable equivalent on the market. I still have my 160 GB classic, but I know it's days are probably numbered. iPod touches hold very little for how much they cost, and from what I've seen of the new Sony Walkmen, they're way overpriced.

So anyway, I've been buying digital the most, then vinyl, then CDs. I have really mixed feelings about vinyl, largely because of what you mentioned about the sound quality of most new vinyl not actually being very good. Even when they're mastered right from analog, a lot of the domestic pressing plants seem to do some pretty shoddy work. And the price of new vinyl has gone way up over the past 10 years. It used to be cheaper than CDs to get a new album on vinyl from one of the major indie labels like Sub Pop, Domino, etc., but now they are typically way more expensive. Somehow it's also been decided that there should never be more than 15 minutes of music per side so a typical 45-minute album gets pressed on two pieces of vinyl. The last Flying Lotus album was a double LP, and it's only 38 minutes long.

Sometimes vinyl is really reasonable, though, and then it's a no-brainer. The self-titled Viet Cong album was like $15 on white vinyl. Anytime a new album that I want is under $18 on vinyl, I will typically grab it, but I guess that there aren't that many new things I feel like I need to own a physical copy of anymore. Nowadays I'll download most everything (paid usually, through emusic, Bandcamp, Amazon, or occasionally iTunes), and after I've had a chance to really digest it and decide what I like most, I'll start getting my favorites from a given year on vinyl if I can find them for a reasonable price. It's rare that I'll buy something on vinyl when it comes out before I've had a chance to listen to it first for a while.

And I've gotten pretty averse to buying reissues of older albums that can still be gotten in decent condition for not too much money on eBay or a used record bin. A lot of the reissues seem to be made from digital masters.

NEW Vinyl over CD purchase:

1 - When you can't get it on CD.

2 - When it has songs exclusive to the format (or as more often is the case, comes with a bonus 7")

3 - When it comes with a free digital download. This is especially tempting to me when it's a pre-order, and you can get the songs NOW, and then the record ships to you later in the future.

There definitely seems to be a cash grab in the industry right now. There's new vinyl at my local FYE for cryin' out loud. One of my vinyl-loving friends on facebook is usually up in arms because somebody is reissuing the Ghostbusters soundtrack or something just to sell to hipster douches he doesn't want to be associated with,

Also there's stuff like this that would aggravate anyone:

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/hot-stampers/

i've been selling them for beer money so i hope so

and two guns is making beer to sell it for LP money.

the cirrrcle of liiiiiiiiife!

I did really well at a HUGE record fair in London today, didn't buy anything for a change
but took a hefty wad which will keep me in more vinyl for a while,



my stall attracts the usual deviants




the best thing I saw however was this Kraftwerk debut on the spiral Vertigo label, (mine is only the spaceship re-issue)
but whats so unusual about this - and I have never seen another in over 35 years of record collecting is that official Vertigo £3 sticker!!
so what you say, it's only a sticker! but I took this pic as I was so shocked to see it, walked over to a mate to tell him about it,
we walked back to the stall a while later and the guy said, "oh sorry mate, it's gone"
it was £400

I've bought a ton of vinyl the past two years. Don't really care the condition or if it's an OG or a reissue because, at this point, the only way I'm listening to music at home at all is on my turntable.

If vinyl is more than 50% over the cd cost, I will always choose the cd. Or I buy cds if I'm on foot all day and have to carry it. Otherwise, vinyl. No hard rule.

if you're thinking of selling your cd's, sell them to second spin online. they give way more than any other place i've found and will refund some of the postage it costs to mail them and send anything back they won't accept for free.

good tip, thanks Shiv

I only buy vinyl or mp3, haven't bought a CD in a long time (unless it was an LP where they threw in the CD as part of the deal). Agree that new records are way too expensive and thus, don't buy as many as I would like to. It sucks because I've made a conscious effort NOT to steal as much music, but am faced with this price wall on an actual physical piece of music. (I do find digital downloads to be priced right for the most part)

I'm actually kind of cheap about downloads, I guess because I try to pay for everything I listen to in some form, and I want to listen to a lot of stuff. I virtually never pay the full iTunes price of $9.99, for instance, and I certainly won't pay more. For whatever arbitrary reason, I feel like $7 is a fair price for an album download, but I generally try to get stuff for $5 or less.

Every band that sells digital copies of their albums on Bandcamp for $5 is doing it right, in my opinion. It's hard to assign a dollar value to something like a digital download, I'm sure, and trying to bring in the question of how much an album is "really worth" is kinda problematic, I think. I'd be interested to know whether bands selling their albums for $10+ digitally really make more than bands that sell them for $5-$7 because I would think the lower price would entice more people to pay rather than to stream for free or "steal". There are obviously different schools of thought on this, and I'm sure somebody somewhere has or has tried to collect some data on it.

Oh no, you are totally right: I am a million times more likely to buy a 7.99 download than a 9.99 one, and Amazon seems to have them on sale all the time so its not a hard thing, really.

Collecting data on illicit activity is always tough.

I guess I meant collecting data on $5 album sales versus $10 ones, or more specially how much a band gets from selling their album for $5 on Bandcamp versus $9.99 on iTunes. Not just whether a band gets a larger chunk of each individual sale, but whether they can actually sell more on Bandcamp due to the lower price while also getting a higher percentage of the sale price.

There probably is data, though I'm sure there's a bunch of other factors that will skew it beyond use. Some bands just naturally have a demographic of young cheapskates, and other artists probably have older, non-tech savvy fans who will go with the flow and be like "Oh, this is how it's done these days? I guess I'll pay 10 bucks for this." and it wouldn't cross their minds to look for a cheaper/illegal downloads.

Yeah, it has gotten to the point that the last time that I decided to pair back my collection for storage reasons and just knowing that I would never listen to a bunch of stuff again, I threw a bunch of cds in the trash rather than even trying to trade them in for credit anywhere. I bought a refurbished 160 GB classic right after Apple announced they were discontinuing them. I paid essentially the old full price for a new one for a refurbished one and it gave me nothing but trouble, finally crapping out completely for me about six weeks ago. I mostly used it for podcasts anyway. I still will almost always opt for physical product over mp3s. Besides not having anything to listen to them on at the moment (without burning to disc), its just too easy for me to forget about or not give enough spins to something I don't have in physical form.

That said, I'm still torn about how much more is fair to pay for new vinyl over cd when the source tapes are digital masters. The resale price is something I hadn't considered. A few extra dollars is a no brainer still but when it gets above $5 more even with free downloads included, I'm not sure whether its really worth it and most of what I've seen is:

Mp3 download: $10
CD: $12
Vinyl w/ free download: $20

I still somewhat want the vinyl but suspect its not really worth it. Its not a big deal obviously on a single purchase but since I'm presumably going to have to make this decision over and over again, I'm struggling with what to do.

That is it, totally. And I often settle it by saving the album on Spotify and moving on.

Damn. Guess I won't be getting a refurbished one whenever mine craps out.

Mine was bought new, and I've had it a few years with no problems. It's not a great iPod, though. Even like the 5th Gen Nano (last one with a click wheel) has a better interface. The way you can't just shuffle within a playlist without setting your whole iPod to shuffle is really dumb. Also really dumb that it will play music with nothing plugged into the output jack, but it won't play through the internal speakers. The only sound that seems to come through those is from the clicker. So if you accidentally hit play with no headphones or anything plugged in, it'll just play right through your library silently, eating battery power.

I mostly buy CDs still. Only will buy vinyl if super cheap, like at a thrift store. Definitely do not want to pay the prices for new vinyl. In general I prefer CD if not simply just for the size and convenience. I am a lazy person and do not enjoy having to flip a record to hear the second half. And they just take up so much damn room.

That said, I don't buy as many CDs as I used to. I listen to rdio at work all day so between that and downloads (illegal) or youtube or something, there isn't really any reason to "blind buy" an album just based upon what you have read or heard, or even whether you like that artist. I don't give anyone benefit of the doubt anymore. I still have the compulsion to own something physical if I like an album, though, and my preferred format for that fix is still CD

I sold most of my CDs this past summer, keeping only my jazz collection and some, select rare ones I listed on Discogs. Got about $1400 for the lot at Reckless. Then, this January, a leak in my storage locker ruined about 100 of those jazz CDs and all of the rare ones. I actually wasn't as pissed off about it as I thought. My emotional connection to them wasn't strong anymore. I mean, they were in boxes for almost 8 years. If anything, it reinforced my vinyl addiction.

I've never bought a digital album, movie, book, anything.

My default is to buy vinyl. The turntable is on top of the cabinet and it's easier for me to pop on a record than anything else, just the way things are set up and a choice that if I wanted to be different would be easily changeable. I really prefer to have my music and computer separate as much as possible. Very little that comes out new isn't available on vinyl these days and frankly, the occasional thing that's not I will download and burn over buying the CD. Seems like it's pretty rare nowadays for a vinyl record to not come with a download of some sort and it's not all that unusual for them to come with a CD version slipped inside. Still by a good amount of used vinyl, which can be a cheap way to build a collection as far as common titles go. I sold off my few remaining CDS a few years back and I've not really missed them at all. Just never got the same sentimental attachment to them I had with records.

I do think selling them all off cheap was probably a bad idea. With everything being converted to digital downloads, CD collecting will probably eventually come around to being a big deal. After all, CDs were basically the last physical form a music you could by where there was an honest effort to make the sound as good as possible (digital vs analog arguments aside). From there, you go to streaming and MP3s, which are both obviously lesser mediums as far as sound quality. I really think that one of these days, you're going to see people paying big bucks for original CD issues of things like you do vinly today. You'd probably be well served to stock up as everyone dumps those collections these days. I'm still sticking with vinyl though, where prices will fall through the floor as the older generations die off. Actually having a truck load of lumber delivered Saturday to get started building new shelves for all of it as I've outgrown the wall of Ikea I've been using for the last 4-5 years. Should end up with around 160 linear feet of shelf space which should leave me with room to grow.

This is my problem with the whole vinyl revival. It keeps pushing the prices up, especially on some of those reissues. I'm not picky about sticking with original pressings or anything, but when they're reissuing things on $25 or $30 for single LPs when you can still get originals for $10 or under, it's just ridiculous. And I'm with you on trying to not steal music. But really, while it will annoys me at times, the limiting factor does make it possible to actually listen more to individual albums and get more into them, which I really enjoy. Just grabbing anything and everything, especially when you can get it free online, kind of takes that experience of really digging individual records away. So far this year I've stuck to a hard rule that I never buy more than 2 records at once, space out my buying a bit and generally try to stick with one at a time. I find I actually enjoy listening more that way. Just have to stop caring if you miss this or that and enjoy what you do come across. If anything is really all that special, you'll eventually hear about it over the next couple years as the cream rises to the top.