Vinyl coming soon to a Best Buy near you?

[keaggy220]

The article is not specifically about classical music so I wasn't sure where to post it. Would you buy vinyl if it became available at your preferred music retailer?

Retailers giving vinyl records another spin

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- It was a fortuitous typo for the Fred Meyer retail chain.

This spring, an employee intending to order a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.'s latest release "Accelerate" inadvertently entered the "LP" code instead. Soon boxes of the big, vinyl discs showed up at several stores.

Some sent them back. But a handful put them on the shelves, and 20 LPs sold the first day.

The Portland-based company, owned by The Kroger Co., realized the error might not be so bad after all. Fred Meyer is now testing vinyl sales at 60 of its stores in Oregon, Washington and Alaska. The company says, based on the response so far, it plans to roll out vinyl in July in all its stores that sell music.

Other mainstream retailers are giving vinyl a spin too. Best Buy is testing sales at some stores. And online music giant Amazon.com, which has sold vinyl for most of the 13 years it has been in business online, created a special vinyl-only section last fall.

The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer is The Beatles album "Abbey Road." But musicians from the White Stripes and the Foo Fighters to Metallica and Pink Floyd are selling well, the company says.

"It's not just a nostalgia thing," said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer. "The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound."

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they lost some ground to digital formats.

The resurgence of vinyl centers on a long-standing debate over analog versus digital sound. Digital recordings capture samples of sound and place them very close together as a complete package that sounds nearly identical to continuous sound to many people.

Analog recordings on most LPs are continuous, which produces a truer sound -- though, paradoxically, some new LP releases are being recorded and mixed digitally but delivered analog.

Some purists also argue that the compression required to allow loudness in some digital formats weakens the quality as well.

But it's not just about the sound. Audiophiles say they also want the format's overall experience -- the sensory experience of putting the needle on the record, the feeling of side A and side B and the joy of lingering over the liner notes.

"I think music products should be more than just music," said Isaac Hudson, a 28-year-old vinyl fan standing outside one of Portland's larger independent music stores.

The interest seems to be catching on. Turntable sales are picking up, and the few remaining record pressers say business is booming.

But the LP isn't going to muscle out CDs or iPod soon.

Nearly 450 million CDs were sold last year, versus just under 1 million LPs, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Based on the first three months of this year, Nielsen says vinyl album sales could reach 1.6 million in 2008.

"I don't think vinyl is for everyone; it's for the die-hard music consumer," said Jay Millar, director of marketing at United Record Pressing, a Nashville based company that is the nation's largest record pressing plant.

Many major artists -- Elvis Costello, the Raconteurs and others -- are issuing LPs and encouraging fans to check out their albums on vinyl. On Amazon.com, one of the best-selling LPs is Madonna's latest album, "Hard Candy".

Some artists package vinyl and digital versions of their music together, including offers for free digital downloads along with the record.

"We've definitely had some talks with the major retailers about exclusives on the manufacturing end," Millar said of United Record Pressing, which focuses primarily on independent recordings.

An avid music fan himself, Millar says he has moved to vinyl in recent years.

"Once I got my first iPod ... I'm looking at my wall of CDs and trying to justify it," Millar said. "The things I like -- the artwork, the liner notes, the sound quality -- it dawns on me, those are things I like better on vinyl." He welcomed back the pops and clicks, even some of the scratches.

"I like that fact that it's imperfect in a lot of ways, live music is imperfect too," Millar said.

Independent music stores, which have been the primary source of LPs in recent years, say many fans never left the medium.

"People have been buying vinyl all along," said Cathy Hagen, manager at 2nd Avenue Records in Portland. "There was a fairly good supply from independent labels on vinyl all these years. As far as a resurgence, the major labels are just pressing more now."

In this game, big retailers aren't necessarily competing head to head with independent sellers' regular clientele of nostalgic baby boomers, independent label fans and turntable DJs.

"I cannot see that Best Buy or Fred Meyer would order the same things we would," Hagen said. "They aren't going to be ordering the reggae, funk, punk or industrial music."

[Seán]

Would you buy vinyl if it became available at your preferred music retailer?

An emphatic, yes!

[Ralph]

An emphatic NO!

[Lance]

With a huge collection of vinyl at my fingertips, it is a rare occasion, indeed, for me to pickup up anything on vinyl these days. I've made the switch to CD and there I stay. I don't expect to dump the LPs any time soon, but won't expand it unless there is no CD counterpart. The sound quality of CDs, no pops and clicks, and ease of tracking (especially for radio work) is outstanding. Yes, I may need to get a magnifying glass on occasion to read notes, but even that's rare. I think the CD has been perfected just like the LP was greatly perfected when it met its demise with the new technology.

[TopoGigio]

Long Live to LP !!!

[Chalkperson]

What's Vinyl...

[AntonioA]

I still buy lp:s. But some new pressings of old recordings are probably made from digitally remastered tapes, so I avoid them.

[dirkronk]

Depends.

If the vinyl in question included higher grade reissues--such as Speaker's Corner--and priced at the same cost or a slight discount to internet vendors (to balance sales tax against shipping), then a most definite yes.

If it included vinyl issues of digitally-recorded performances that were also issued on CD, that depends. For orchestral or instrumental classical, probably not. For vocal classical, or for rock, pop and jazz, maybe. Reason: I've heard vinyl issues of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Norah Jones, Bruce Springsteen, the Dixie Chicks and a few other artists that quite literally put the corresponding CDs to shame, in terms of warmth, spatial coherence and even vocal timbre. Since I'm not talking about analog recordings here but digital ones that SHOULD show equal or lesser qualities in a non-digital medium, I have no logical explanation for why, you understand, only an observation that the vinyl exhibit superior sonics...and this is corroborated by at least three other listening buddies, only one of whom typically has an analog-vs.-digital ax to grind. Still, those examples tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Thus, I'd want to audition the vinyl before purchase, on good equipment, and the likelihood of THAT happening is slim, indeed. Especially at Best Buy. So...

My 2 cents.

Dirk

[Seán]

What's Vinyl...

You are obvi- viously too young to know Oh dear

[Chalkperson]

Hardly Sean, I remember 78's and my first 45 was a copy of 'All My Loving' by the Beatles in 1964 (I was Nine), a German Import (even then I was a Collector)...I had at least 4,000 LP's but they got Lost in a Flood...

[Seán]

in 1964 (I was Nine), a German Import (even then I was a Collector)...I had at least 4,000 LP's but they got Lost in a Flood...

Chalkie, you are only a couple of years older than me.