Goodnight, CDs, Goodnight: the Return of Vinyl

I think it was Hamlet that said "for murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ: the record player."

Perhaps that wasn't the exact quote. But one thing is true: the CD is finally dying its much-awaited death, and it wasn't the MP3 that killed the king: it's the record player. The once antiquated method of listening to music has been making a welcome comeback among both young and old music fans, especially in the indie-music realm. So why now?

Well, vinyl finally figured out a way to fit on your iPod.

Not literally, of course: record companies are wising up, and a majority of albums now come with MP3s, allowing collectors to have that tangible "in-your-hand" feeling of vinyl with the ease of a simple download. Purchase the vinyl, and a card listing a download code is included within. Like the point recording artist Jill Sobule made the other day: we all want to experience the act of flipping through liner notes and viewing the album art, but want to combine this with the ease of a simple download. We want to feel and see the music - not just a click of a button. The vinyl and MP3 marriage satisfies both of these needs: making the idea of a CD pretty pointless along the way.

"It's just nice to sell something that is a collector's item for those people who want to support their favorite bands, but also love their ipods," said Christina Rentz, of Merge Records, a North Carolina-based record label that is home to She & Him, Spoon and my recent interviewee Conor Oberst among others. Merge releases their albums on 180 gram form, which is considered by some to be the best-sounding, heavy-weight vinyl available. Each purchase, naturally, includes the free MP3.

I've always felt somewhat alienated by the ease of the MP3 experience- it satisfies one need (the lure of instant gratification) but not others (the pleasure that comes from unwrapping and devouring all parts of the purchase, and having the ability to collect something concrete). So while vinyl still is a niche market, MP3s are not, and this unique way of merging the old with the new satisfies a gamut of music fans.

While Merge sells its vinyl online here, one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly places to purchase vinyl on the web is Insound: now celebrating its 10th birthday, it's one of the pioneers of the record resurgence (the store also sells music in all formats in addition to band gear, posters and more). Insound created an LP and MP3 program, which means shoppers need not wait to hear their album until the mail comes--the downloads are available immediately at checkout upon purchase of select LP's. The idea was born out of founder/president Matt Wishnow's desire to reintroduce a newer generation of fans to the dying art of the physical music purchase and the act of listening to an album as an entity from start to finish, while respecting their desire to quickly grow their digital catalogs.

"The technology is there to deliver MP3 files immediately with vinyl purchases. However, we are one of a very few places that does it on a large scale. In general, vinyl sales have been growing on our site by almost 5% each month. But I will say that the LP+MP3 titles are selling at a faster rate than normal catalog vinyl," Winshow tells me.

Insound reported recently that their vinyl sales have increased from 20% of overall business one year ago to more than 40% last quarter. Likewise, turntable sales have enjoyed double-digit percentage growth each quarter for the last year. This is in sync with the RIAA's recent findings that vinyl sales revenue from EP and LP records had grown by 46.2 percent from the previous year.

Touch and Go / Quarterstick Records has also taken a similar approach to offering their customers a fully interactive experience: MP3s are available in the download store, in addition to massive, studio-quality download files that offer amazing sound quality. Other record labels, such as Saddle Creek and Sub Pop, sell multiple formats (including vinyl) on their web sites. Stores like Amoeba Music in Los Angeles and Other Music in New York City have entire sections dedicated to vinyl.

"I think the appeal is that vinyl bonds fans with bands in a way that digital music cannot. It is the scale of the 12" LP, the artwork inside, the fragility and care it requires and, most of all, the way it way in which it says "music is the architecture of my life. I must be surrounded by it,"" Wishnow says. "In an age where the casual music fan can have a music collection larger than the most ardent record collector, by downloading music for free or sharing files, albums separate the most avid of fans. "

Haven't yet embraced the transition to (or back to, actually) vinyl? Here are a few of Winshow's tips for growing a record collection to get you started:

1. The first step is easy -- buy a turntable. They are cheaper than ever, portable, and come with USB conversion software. Alternately, many vintage turntables are available on EBay or at local thrift stores for nothing.

2. Once you have a turntable, I'd recommend you purchase the essential 20 albums that you cannot live without. Most classic albums have been repressed recently and are available new, in mint condition.

3. It's fun to go "crate digging" at local vintage record shops. You can easily start your collection for under $200 if you don't need new products and not much more even if you want the shiny new toys.

My collection began with a few hand-me-downs and has grown with a combination of thrift-store scouring, online shopping and diligent concert-going. Most notably has been the fact that the last five albums I've purchased have all been in record (with MP3) format. The way you listen to music changes: you heard the record from start to finish, you experience it as an album and not just a chain of singles.

So is the CD really, truly dead?

Says Winshow: "It's barely breathing. It has a terminal disease. It's sad. But it lived a good life. Perhaps a little too good."

I once heard you can make a photo frame out of a jewel case, if it's any consolation.

Comments

[ChrisR]

Rant - Part 1

If the mastering is lousy, the format won't matter - harsh is harsh, weak is weak, too loud is too loud.

The new digital dynamic compression is powerful, but sad - check out Plant/Krauss: the sound is maxed to the limit which kills the atmosphere.

When I make my mix-CDs (an old habit from the cassette days), combining old and new CDs with vinyl tracks, I have to lower the volume on the new CD's by a factor of 4. Many folks are very surprised to hear a great sounding track on those mixes and learn it's from vinyl.

Have you experienced CD skips, pops or rot yet? No medium is perfect. But a well-mastered CD is still the best, will always beat the vinyl in overall grading. But dammit, why did they not include "buttons" on CD players for Side 1, Side 2, Side 3, etc. That's what I miss most : 20 minutes is the perfect amount of time for we attention-deficit folks, and the artist can really create a wonderful atmosphere in that amount of time. 70 minutes on a CD is too much without boundaries. Why program it? Gimme a button!

Another vinyl-plus along those lines: the concept of listening to the entire side, warts and all. Sometimes that Track 3 is a drag to hear, but ya know what...it may just become your favorite song! Today you just hit "next track", or just not download it - your loss!

[ChrisR]

Rant: Part 2

MP3's are just candy, not for the audiophile. iPods are the transistor radios of the 21st Century - love it.

True analog vinyl is beautiful - you're hearing unbroken waves of sound, not chopped-up bit sampling, and the human ear (and heart) can feel the difference. But on vinyl, unless you've got the sliding arms, the last track will always suffer as the arm and needle are in awkward positions.

Hey, I've got 78's that kick-ass! Bo-diddley, The Drifters, Little Richard....Pretty noisy tho, but great bass.

Music has always been about the technology: the quest for the perfect sound. The ultimate format is coming soon, when file size becomes totally irrelevent and broadband is perfected, all the music will no longer be confined to a "format", but will exist in the magical universe of perfect digital storage called up at will. But you can't beat putting the needle in the groove - in that moment you become part of the process, and that's the most satisfying feeling of all.

[JaneaneTheAcerbicGoblin]

Vinyl has always been cool, and I do like CD's. I think they're getting an undeserved bashing, but I do agree on this...

MP3's suck. God, they're awful.

[rochrist]

So your vinyl copies of material that was recorded digitally sound better with restricted low end, no signal to noise ratio to speak of and far less material per disc. I see. As for MP3s, lets not even discuss that audio massacre!

Frankly, I love the notion of an audio technology that involves grinding a diamond through gooves carved into a platter made from petroleum byproducts in order to scratch out an analog of the original sound. Very Fred Flintstone.

[BBDisk]

For me - I'm happy that i can buy new vinyl. I've been able to get so many new bands on vinyl it's ridiculous. The nice part is that they come with a free download coupon or CD of the whole album, so if i want it on the iPod it's an easy transfer. I think that was a genius move. Now I can have the record to play at home when I just want to listen and get submerged in the music, and I can have the tunes on the go, too.

[NoSillyName]

That sounds great!! I haven't bought any new vinyl. Do you buy from a specific site or just anywhere?

[sssteverrr]

The quality of sound is so relative, it doesn't really matter unless you play them at the same time and compare.

The thing I miss is the album art, not the vinyl. SO WHY DON'T THEY JUST MAKE THE POCKET SMALLER AND PUT THE CD IN THE ALBUM PACKAGING. THEN THEY WOULD SELL RECORDS AGAIN.

[vinylguy]

Ever since I heard my first compact disc at an Audio Engineering Society meeting in the early '80s in Los Angeles I've been a vinyl lobbyist. I said then that the idea that CDs sound better than records represented the greatest single mass deception since the election of Ronald Reagan, and that digital preserves music the way formaldehyde preserves frogs: you kill it, and it lasts forever. Of course CDs were a stupid medium to begin with: bad packaging, fragile, despite the hype and tinny sounding. I'll put my 40 year old vinyl copies of ANYTHING against any CD version, after 100s of plays. The more you spend on playback the better they sound and just when you think you've heard everything in the grooves something comes along and you hear more! I made a turntable set-up DVD two years ago (21st Century Vinyl: Michael Fremer's Practical Guide to Turntable Set-Up." It's 3 hours long, a lot of fun and for anyone new to vinyl, you oughta get a copy...it has sold more than 7000 copies and still sells---like vinyl. Sound deprived kids weaned on files are hearing vinyl and it's like seeing HDTV for the first time---that's why they're buying vinyl.

[RobinSeattle]

I think the issue isn't necessarily digital itself, but how records are mastered. For example, when Steely Dan's "Gaucho," the first, iirc, mainstream digital rock album came out, they butchered the mastering process and it indeed sounded harsh. But I have a couple other cd's by that band (duo, project, whatever you want to call the Becker-Fagen stuff) and they sound great, Only there is no surface noise and it won't wear out when compared to their original vinyl versions.

I have also heard LPs where they decided to go cheap on the mastering and it sounded like crap.

Digital has more distortion free headroom than tape (again, almost all records were first recorded on tape during the time boomers have been alive before the advent of digital recording) and so you get a truer picture of how things actually sounded in the studio. To make the argument that digital is somehow worse than analog is to say that seeing a band live in concert, where there is no tape compression or saturation, is also disappointing compared to the vinyl experience, where part of the low end is also rolled off,. I just can't buy that.

But everyone has different sensibilities. I respect people who favor vinyl since they have to go with what makes them feel comfortable, but personally, it's cds for me.

[NoSillyName]

Speaking of Steely Dan, I seem to remember something about the vinyl "Katy Lied" having been recorded improperly and supposedly something was odd about it. I, however, never noticed whatever it was. Anybody know?

[Charity]

and anyone remember when we had the arab oil embargo and the quality of vinyl recordings went to crap??? geez - i have quite a few from that time and they are all snap crackle and pop, including stevie wonder album and nilsson (that i recall off top of my head.)

[bokiluis]

There is a long, long route to travel before a resurgence of vinyl can truly be celebrated!

New vinyl releases are almost strictly alternative and/or classic rock. I am not a big fan of alternative music......

Stevie Wonder's golden era will soon be available on vinyl beginning with "Talking Book".....that is exciting to me.

I have to confess, I have a Technics 1200 turntable and I rarely turn it on anymore. Cds still work for me though I understand the sound compression issue.

MP3s are poor subsitutes but they are here to stay.....so if I really love something....I buy the CD.

Including MP3s in Vinyl releases is a brilliant idea!

[sco8d]

Vinyl on a good system does sound a lot better by far. I have a some albums on both vinyl and cd and have played them both for friends and they are blown away. The sound quality is just much better and "fuller" if that is a word. Plus if you buy new stuff on vinyl, Beck, My morning jacket etc. you are getting one of a few thousand copies made, much more rare and collectable and in the future more desireable. Also a lot of bands put out the vinyl a little before the cd, they should put the hidden or extra tracks on vinyl only instead of cd for audio geeks like me. How about an extra 7 inch inside the LP with a B-side or a couple extra songs. Damn, I should be working for the record industry.

Any one remember cutting a record off the back of a cereal box back in the day? I kinda remember doing that for the Sigmund and the seamonsters theme song or something along those lines, I could be wrong.

[NoSillyName]

I think I got a paper 45 out of a Mad Magazine once.

My very first record was a yellow 45 of Roy Rogers & Dale Evans "Happy Trails to You". I think my mother send away for it for me from a cereal box offer, but it wasn't cut out of the box.

Fun memories!!!

[Charity]

i still have several of those small yellow records, some of which i etched my name into when i was about five or six. i also have a full collection of "paper vinyl" that disney sold in the fifties promoting disneyland - i got it for a birthday. the content was incredibly good, with all the voices we know and love - donald duck, goofy, etc. a real treasure.

and as others here have reported, i also have a collection of my mother's 78s (just like bette midler, i, too, grew up singing along to the andrews sisters records). and then there is the 45 rock and roll collection inherited from my brother (original sun records, elvis, little richard, bo diddley, buddy holly and the crickets, etc.)

as i mentioned earlier, dragging them all around is a chore, but really, i wouldn't trade it for anything, though i occasionally entertain thoughts of selling parts of it...

[3fingerbrown]

One of the first 45s I owned was also a paper record, from a Quaker Oats box, one in a series of "Great Moments in Baseball." It was a recording of Lou Gehrig giving his famous farewell speech at Yankee Stadium. I was shocked but delighted to discover that Gehrig sounded nothing like Gary Cooper, with that famous Montana drawl, but instead spoke with a thick Bronx accent--"Ahm da luckiest mehn on da face a de oith ..." For a little kid growing up in Brooklyn, it really made the semi-mythical hero seem so real and accessible--he was one of us, an outer-borough kid! Fun memories, indeed.

[marlovian]

NoSillyName

Thank you! I had forgotten about that Mad insert. Do you remember the issue? Dredging up memories from the primeval sludge at the bottom of my memory.

[Maanu]

I make hip-hop and have plenty of vinyl and even make some when my band has a release. It IS a big hassle to transport, but it beats paying to go to the gym.
Old vinyl is so great, and such a link to the past and history of music and the changes in society as reflected in the music and packaging.
Say what you will of sampling, but it has directly lead to a deep appreciation and understanding amongst hip-hop heads that other genre's musicians might not have.

[RobinSeattle]

As a recovering record collector who owns over a thousand vinyl LPs, I'm puzzled by the resurgence of that format. I have so much vinyl because that was the predominant medium for half my life. But vinyl wears out and it is sensitive to heat and static electricity.

The argument made by a certain faction of audiophiles is that vinyl sounds warmer, especially when it comes to things such as the distortion of a guitar. However, the vinyl product that you see from newer bands has almost certainly been recorded digitally, not on tape (where that warm distortion actually comes fro due to signal saturation) plus in order to master a record so you can fit all the tunes you want to put on it you have to roll off part of the low end.

Then there is noise created by the vinyl itself and the needle rubbing against it (and the pickup in a needle has its own sonic limitations) that further mars the sound.

Audiophiles complain that cds sound harsh in comparison to vinyl. But when I play a cd copy of Boston's first album, for example, which contains some of the sweetest guitar tones ever, it sounds huge and gorgeous. Rhapsody's Legendary Tales, which was recorded in digital, sounds amazing, with well defined orchestral and guitar arrangements that would have been sonically blunted somewhat by vinyl.

However, the mp3s on ITunes and other download sites do suck. They sound slightly thinner than they should.

[NoSillyName]

I was wondering about the new vinyl coming from a digital source and what the difference would be.

I have Hendrix's "Nine to the Universe" on vinyl.... sounds fantastic. A friend just sent me the British CD and it sounds really cold or brittle or less dense.... some term I can't exactly put words to. Glad to have it, of course, so I can pop it into the CD player, but its just not the same.

[gladiatorpodolsky]

I had loads of 78s, put them on CD's and gave the 78's to my son 19 who loves them. I still have plenty of 33's and 45's. What's an MP3?

[wayoutleft]

one reason a lot of kids think vinyl is suddenly cool is because they haven't heard vinyl that's 5 or 10 years old.

[NoSillyName]

HUH? My vinyl is 45+ years old and still sounds great.

[wayoutleft]

right, no doubt. i've heard vacuum tube systems people swear sound better than solid state. if you're an audiophile, you're capable of perserving a vinyl collection in near-perfect condition. but it still wears as its played. even the temperature of the record can bear on that. but vinyl sound quality depends mostly on the stylus and tone arm balance.
zero sound decay could not even be obtained by changing a stylus every week.
however, the real musical media world is a world of music left in hot cars, dropped on sidewalks, spilled on, played on repeat for a 18 hour party, jammed into old packing crates, dumped off at a used record store, and what have you. this is not the environment of the (usually) middle aged audiophile. with these kids, we're not talking about a thousand lp's each played ever three months at most. it's playing a single track on repeat scores of times in a few weeks, then winding up laying flat with a knpdsack or something on top of it. that's the real recorded music environment.

[Charity]

i have about a 2,000 plus record/vinyl collection which "officially" began with the Beatles first album way back then. i resisted CDs for a long time until vinyl virtually disappeared from the shelves. i have a rather eclectic collection, many of which are no longer in print.

however, with vinyl i suffered through scratches, pops, and crackles - and warps. and not to mention the hellacious problem of moving 2,000 plus albums!

i think it's fine that vinyl is making a comeback, but in the past several years i moved across country and then back again - not to mention the several times i moved once i got where i was going. each and every single time i yearned to have grown up during the CD age....oy.

[pkohan]

Irony: When I clicked on this post HuffPo there was an ad for converting old LPs from vinyl to CD.