"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...
There is a store not 10 miles from me than sells NOTHING but new
turntables
(dozens of brands all the way from $200 for a Chinese built belt drive
unit
with a decent arm and a cartridge of unknown quality (sold by Music Hall)
to
Walker Proscenium selling for more than $60,000.), new turntable
accessories
and records.
I'm a bit surprised, but not really. There are any number of stores that
specialize in Buggy Whips, even one with a web site:
http://www.buggy-whips.com/
Does this mean that the days of the automobile have ended and we are going
to return to animal power? ;-)
But there are scores of new ones that have taken their place. The absolute
bottom tier is gone, that's true.
Actually, the absolute bottom tier, which is the sub-$100 to ca. $100 USB
turntable, has lots of representation. Adjust ca. $100 for inflation and
then compare that to prices in the days of vinyl (ca. 1960-1970) and you
will see what I mean.
There are no more cheap mass-market tables
from the likes of Pioneer, Yamaha, Panasonic etc., if that's what you
mean.
But there are such products from Audio Technica and Sony. Are you
cherry-picking names?
But there are plenty more higher end tables from Japan, China, GB,and
Europe
and even the good ol' USA!
None of which sell in appreciable quantities.
So, given that the population of the US, at least,
200,000,000 40 years ago and is over 300,000,00 now,
what, in FACT, has happened to the number of stores selling
turntables, the number of turntables available, the number
of new LPs being released, the number of new LPs available
and sold, per person 40 years ago vs today?
Not a valid question. Vinyl is no longer the ONLY source of listener owned
music media as it was 40 years ago.
Vinyl sales are still around 1-2% of physical media:
http://76.74.24.142/548C3F4C-6B6D-F7...5E2AB93610.pdf
LP/EP + Vinyl singles = 4.3 million pieces. Total physical sales = 212
million.
Vinyl sales are only about 0.1-0.2% of total sales = 1,726 million pieces.
Pick a number - 2% or 0.2%. It is all best described as "vanishingly small".
If you treat the facts honestly and without prejudice, how
can one say that "LPs are flousriching?"
Because, as a niche market, it is.
That's like saying that the Greater Scaup (a duck-like bird that whose
numbers are only a tiny fraction of what they were) family in my back yard
are doing well.
If you insist that vinyl has to be the
dominate music source in the marketplace in order to be healthy and
flourishing, then we have no common ground to discuss this, because that
is a
false requirement in my estimation.
The absence of common ground comes from an illogical sentimental
attachement, not any technical or commercial fact. You can like what you
like and spend your money as you wish, but I don't have to take at face
value claims that don't stand up to the facts that are before us all.
The sale of vinyl and the attendant
equipment to play it with is large enough to support the number of players
in
that market, and the market segment is growing, not shrinking.
In fact vinyl equipment and media sales have ebbed and flowed in the 20
years since it stopped being a mainstream format. It has doggedly held onto
a tiny numeric segment that is continually being more agressively dwarfed
when the total market for recorded media is considered. We used to talk
about vinyl having a 1-2% market share but if all recordings are considered,
that has dropped to 0.1-0.2%. You can't download vinyl but you can download
a digital file that represents a CD track and have a recording that is
technically and sonically identical to what was on the physical media.
You can play a CD track on a portable player the size of a pack of matches,
but you can't play a LP that way. That's either the bad news or the good
news depending on how you weight sentimentality and tradition against
enjoying mainstream music offerings now.
That's the
criteria for a flourishing market, not some erstwhile market dominance
from a
simpler age when the average music lover had little choice but to buy
vinyl
because there was, essentially, nothing else.
For most people vinyl was something that they tolerated because there was no
competition for it. As soon as there was viable competition the air flowed
out of the vinyl baloon like a bullet had passed through it. That is all
ancient history.
We are now obviously seeing a strong move away from any kind of physical
media at all. I don't buy DVDs from the store that used to be down the
street a few blocks away, I don't go to Blockbuster a few blocks away to
rent them, I rent Blu Rays by web and mail from Netflix and download a few
over the web.
That might work with Harry, but not with me. I'm taking issue only with
your
statement that LP is not flourishing by any criteria you know and your
rather
weak attempts at backing that opinion up.
Using the same logic, the existance of a web store that specializes in buggy
whips means that the buggy whip market is thriving? Thriving comapred to
what?
Well, Dick, your "facts", as stated, seem to lack current market
knowledge.
Statements like "...how many of those three brands of turntables at Best
Buy
would you let within 10 feet of any of your LPs?" shows that you don't
seem
to know that today's record decks, even the cheap ones are very good with
fine performing arms and low-friction bearings. So, with seemingly
outdated
"facts" and some of the assumptions that you seem to have made, above,
you'll forgive me for taking your conclusions on this issue with a grain
of
salt.
Actually, I've seen technical tests of many of these low cost turntables,
and most turn out to be the groove busters that we fear that they we
http://www.knowzy.com/Computers/Audi...rntabl es.htm
On this page there is a particularly amusing item called: "One Cheap USB
turntable. Many brand names" How many of these aliases have been namelessly
hyped here? The technical description after thorough testing is:
"All plastic construction, ceramic cartridge with inferior sound,
accelerates wear by applying serious needle pressure, skipped frequently in
(our) tests."