The death of Vinyl

[dubstepz]

If you are a new artist you might find it depressing to have 700 vinyl stacked in your room that didn't sell?

That's why people make sure there is enough hype behind a tune or artist (dubplate culture) before it gets a release. Otherwise anyone would release a plate and hope for the best, which is what can happen through mp3. The work that goes into ensuring a vinyl release will be at least partly succesful means that the tunes can't b utter shit.

Yeh of course you need the hype, no-matter how u sell it.

I know what you mean about working harder when you have invested in vinyl but I still think the online digital scene is going to be the future for the reasons in my last post.

[miig]

I agree with Dubstepz.

I was 18 a few months ago and the dubstep scene in youngsters is rapidly getting bigger and I would probably say this was down to the Caspa & Rusko - dare I say it.

A lot of youngsters can't afford the vinyl and online purchases from the likes of Beaport are easy.

Someone saying about dropping 128s in club - anyone who does that should be shot. Anyone who listens to 96s other than for a preview - doesn't know much about music.

All music will eventually become digital because that's just the way this world is going, everything is heading digital. How many letters get sent compare to emails now?

There will still be the "Vinyl Culture" but as the years go by this will die out too.

I write for a blog http://hush-house.blogspot.com and I believe this is the future for Dubstep. We only deal with 320s (unless they aren't available).

There are thousands of other blogs out there - very rarely do you find a drum & bass or dubstep blog and I think this is partly to do with this vinyl topic.

Blogs introduce and promote artists so that when they come to release stuff a fair amount of people have heard the song and want to buy it. There can also be the issue where everyone has got the full quality version and therefore don't need to buy it.

Does that make any sense? Hmm.

[thesteppahs]

Who want's a room full of vinyl when you can do the same in a laptop, particularly if your lucky enough to be a traveling DJ.

WE DO!!! Long live vinyl!!!!!!!!!!!

[seckle]

Who want's a room full of vinyl when you can do the same in a laptop particularly if your lucky enough to be a traveling DJ.

i would take a room full of vinyl over a laptop anyday

Why?

It's only because it is perceived that Vinyl is a cool thing to have in Dubstep/DnB culture.

Practically, both as a DJ and Consumer, laptop's make sense.

I bet more ''dance music'' purchases are made through beatport than any other retailer.

Why?

Because it has been accepted in nearly every other electronic music scene.

15 to 25 years from now, when you all have children, and they get to an age where they're old enough to start letting music get under their skin a bit, what do you think will be the best way to show them music...

a. by giving them a harddrive or ipod full of mp3's, that have no real legacy, nothing tangible that they can look at without a screen or hold in their hands, no liner notes, no sense of the past or nostalgia, no crackle, no fragility....

or

b. a dozen crates full of vinyl, that has an immediate legacy.... that you've protected, built, cared for, loved and obsessed over for decades and that now they can take from you and carry it further for their kids and so on.... you can show to them the big tunes from back in the day, and reminisce about them, open their eyes to things, and show them that music isn't all disposable or a bunch of 1's and 0's.

when we humans got tired of walking we conquered and learned how to ride horses; when horses got tiring, we invented cars. when we got tired of travelling in cars, we invented airplanes. society and corporations are training us to think that we have to see our world from a profitable, fast moving, advantageous side only. we don't think anymore about the idea that human creativity needs to be protected and developed. if you can't see that constantly moving faster and faster as a creative artistic person, is not always the best way forward, then you're in for a rude awakening somewhere down the line on the express train to whereever you think you need to be....

[kani]

I use vinyl & cd but I'll give u some reasons why WAV/mp3 can sound better than vinyl:

1.) No need to reduce stereo width of bass frequencies so pads can sound a lot deeper - ok this might not be relevant to a club if the soundsystem is set to mono, but listening on a home stereo/headphones it does make a big difference. Also comparing some of my original WAVs to the vinyl cuts I've noticed the overall stereo width (not just bass frequencies) is usually a bit narrower and it always gets messed about with 2 some extent. Point is if the tune doesnt have to be cut 2 vinyl then theres less that can go wrong with it.

never thought about this one,.. sometimes you get those tunes where it looks like the tonearm is possessed and every once in a while get that drop where it throws the needle..
good point.

[maxr]

oh please I just started to buy vinyl, noway it's dying :')

[dubstepz]

15 to 25 years from now, when you all have children, and they get to an age where they're old enough to start letting music get under their skin a bit, what do you think will be the best way to show them music...

a. by giving them a harddrive or ipod full of mp3's, that have no real legacy, nothing tangible that they can look at without a screen or hold in their hands, no liner notes, no sense of the past or nostalgia, no crackle, no fragility....

or

b. a dozen crates full of vinyl, that has an immediate legacy.... that you've protected, built, cared for, loved and obsessed over for decades and that now they can take from you and carry it further for their kids and so on.... you can show to them the big tunes from back in the day, and reminisce about them, open their eyes to things, and show them that music isn't all disposable or a bunch of 1's and 0's.

I do get you man. But I don't really think about music as a physical product, but something for my ear's to enjoy. Perhaps this is because I make music and well as enjoy it.... I dunno.

I have a mate who is a proper vinyl head, complete with the £1500 turntable. I do admire his enthusiasm and when you search through a load of vinyl, pull it out and play it you do in some way listen alot more than clicking though iTunes.... i supose.

I think there will always be a market for vinyl, one which has recently grown across the board, but think the strict vinyl only consensus in most dubstep and all dnb raves will soon switch to digital and it will be better for it.

society and corporations are training us to think that we have to see our world from a profitable, fast moving, advantageous side only. we don't think anymore about the idea that human creativity needs to be protected and developed. if you can't see that constantly moving faster and faster as a creative artistic person, is not always the best way forward, then you're in for a rude awakening somewhere down the line on the express train to whereever you think you need to be....

I don't think this is about wanting to do thing's quickly, easily or skipping thing's out. Progression in genre's, in my view, is essential and much more likely in a digital world.

Anyway... I think this is a debate that will never be resolved to be honest. It will just take time for more big name dj's to go digital, labels to release digital only and specialist dubstep download site's for underground music to get big.

You will probably see Scram and Benga on the native instrument's advert's with Ritchie Hawtin in the next couple of years.

Dubstepz

[merkin]

15 to 25 years from now, when you all have children, and they get to an age where they're old enough to start letting music get under their skin a bit, what do you think will be the best way to show them music...

a. by giving them a harddrive or ipod full of mp3's, that have no real legacy, nothing tangible that they can look at without a screen or hold in their hands, no liner notes, no sense of the past or nostalgia, no crackle, no fragility....

or

b. a dozen crates full of vinyl, that has an immediate legacy.... that you've protected, built, cared for, loved and obsessed over for decades and that now they can take from you and carry it further for their kids and so on.... you can show to them the big tunes from back in the day, and reminisce about them, open their eyes to things, and show them that music isn't all disposable or a bunch of 1's and 0's.

Absolutely spot on.

I had typed something long, but Seckle put it better.

Anyway, I'm off to DMZ!

[struggle]

It's arriving in Dubstep soon.

From a label's perspective Vinyl makes more money.... but consumers are mainly after digital .wav or 320's to play with traktor, serato, ableton, ipod etc...

Who want's a room full of vinyl when you can do the same in a laptop, particularly if your lucky enough to be a traveling DJ.

But... like drum and bass... laptop dj's don't exist yet.

There will always be a niche market for vinyl... But digital sales will represent over 90% of Dubstep sales and over 90% of dubstep dj's will not be using vinyl in the next 5 years.

Dubstepz, looking into his crystal ball

thanks for this useful info. please let us know if you have anymore of these premonitions.

[SHAFEY]

Interesting to read how opinions have changed over the last couple years on the whole vinyl vs digital debate. I remember a time when words like mp3/cd/serato were as good as blasphemy!

It's gonna be important moving forward that dubstep is accessible across all formats. As someone's already said, there is a new breed of listeners coming through that acquire their music digitally. Not everyone is or wants to be a DJ. Not everyone has or can afford a turntable.

Another problem with vinyl only releases is that you can never be sure that the copy you've ordered is going to have perfect audio quality, i.e. warped, scratched, bad cut etc. which is gutting. I waited a fucking age to get Kalawanji on wax and when it came it was a bad press. The dissapointment was unreal. Obviously you can send it back or buy another copy, which can be both long and relatively expensive.

[SickMan D]

Ok I love vinyl, I dont want people to ever stop pressing it, I prefer mixing with it probably because thats what Im used to, I do use mp3's/CD's because I dont have all the tunes I want to play on vinyl.

Mp3 is the easiest way to move music but the highest bitrate so far is 320kB, CD's have the quality standard set by the red book every digital release is dithered down to 16bit 41kHz the future is gonna be on expanding that, like HD TV - Audio DVD, 24bit 192kHz music. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Audio

Now I know the arguments for and against the sceintific reasoning of the human ear response (20Hz - 20kHz at birth, narrowing with age) would not be able to hear the nuansces in higher rate audio, but anyone who has spent time in front of a decent set of monitors producing at higher bitrates might agree there is a difference.

At a club level ok at the moment many systems wouldnt probably wouldnt have any concieved difference, but in the future people will seek audio clarity imo. Anyway bit of a tangent, this debate will roll on for years..

[Juan BassHead]

2008 vinyl sales the highest since 1991

read more here: http://dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=71637

[dubstepz]

2008 vinyl sales the highest since 1991

read more here: http://dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=71637

Vinyl isn't dead yet. Quite the opposite.

But it has, unfortunately for some, caught cancer.

[wrecked]

2008 vinyl sales the highest since 1991

read more here: http://dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=71637

While I have no info to refute or confirm what the article says,

I'm going to call bullshit on it's relevance to underground music.

These numbers reflect major labels trying to jump on the trendyness of vinyl (several years after the fact no less), and pressing more vinyl than they have in years. So yes, any number of top 40 artists probably have sold more records than they have in years.

But if you're looking at the more dj-related and underground scenes, there's no question that vinyl has been selling much, much less. Just in the past year, a number of distributors both in the US and world-wide have gone under due to low sales.

I think that reality will hit the more major labels in the next year or so as well, and their vinyl trend will die out too.

I think many of us, myself included, have TONS of anecdotal experience about people playing mostly digital as opposed to vinyl. I'd say less than a third of local djs play mostly vinyl in my town. Just five years ago only a handful did not play vinyl. Amoung my close friends who aren't djs - 5-10 years ago they would buy 12"s simply to own them. Now none of them do.

I'm sure vinyl will continue to exist in a niche way in the forseeable future,
but especially for dj music with a short shelf life - digitial will be the dominant medium.

[djshiva]

i would take a room full of vinyl over a laptop anyday

until i have to move it to a new home. then i hate that roomful of vinyl with every ounce of my being.

that said, my vinyl is still sitting over there getting dusty. a whole month's worth of mp3 and wav purchases are now locked down in my dead dead dead harddrive. i can get most of them back through the purchasing places tho. try that with lost vinyl.

each have their merits.

but at the end of the day, the music is the message, not the medium. think on that for a minute, before exhorting the superiority of either.

another point that amuses me: i find it rather funny that underground music scenes have continued to use the most expensive medium to produce (vinyl), with the least amount of playback options (no turntable? well fuck you, listener). we continue to hammer away at antiquities, with such a high break-even point, to the point where underground artists/labels continue to struggle to get their music heard, or break their bank trying.

i love vinyl too, to the extent that i will be breaking my back to move it all when i move out of my house, but the fact that we keep using the most expensive medium, with the least accessibility, is still completely flabbergasting to me.

[alien pimp]

15 to 25 years from now, when you all have children, and they get to an age where they're old enough to start letting music get under their skin a bit, what do you think will be the best way to show them music...

a. by giving them a harddrive or ipod full of mp3's, that have no real legacy, nothing tangible that they can look at without a screen or hold in their hands, no liner notes, no sense of the past or nostalgia, no crackle, no fragility....

sometimes i listen to my grandma's music.
it isn't happening on gramophone plates at 77rpm, i don't have any. and i don't appreciate being given such plates to listen to them because i can't find a gramophone. my granny was sad, hers broke long before... i feel sorry for her, SHE has so many memories printed there.
i don't, i have mine
and i can imagine my grandchildren would react the same to the vinyl releases i'm so proud about
let's see...

[Littlefoot]

Who want's a room full of vinyl when you can do the same in a laptop, particularly if your lucky enough to be a traveling DJ.

ME!!!!!!!

[struggle]

2008 vinyl sales the highest since 1991

read more here: http://dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=71637

While I have no info to refute or confirm what the article says,

I'm going to call bullshit on it's relevance to underground music.

this probably isn't relevant to the underground, but i'm digging all the high quality soul, funk and jazz reissues that have come out this year and i'm buying them up while i can.

[chrish]

i love vinyl too, to the extent that i will be breaking my back to move it all when i move out of my house, but the fact that we keep using the most expensive medium, with the least accessibility, is still completely flabbergasting to me.

The one benefit of this as I see it, is that it helps to create a synergy between producer, dj, and fan. The producer relies on the dj's to buy up the music & mix it live or via mix tape to then market to the masses. The masses get excited about both the good dj's & the good producers & will seek out more music from both, and also seek shows in which to see it all live.

Had the music originally been readily available at your local cd store their may potentially be less revenue to continue supporting as much work for both the dj & producer. Pure speculation, but something to think about.

Also, I love the argument that vinyl is better then 1's and 0's considering most of the tunes are 1's & 0's from the beginning being programmed on computers and all.

This debate is an interesting one. There really isn't a right or wrong that covers the gamut, it's all very personal. All of us feel more passion for the music then most, and therefor have an emotional attachment in some way to our means of buying, using, archiving our music. My preference is vinyl as I stated earlier, but I am a proud Torq user & love it.

[surface_tension]

Vinyl is dying?

Please don't tell our distributor about this, who we recently inked a vinyl distribution deal with.

My response to Seckle, is that he was pretty much spot on. Except a lot of my parents vinyl got played so many times that it is now unlistenable. Which is why I rip all my vinyl and play it digitally unless it's in a Live setting or recording for a mix usually. Otherwise, I play digital when I practice and listen for pleasure. Plain and simple, my home system may be pretty damn nice, but it's not so nice that I can tell the difference.

And in 15-20 years, I'll probably still be cradling my vinyl, rocking it to sleep. It will want to have something to do with me, my kid won't. If you ripped your vinyl to digital and played only digital, that legacy is there--and it will have more than just your story about how good it used to sound before some wasteman ran up and yanked the needle across the wax asking for a wheel up.

If you are a touring DJ, I wouldn't even worry about vinyl, because if you are playing tunes that are already released and they aren't in the context of 98% of tunes that are unreleased dubplates, odds are you won't get booked very much. And my kids better keep their fucking hands off my wax. They can buy their own. There are records that my parents STILL won't let me play, even though I was the one who gave them a new 1210 and a good needle that wouldn't wear out their tunes as fast.