OT: Labels up volume on vinyl releases to meet demand

[Ronald Lee]

Found something interesting, remember the old saying, "what is old is now new?" Of course the younger people will have to put up with turntable wow & flutter, rumble, limited content at frequencies below ~50hz and above ~10kHz. And a of course compression and limiting.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080712/media_nm/vinyl_dc

Labels up volume on vinyl releases to meet demand

By Ed Christman Sat Jul 12, 3:05 AM ET

NEW YORK (Billboard) - It may have seemed like a fad at first, but the resurgence of vinyl is now turning into a nice niche business for the major labels. With EMI's announcement that it would reissue eight classic albums in the format, all four majors are now onboard the vinyl bandwagon.

EMI will release two Coldplay albums, four Radiohead titles and Steve Miller's "Greatest Hits" on August 19. Universal Music Enterprises will release 20 albums on vinyl this month and an additional 20 at the end of August, while Warner Music Group will issue 24 to 30 albums from its catalog and 10 to 12 new releases from September through the end of the year, according to executives at those companies.

In the independent camp, RED labels will have several hundred vinyl titles by the end of the year, half of which are new releases, RED vice president of indie sales/marketing Doug Wiley said. One of RED's labels, Metal Blade, is reissuing its classic Slayer catalog in deluxe versions, all on colored vinyl with hand-designed blood splatterings on it, Wiley said.

Indie retail started the party, but now some of the chains are carrying vinyl too. In addition to Fred Meyer and Borders, Best Buy has said publicly that it will experiment with carrying LPs.

EMI Music Catalog vice president of A&R and creative Jane Ventom said that the company has always been into vinyl, "but we are getting more into it." She said the move is in response to consumer demand from the iPod generation, baby boomers and audiophiles.

"Music is becoming a social action again," Ventom said. "The kids are now listening to music with their mates instead of on headphones." She added that vinyl allows them to "hear music in its true form."

"People are going back to reliving the way they used to listen to music and they realize that they missed the (album cover) artwork and what a pleasurable listening experience it is," Ventom said.

SOUND MATTERS

One of the most important elements to issuing vinyl is sound quality, especially in the MP3 age. That's why Warner Bros. will relaunch its becausesoundmatters.com Web site, which touts and sells vinyl and may start offering high-resolution MP3s, according to Warner Bros./Reprise Records executive VP Tom Biery, who heads the label's radio promotion team and oversees its vinyl initiative.

Warner Bros. reissued the first two Metallica albums -- "Kill 'Em All" and "Ride the Lighting" -- on vinyl, and both have passed the 4,000-unit sales mark, according to Nielsen SoundScan. On July 15, the company released "Master of Puppets" on vinyl in two versions.

In September, the label plans to issue a 50th anniversary archive series of vinyl releases, including James Taylor's "Mud Slide Slim," a Rickie Lee Jones album, a Marty Paich album and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Blood Sugar Sex Magik." Most of the albums that are issued on vinyl also come with an enclosed CD, Biery said.

The increased interest in vinyl is putting a strain on the handful of pressing plants still left from the format's heyday. "Our vinyl is always late because it gets bumped," Redeye co-owner Tor Hansen said.

"I still have eight machines, and I am currently running at about 75 percent capacity," said plant manager Dave Jump of Nashville's United Records.

The limited pressing network often makes it hard to get vinyl out on the same release date as the CD, but when the stars align, sales can be significant. Warner Bros. offered vinyl and CD on the same day when issuing the Raconteurs' "Consolers of the Lonely" in March; the album sold 42,000 units in its first week, and 3 percent of sales came from the vinyl version.

Looking forward, executives said they want to be aggressive and practical with their vinyl campaigns.

"Everything shouldn't be released on vinyl," WEA (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic) vice president of catalog sales Steve Corbin said. "We want to be selective and smart about what we put out. (But) it's interesting that the consumer sees the value and is willing to pay for vinyl."

Reuters/Billboard

<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ July 13, 2008 09:20 PM: Message edited by: RKLee ]</font>

[LICORNE]

In the meanwhile ITUNE will be announcing any day now. Music download uncompressed at 24 bit 96KHZ.
There waiting for record co. new releases and their OK.

A 2min song at 16 bit 44 KHZ takes up to 20 MB
of space at the present. So get ready to throw out your old CD player for a new 24 bit 96 khz one.


http://www.tweakheadz.com/16_vs_24_bit_audio.htm

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<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ July 13, 2008 07:58 PM: Message edited by: CONVERGENCE ]</font>

[Ronald Lee]

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<font color="#FFFFFF" size="1">[ July 13, 2008 09:21 PM: Message edited by: RKLee ]</font>

[martyh45]

Young people will need to put up with all kinds of stuff because cheap vinyl playback sounds krappy. It?s really a double edged sword for me, the new releases are nice but the competition at the record racks is something I can do without. Gone are the days when I could browse the racks without some twenty year old in the way.

That being said, vinyl is simply better. Done right, there is a naturalness to the sound that even 24/96 will not touch. And yes, before you ask, I have heard the best consumer digital available in systems that cost as much as a house. The background of digital seems blacker at first but after listening closely for awhile you can hear that it is artificial. Notes don?t really fade away to nothing, the nothing comes up to meet them. That simply doesn?t happen with vinyl, I can follow the decay of a note down to the limits of my perception even through the noise ?floor? with my best equipment. The bottom end is as solid and extended as ANY digital with my unsuspended deck and pretty dam-n close with my suspended. There is simply no comparison in the HF even with my old ears.

I still find LPs for a buck, which is less than the cost of a krappy single song MP3 download and far less than any CD. Better sound, less money?who could argue with that?

[speakerdave]

Well, I'm skeptical and I have a question. What about the technical details?

Are we being sold digital recordings that are analog in their final form only? If so, I don't see the point, except to exploit a marketing opportunity. If this is happening, then it means the real problem is the quality of the average CD player, and that's the problem that should be addressed.

Which releases are all analog, if any?

If new digital recordings then what type, and when and how is the transfer to analog made?

If remasters of analog master tapes from the 50's, 60's and 70's, is there a digital generation? If so, what are the technical details?

If anyone knows of a good source of information about these questions I would really like to know it. Is there, for example, an oppositional journal of the recording trade where these kinds of things are discussed and debated?

Why are the recording companies not including this information with the releases. The inclusion of technical details (at least what microphones were used) was at one time fairly common.

Finally, why do the hundreds (it seems like) of reviewers/announcers of new releases not dig for this information and include it as part of their reviews? Is it because they're just out there whoring for free discs?

As I said--I'm skeptical

David

[Ronald Lee]

Well my thoughts is that vinyl LPs can be as good as the CD, BUT....
I have quite a few of the audiophile LPs such as half-speed mastered Mobile Fidelity using JVC Super Vinyl, 1/2speed master from CBS, Nautilus etc. They sound every bit as good as some of my CDs, and some of them even better because those audiophile vinyl has no limiting or compression, and many of them are mastered straight from the studio's master tape.

[speakerdave]

It's just that to me the advantage of vinyl was that it was non-digital, that is, PCM 44.1, with its upper register glisten, opaque midrange and "breathing." I always thought the naturalness and smoothness of the sound of recordings I was playing in vinyl came not from the vinyl itself, but from the all analog signal train. But, I don't know enough about the nature of digital mastering to know whether that process is enough different from PCM 44.1 to be in the recording chain and not be a point of loss of the analog quality.

I found this website and started reading, but it's tough sledding for a nontech like me:

http://www.digital-recordings.com/publ/pubrec.html

David

[bfish]

Yeah, it's kind of pointless to cut vinyl from a digital master. Doesn't mean people won't buy them though. I'm skeptical too, if it doesn't specifically say it's 100% analog, I'd assume otherwise, especially for anything also available on CD.

The RIAA used to be concerned with such things, but a visit to their site confirmed they're too busy prosecuting file sharers than managing an industry.