Why does there seem to still be a limited amount of vinyl in stores? (1 Viewer)

Why is it that when you find a record/cd/dvd/bluray store or a place like Fry's selling new vinyl there is some some really poplular titles. But other albums that where not that popular instead of releasing other popular titles that sold very well. Granted I am not against an artist like Led Zeppelin or the Beatles having a good selection of there albums available. I would love to own a number of albums from Led Zeppelin and Beatles that I never got around to owning on vinyl that I own on cd. But I have been able to go into a local store and find one or two AC/DC, a good selection of both Beatles and Led Zeppelin as well as Pink Floyd. And some Rolling Stones albums but no Rolling Stones Tattoo You, Def Leppard Pyromania or a number of other titles. It is nice to see Miles Davis Kind Of Blue and Norah Jones Come Away With Me. But where are tiles like Journey Escape, Def Leppard Hysteria, Micheal Jackson Thriller and many other big titles? It makes me feel the new vinyl revival may not be as big as it was said to have been. How many people are having trouble finding new vinyl have you gone it and where told the album you really want is not being pressed? Or do you focus more on finding good condition used vinyl?

Probably with any store it is a matter of profit margin vs. available floor space. There are used record shops and online stores. It is no different with any other medium. You won't find certain things in the CD aisle. I used to enjoy going to Tower Records and Borders at one time since you could find music that was not in stores like Best Buy.

I used to love going to Tower Records myself and also going to Music Plus and a independent place called Middle Earth that had everything from Domestic to Import Albums. But when I was at my local shop I asked for the availability of certain albums on vinyl and I was told it is not available. I would hate to think that the person went over to the computer and did not actually look it up. I would think that if it is available they would order it to make money. One thing I thought to myself that there was a lot of used albums in mediocre shape price really cheap $3 and cheaper. I saw Metallica - And Justice For All new vinyl but I am not currently ready to pay $40 for that album. I need to get back to work and have a good paycheck before I can justify $40 for a album. Fry's Electronics is now carrying some vinyl records with some new turntables on the same isle. But with the format said to be making a come back you would think that there would be more popular titles available. I hope that more titles are available next year but at this point it is hard to say if they will be available.

I think part of the resurgence in the interest in vinyl is that there are so many used (and admittedly mediocre condition in many cases) original records to be found for dirt cheap. While there's certainly a market for new pressings, it's likely not enough for a store to take the chance to have all that stuff in stock...very much like DVDs and Blus.

I read a recent article about the UK that vinyl still is only 2 percent of sales. This is a recent article - http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/vinyl-record-sales-pace-exceed-7-million-cost/

I understand that many records also come with a digital download today. So that could be part of the spike. You get convenience that you use all the time and can play the record once in a while as well.

I got rid of my vinyl over 30 years ago and today I have digital playback, including high resolution files like DSD and 192kHz. I rarely even spin a music disc. Most of the discs played are when I have an audio get together at my place and other people bring them.

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I would rather listen to vinyl than digital downloads from iTunes and I love my new 180g pressing of Dark Side Of The Moon. I do have some DSD SACD discs but that is somewhere around 14 titles and a hand full of DVD-A's. I have a decent JVC QL-50 turntable with a Sure tonearm sporting a Sumiko Pearl cartridge. There are just times I want to go back to analog vinyl and I really want to get a hold of new pressings of Rolling Stones Tattoo You and Def Leppard Pyromania. Sure I still enjoy my old cd's and I have about 300+ titles on that format. I unfortunately am missing a good number of my old vinyl records that have been gone for some time. I have 91+ gb of music on my pc but I honestly do not listen to music very often on the pc and when I do I don't seem to listen for long. If money was not so much of a factor I would upgrade my turntable and cartridge and invest in a serious vinyl collection. For me my music collection is not about convenience it is about enjoying it at home where I do most of my music listening.

I have over 5TB of music on a couple of Oyen Digital 3TB hard drives in the main system. Probably going to get two 4TB ones soon so I don't run out of space. One of the main reasons I got out of vinyl over 30 years back is that while I had probably almost 400 albums, there were only about 10 percent that were nice audiophile albums in great shape and almost all of the rest were played on really crappy equipment when I was younger. I had one of these (Burwen Transient Noise Eliminators) - http://s264.photobucket.com/user/object0/media/379bbfc7.jpg.html and it did a great job of getting rid of pops and clicks when adjusted properly. I had a beautiful Phase Linear 8000 turntable which probably weighed 35 lbs (http://s122.photobucket.com/user/speakerlabfan/media/004-6.jpg.html) and three nice cartridges (and of course drove myself nuts with a stylus microscope and cleaning albums. I realized back then to go the next level in vinyl was going to be really expensive and storing records is a lot harder. I got rid of the equipment just before a move back at the end of 1983 and the records right after that (and after moving them realized how heavy they are and how much room they took up).

Always liked physical media but was more or less dragged into digitizing them as I was not about to go back to vinyl and I've actually heard digitized DSD and other hi-rez files both at audio shows vs. vinyl (on really expensive rigs - like $10k turntables and phono preamps) and in peoples homes (and I regularly go to get togethers at local audiophile societies) and sometimes I prefer the vinyl and I would say it was about half the time that I preferred the hi-rez file and when I preferred one vs. the other it was generally pretty close. So I made the move and very rarely spin a disc. To me it is a no brainer not having a vinyl system and getting the same quality of sound and getting convenience and the quality. I burn the DSD disc image and extract the file when I get an SACD. Just ordered three SHM SACDs (two John Lennon and one Beach Boys) from CD Japan which should be here in about a month. They have issued a bunch of things by the Stones but I have the old DSD files (from Abkco records) and unless I read a review that seems to show me that they are much better (in which case I'll buy at least a couple), I'll stick to what I have in DSD files. I think I have about 35,000 songs (some are CDs, some are hi-rez) on the hard drives attached to the music server

Sounds like you are really into it. Also looks like you have had alot of equipment over the years :- ) I grew up around vinyl and my father was always getting nice gear and he had a decent amount of vinyl back then. I wish I had photographs of some of the gear he used to have. But that is where I got the bug from and throughout my life I have always had to scrimp and save like many people I guess to build and evolve my audio and a/v systems over my lifetime. I remember I used to have a neighbor next to me that there where three bachelors sharing a house and one guy worked for Music + back in the day. They had about 30 - 40 crates of records which was like a candy store to me. They had a Pioneer receiver, thorns turntable, harman kardon cassette deck, pioneer reel to reel deck and 2 pair of bose 901's suspended from the ceiling that later on where changed out to some custom built speakers with vintage JBL 12" woofers with a passive radiator and pyle driver mid and tweeter.

But I remember my first decent system was a Kenwood rack system in the mid 80's and it went on from there.
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I do not have much vinyl and never had a large collection but I do want to buy certain albums on vinyl. I recently found a program that allows me to play music and videos from my pc to my Denon 1611-UD bluray player and I am toying with that. Mainly because I want to just play Christmas music in the background during Christmas dinner while family is over. But I will try out playing other music and see how it works out. I have a DTS CD release of Don Henley End Of The Innocence that is a 5.1 mix that sounds good. Thanks for mentioning the CD Japan site as I will take a look at that later. I also love physical media and even though I downloaded some music from iTunes I am not completely sold on the quality and I really dislike that you do not really own any of it like you do with physical media. And buring it to a disc may be easy but the burned media doesn't have a long life span like commercially produced media. And mp3 do not do much for me ether and on the audio side of movies i never did like Dolby Digital ether. The majority of my mp3's are at 192 and maybe it is the way mp3 encodes the music and removes overlapping frequencies but I just can not seem to be able to sit down and listen to mp3's for more than 20 - 30 minutes. Your right is is amazing how much room a large vinyl collection will take up and if you do not have the room you are very limited on what you can do. There is something to be said about being able to store a very large digital music collection in a small space. I have my CD collection and downloads on my pc but I dread loosing my hard drive and having to re rip everything and re download everything else. I know the answer is to duplicate the music on a seperate HD but with money being tight and looking for work that is not an option till I can get another hard drive. What program are you using to rip the DSD recording to your hard drive? Also my main focus beyond getting a new job is upgrading my current a/v system, upgrading my current a/v receiver to 3D pass through, Dolby Atmos, 4K video and buying a 4k bluray player and upgrading my center channel speaker and rear speakers and adding speakers for the Atmos channels. And mix in with all that is buying a few vinyl records while also buying 1080p bluray movies and start buying 4k Blurays next year. And I might buy some music if it is on physical media but sometimes the knowledge of how much this all adds up to is sometimes overwhelming. But I love this hobby as do we all here at home theater forum.

I have my stuff backed up (although due to a move late last year it is not in perfect order and after I rip some remaining DVD-As this winter I will work on a more organized back-up - I do have the DSD image files separately backed up so I can re-extract those). If I had a turntable and vinyl at this point and enjoyed it, I'd keep it and perhaps just re-buy a couple of things I really liked digitally. I've had audio separates for over 30 years and have multiple systems.

I'm waiting until after CES next month to decide what to do with Dolby Atmos/DTS UHD/Auro 3D. I'll probably upgrade one secondary system (I have multiple systems) first as I already have in-ceiling surrounds (which I can use as overhead channels) and an extra pair of speakers to add as regular surrounds. I already have 9.2 in the main system (integrated A/V system with a preamp with HT Bypass) and may do in-ceiling surrounds this winter (attic above the living room) so that I'll be ready. I have one system that I just have 2-channel for now (although there are in-ceiling surrounds not being used), have another in the office that I'm not using in-ceiling surrounds, a 4.1 system with in-ceiling surrounds in a bonus room and a 5.1 system with all in-ceiling speakers in the master bedroom along with a 92 inch screen that folds into the ceiling.

Main System

Most major cities have independent record/music stores...those are your best bet for good vinyl selections. And just like when CDs and DVDs starting taking off, it's the new releases and classic/best selling titles that get released first.

Master Bedroom and Bonus Room systems

A couple of backup systems
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Here's a recent thing about Meridian MQA which talks about digital vs. convenience -

I would be willing to check it and see if it is any good once it is available.

Dave Moritz said:

I would be willing to check it and see if it is any good once it is available.

Click to expand...

Hopefully it will do formats which are standard (e.g. FLAC) and do not require proprietary things (like their old MLP for DVD-As) needing separate hardware.

Or proprietary software that they will charge a nice fee for.

btw - near where I used to live 20+ years ago (when I was 8 years old of course ), they had a nice used record shop and apparently it is still there. Not sure where you are located but it they had lots of used LPs - http://www.prex.com/

As far as albums like Tattoo You, not all of the Stones catalogue has been remastered, so I doubt you'll find any "new" copies in most of the big stores. Ma and pop record shops might have something, but you should be able to find a cheap used one. I regularly see tattoo You in the cheap bins, but in good condition. Eventually the Stones will do a push like they did on "Some Girls" and others, and you'll see them in the major chain stores again.

As far as digital, I received my PONO player from the kickstarter campaign, and I couldn't be happier. the full rez, 196/24bit flac files of Neil Young's "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere" sounds indistinguishable from the vinyl through both headphones and the line out on the PONO player through my system with my record player. I did an A/B by playing both the PONO and the Vinyl at the same time and switching between the line inputs on my amp. It's impressive. Whatever DAC is in the PONO, the 44/16bit CD rips sound better than higher bit vinyl rips due to the PONO picking up some turntable noise that it "hidden" on lesser players, and most phones/etc. At least in the case of my Beatles Mono boxset rips from vinyl at 96/24bit. The rips sounded muddy on the pono compared to the vinyl that sounds perfect, and the CD rips sound closer to the vinyl.

So yeah, I believe in PONO as far as a portable/digital player goes.

Charles Hansen of Ayre Acoustics was one of the people involved in the design of the Pono so I'm sure it is first rate.

I just dusted off my old eighties Sony PS-FL9 linear tracking player. Last time I used it was over 10 years ago. At that time, the tone arm was getting sluggish, and would just stop moving after playing one track.

Did some Googling last week and found out why (a $3 rubber belt). Found a place online that had fresh stock, downloaded a service manual (free), and replaced it myself. Now it's working like new again.

The thing is built like a tank, and will probably still be working long after I'm gone.

I still have well over 500 soundtrack, and various other LP's, some dating back to the late fifties. I'll give some a listen again soon. I may even transfer a few that aren't available on CD yet.

At 59, my hearing is probably too shot to be able to really appreciate a fine, virgin vinyl pressing anymore, so I won't be losing much by making CD's, flacs, or even MP3's.