Vinyl Bargain or Rip off?

My vinyl buying peak was the mid 80's when we would usually pay around 4.99/5.99 for a UK/Euro release and 7.99/8.99 for US imports. That was for more obscure metal stuff from independent shops but I think mainstream releases from the likes of Iron Maiden for example were still only about 5.99 from the main retailers such as Our Price/HMV etc. So that's about 15 to 18 quid in today's money if you ignore the US import prices.

I started replacing my vinyl with CD's in 88/89 and they would range from about 9.99 for back catalogue re-rereleases from independent stores to around 14.99 for pretty much anything in stock in a mainstream store. Imports not taken into account as they could be crazy money, That's apparently somewhere between 25 and 40 quid in todays money according to This Moneys inflation calculator so although vinyl is perhaps a little more expensive in real terms compared to my days of buying it, CD prices have tumbled a hell of a lot more.
 
Wow, the memories come flooding back reading this Thread!

We didn't have a Hi-Fi, we had a huge teak radiogram with an auto-return record deck (you could stack 7" singles!), a tuner, built-in speakers and a drinks cabinet in the middle!

My sister had a portable cassette player with tuner which I used to "borrow" all the time to listen to Peel. My other sister was given a Sony Walkman as a Crimbo pressie and it was an absolute revelation at the time as I'd never used headphones before, and you could really get lost in your music lying on your bed in the dark.

So yeah, I take it all back regarding da kidz - they've got it made!
 
We didn't have a Hi-Fi, we had a huge teak radiogram with an auto-return record deck (you could stack 7" singles!), a tuner, built-in speakers and a drinks cabinet in the
We had one of those at home as well.
I had an auto return, stackable record, player in my bed room. I then had another unit, connected to the record player by a cable, to turn it into stereo. :)
 
Wow, the memories come flooding back reading this Thread!

We didn't have a Hi-Fi, we had a huge teak radiogram with an auto-return record deck (you could stack 7" singles!), a tuner, built-in speakers and a drinks cabinet in the middle!

My sister had a portable cassette player with tuner which I used to "borrow" all the time to listen to Peel. My other sister was given a Sony Walkman as a Crimbo pressie and it was an absolute revelation at the time as I'd never used headphones before, and you could really get lost in your music lying on your bed in the dark.

So yeah, I take it all back regarding da kidz - they've got it made!


Hmm.

In the sixties when I was in my early twenties, I managed a TV and electrical appliance store for a now defunct chain.

Radiogram with a cocktail cabinet?

This was the best seller. 105 guineas. Bleupunkt.
Around £2,300 now

They were very popular with the West Indians who lived in bed sits in North London. They'd come over to work on the buses and the tube. They bought them on the drip. But were always polite and good payers.

$_86.JPG



Long demo video

 
I vaguely remember having a really crap tape recorder and holding to microphone to the speaker on the transistor radio to try and record the top twenty.
 
Yep, that's what it looked like!

It had a dark wood finish, skinny legs, those sliding compartments and the record deck slid out so you could stack your records.

God, it was crap!
 
It's a rip off, pure and simple.

Why buy a Vinyl album for £20 when you can get the CD for £10?

When the two formats were side by side in the past (I didn't buy anything on cassette and MiniDisc passed me by) there wasn't such a huge discrepancy.

Supply and demand is always trotted out as an explanation as if it's a form of justification for greed. It's not. But then the music industry doesn't really care about music, just business.
If you are not able to play vinyl or you were nave around in the 70' 80' you will never understand :)
 
Ha Ha Gibbsy I sooo remember that and holding the pause button when the DJ spoke and trying to get the start of the record without missing the intro :)

Mind you I shop dob you in for that now having been a record industry employee Ha Ha
 
I'm so glad this post has taken off, so many good memories and hopefully a few younger people will be trying out vinyl for the first time due to the comments. (not the cheep record players from HMV though!)
 
My 19 year old grandson has zero interest in going from his phone sourced music, likes it on the move. Give him his due he will listen to some of the vintage music in my collection even though he's never heard of half of them and appreciates the audio quality from my kit. He's just started work in Currys and his father gave him some sage advice.

'If you see your grandfather coming into the store......run'.
 
I gave up on Vinyl years ago (RP8 & Microgroove), unless you buy Audiophile pressings you are wasting your time, my last order of 4 LP's from Amazon resulted in 3 having to go back all with QC / pressing issues.!

What is HiFi about a needle scrapping along a plastic groove, the world has moved on!

Got to love Vinyl lovers, they delude themselves into thinking vinyl is better then digital and the fact is it is not.
 
I gave up on Vinyl years ago (RP8 & Microgroove), unless you buy Audiophile pressings you are wasting your time, my last order of 4 LP's from Amazon resulted in 3 having to go back all with QC / pressing issues.!

What is HiFi about a needle scrapping along a plastic groove, the world has moved on!

Got to love Vinyl lovers, they delude themselves into thinking vinyl is better then digital and the fact is it is not.

Why are Vinyl lovers deluded if they like something?

It's not either/or, or at least it doesn't have to be.

Vinyl was the first of the recorded medium you could play domestically. All the various formats have come (cassette, CD) and gone (8-track, MiniDisc, DAT) and yet it still survives. It must be doing something right.
 
I gave up on Vinyl years ago (RP8 & Microgroove), unless you buy Audiophile pressings you are wasting your time, my last order of 4 LP's from Amazon resulted in 3 having to go back all with QC / pressing issues.!

What is HiFi about a needle scrapping along a plastic groove, the world has moved on!

Got to love Vinyl lovers, they delude themselves into thinking vinyl is better then digital and the fact is it is not.

It not better,but different i feel if people prefer the sound of Vinyl,that's fair enought,room for everybody :)
 
Aaaw! The good old days, when everything was wonderful and cheap as chips. :rotfl:

I've got vinyl LP's but not in a rush to buy a TT.
CD is the way forward, far better sound and less hassle to Play and Store. :)
 
Why are Vinyl lovers deluded if they like something?

It's not either/or, or at least it doesn't have to be.

Vinyl was the first of the recorded medium you could play domestically. All the various formats have come (cassette, CD) and gone (8-track, MiniDisc, DAT) and yet it still survives. It must be doing something right.
They are not deluded for liking something. They are deluded if they believe it is better. As a quibble it was shellac and clay which was the first audio recorded medium in mass circulation. Vinyl was a later substrate.
CDs still vastly outnumber Vinyl by sales, and plays. DAT and Minidisc have disappeared because semiconductor memory in sd cards is superior for robustness . Digital storage on magnetic hard drives and now including recordable optical CD and DVD for capacity and longitivity.
The world has moved on. Vinyl by its inherent limitations cannot
 
Anyone else remember having to tape pennies/half-pennies etc. To the headshell area of the arm on the old stacking/auto-return record players to get them to play problem/warped records?

Jim
 
Hmm.

In the sixties when I was in my early twenties, I managed a TV and electrical appliance store for a now defunct chain.

Radiogram with a cocktail cabinet?

This was the best seller. 105 guineas. Bleupunkt.
Around £2,300 now

They were very popular with the West Indians who lived in bed sits in North London. They'd come over to work on the buses and the tube. They bought them on the drip. But were always polite and good payers.

View attachment 1217118


Long demo video


Cheat... They did not have Bailey's Irish Cream back in the day!.
 
They are not deluded for liking something. They are deluded if they believe it is better. As a quibble it was shellac and clay which was the first audio recorded medium in mass circulation. Vinyl was a later substrate.
CDs still vastly outnumber Vinyl by sales, and plays. DAT and Minidisc have disappeared because semiconductor memory in sd cards is superior for robustness . Digital storage on magnetic hard drives and now including recordable optical CD and DVD for capacity and longitivity.
The world has moved on. Vinyl by its inherent limitations cannot

You are completely and utterly wrong :p

"Better" is an entirely subjective assessment unless there is an agreed definition and means of objectively measuring that criteria - some will simply feel that vinyl sounds "better" than Digital media and as duch who is anyone to say that they are "wrong"?

Am I "wrong" because I thing that Strawberry ice-cream tastes "better" than chocolate ice-cream?

or Volbeat's music is "better" than Bach's?

Jim
 
You can't knock anyone for wanting a particular form of music, unless they listen to the Spice Girls, but that's another debate. Vinyl lovers will always press their case (pun intended). Is it nostalgia or are they right. It's their choice. I prefer SACD, sadly I simply cannot get, or indeed afford, all the titles I want. CD comes a strong second provided the mix itself has not been subjected to the dreadful loudness war.

Which is best? Does it really matter. As for kit then no doubt buying a £1800 SACD player would have vinyl lovers looking at me with some wide eyes and some amusement. I can sit back and enjoy both sides of an album, replay my favourite tracks and not worry about a build up of dust and debris on any stylus. Having to leave the comfort of my armchair to turn the disc over, take another ten minutes cleaning the other side and do it all over again. Left that behind in the early 1990s.

Or is that just me being a lazy b******.:)
 
If you want a record by let's say the Beatles chances are you will not find one under £30 (and I'm talking new press not collectible) Yet you you can find say The Band for £8.99.

My point is this.... We are being ripped off! It cost's no more to make a Beatles record than it does a record by the band,

Ive been buying music across multiple formats for decades and it has always been this way.
Certain big names always command a premium and never show up as “ nice price” editions or in bundle promotions.
I remember paying 30 quid for The wall back when it first came out on
CD, and this was when 30 quid was a lot of money.
 
Anyone else remember having to tape pennies/half-pennies etc. To the headshell area of the arm on the old stacking/auto-return record players to get them to play problem/warped records?

Jim
Yeah. Buggered several records that way! I don't miss the past :)
Still got all my vinyl though.
 
You are completely and utterly wrong :p

"Better" is an entirely subjective assessment unless there is an agreed definition and means of objectively measuring that criteria - some will simply feel that vinyl sounds "better" than Digital media and as duch who is anyone to say that they are "wrong"?

Am I "wrong" because I thing that Strawberry ice-cream tastes "better" than chocolate ice-cream?

or Volbeat's music is "better" than Bach's?

Jim
Sorry better does imply objective criteria.The word you were searching for was prefers or preferences
 
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Should also have said I agree with Gibbsy about SACD. The few I have are noticeably better to listen to than the standard CD version. Shame my SACD player went bang and I couldn't afford a replacement at the time. I must rectify that.
 
They are not deluded for liking something. They are deluded if they believe it is better. As a quibble it was shellac and clay which was the first audio recorded medium in mass circulation. Vinyl was a later substrate.
CDs still vastly outnumber Vinyl by sales, and plays. DAT and Minidisc have disappeared because semiconductor memory in sd cards is superior for robustness . Digital storage on magnetic hard drives and now including recordable optical CD and DVD for capacity and longitivity.
The world has moved on. Vinyl by its inherent limitations cannot

I had a feeling you would reply at some point.

First of all, I stand corrected on the origins of Vinyl in the home - apologies.

Secondly, I'm not sure what sales have to do with anything; being popular doesn't always equate to being good. CD is far more convenient than Vinyl I'll grant you that; to use, to store.

Thirdly, we keep hearing about the world "moving on". That's fine, but some of us (many of us, it seems) are happy to embrace new or current technologies without abandoning everything that came before it. I don't know how this Vinyl versus CD "war" came about, but we don't see something similar in DVD versus Blu-Ray (or 4K) so I'm not sure why this is being perpetuated?

The simple fact is, in the same way that a lot of stuff is only ever released on DVD and not Blu-Ray, a lot of stuff is/was released on Vinyl that has never seen the light of day on CD. So what are you supposed to do?

I don't really get the hatred for Vinyl. I love having a turntable AND CD player (and tape deck too!). It's all about the music, after all, and if it's only available on a particular format, then it makes perfect sense to have the means to reproduce it.
 

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