There are always things to consider about having a physical collection of music – what’s your favorite piece? What’s the most expensive thing you have? What act’s works are complete in your collection? What rare or out of the way pieces do you own that are cool to have? And the most important question that we ask all of the time and plagues our bank accounts – what’s next?
Today I’m not going to ask or answer any of those questions. The one I’m going to work with is this – what is the weirdest thing in my collection?
Being weird isn’t a matter of the music itself – I have a bunch of stuff on my shelves that would be considered weird. Death metal and jazz is a hell of a combo and I’m not sure why I own several examples of it. But that’s not the issue at hand today.
What I’m concerned with is weird, as in format or presentation. I have a few oddball things that do stick out, like a few albums on DVD audio that are in bigger cases, oddly-sized box sets and things of that nature. But none of those really qualify as the most weird thing in my collection.
I considered the question for a moment but then I quickly remembered something I’ve owned for a long time that easily qualifies to answer this question. I proudly present the 2007 album from British doom merchants Paradise Lost, In Requiem.
There’s nothing odd about the album itself – Paradise Lost are a great band and I really enjoyed their material in the 00’s. But if you notice the box in the picture, this presentation is a box set. And it’s a box set of 7-inch vinyl. Yes, this is the full album presented on four small records, as opposed to a standard 12-inch record. And yes, the album is available in that standard format as well.
This box set did come with a few extras – it has the CD version of the album as well as a poster. The CD was important at the time, as we were in the “digital collection” age and it was super cool to get a CD along with vinyl so we could import the album into our collections with ease. Those days are long gone, as streaming has rendered a digital collection unneeded for many.
This edition also comes with a few bonus tracks – the vinyl has a bonus called Missing, while the CD includes that as well as Silent In Heart. These two songs were also available on a few deluxe CD versions of the album but those and this seem to be the only sources of the material. So I guess this can qualify as weird but not necessarily useless.
I honestly can’t say why I even bought this. I don’t specifically recall wanting it. I did used to order from Century Media records on occasion back then and I probably just thought it was a neat thing to have so I put it in with my usual order. It’s possible they also had it on clearance, but again I don’t remember. All I know is I bought it and here it is 17 years later.
And, all else being equal, it will remain in my collection. The box has a tiny premium online, not enough to really bother with unloading – it’s just a hair more “valuable” than its retail price. I would also figure that the box is not a high demand item – there aren’t lines of people queued up to score a 7-inch box set copy of a doom metal album from 2007.
So I will speculate that this oddball box set will remain in my collection until I’m not around to have a collection anymore. The only practical way this gets unseated as the weirdest thing in my collection is if I buy something weirder than it. I don’t go out of my way to find weird music stuff but it is out there, so that is certainly a possibility.
Do you have questions, comments or concerns? Feel free to use the comment form below, or head to my contact page.
I was thinking about the state of my music collection recently. By this point I have a fair amount of stuff – around 800 CDs and 250 or so records. But the point of today’s post isn’t really the amount, but more of the timing of it all.
I’ve had a music collection of some sort since I was probably eight. Tapes and a few old records, then CDs for a long time, then back to records to some degree. As I got to thinking about it, I realized that the vast majority of my collection is from 2008 and on. I built most of it through the 2010’s, and honestly most of my records have been picked up these past couple of years.
It’s kind of sad in a way, as I wish I had more of the stuff I used to way back when. I honestly didn’t have any real collector’s items or anything, this isn’t about that – the stuff I have bought in the past several years commands way more value than the stuff I had in 1991.
But I do kind of hate that I had to let things go over the years. In some cases, stuff simply got lost due to moving. A box misplaced at one time was actually a bunch of old records my relatives gave me. It wasn’t all great stuff but there were some cool albums in there and I liked having them. Other odds and ends I couldn’t even really tell you what happened – I’m not even sure what I did with my old tape collection, it might have walked off when my family moved houses while I was in the Navy in the mid ’90s’.
The bulk of stuff though, mostly CDs, met a more obvious fate – at various points in my life I had to sell stuff off. Back in the early 2000’s, a CD could actually fetch a few bucks from a store. Throw ten in the pile and you got enough for food and gas money, or even beer and cigarette money, which honestly was where I blew a fair bit of that cash. I had one or two times where I had to basically start my life from scratch, and the vast majority of my music collection was sold off for that purpose. These days a CD collection probably isn’t valuable enough to float a person for a month’s rent or whatever, but back then it did work.
With ever rule or tendency there is an exception, of course. And my collection being a pile of stuff I’ve bought from ’08 onward does have its exception – this one CD that I bought on release day in 1994. It’s the unsellable CD – not because it’s worth anything or even for sentimental value – I love the album, but I have it on vinyl and a reissued CD edition. It’s unsellable because it’s just that – the packaging just doesn’t hold up and no one would buy it.
A lot of people reading now who were around back then probably already knew what album I was talking about. The CD packaging for The Downward Spiral was infamously “collector unfriendly.” It has a rickety cardboard sleeve to hold a slimline jewel case and a thick booklet. These did not hold up well at all and the packaging bombed out pretty quick on them, even if someone tried to take care of it. As I recall from a lot of collections back then, many people did not try to care for their stuff.
My copy I guess still holds up – the CD itself has small scratches but plays just fine and the whole jewel case part is in primo shape. But the outer packaging is hosed, in fact it broke apart when I dug it out for these pictures. It all looks a bit waterlogged but I can’t for the life of me figure when it got wet – I think it might just be from the famous Missouri humidity. Nothing else around it or in my collection at all has any signs of being waterlogged.
In the end I guess I do have one CD from my old collection, if only because it was such dim packaging that no one wanted to buy it. I’m kind of glad, it’s nice to have on hand even though it only serves sentimental purposes. I can’t be “that guy” who has an entire life’s worth of a collection on hand, but hey, that’s ok – I have this beat up old copy of a Nine Inch Nails album still.
Last week I covered The Downward Spiral in great detail for its 30th anniversary, that post is here.
For questions, comments or other concerns, use the comment form below or use my contact page to reach me.
I’m getting everything set up to kick off my run through the Iron Maiden singles series. I’ll begin it next Thursday and it will run until its conclusion. Right now that appears to be sometime in June, though I expect the list will grow between now and then.
As it stands, everything I have in my collection is a vinyl single. There are some CD singles I want to get and as they aren’t expensive it will be the area I focus my collecting on the next few months so the list will grow a bit. This could run through the bulk of the summer if I get the ones I have my eye on. The vinyl list might grow some as well. And obviously I will revisit the list when I acquire new ones after I’ve made my initial run through.
This is by no means a complete collection of Iron Maiden singles. They have a bunch and there are a few that carry insane prices. My collection will never be complete, short of winning the lottery or finally getting that huge contract from a baseball team that I’ve been patiently waiting on for decades. But I’ve been able to gather a fair collection together and the Maiden stuff I have would be the absolute last I’d part with, only in an absolute catastrophe would I unload anything.
I am simply using the order these pop up on in Discogs sorted by year, so I don’t know if the exact release dates are in proper order. It’s not that big of a deal – everything will come out in the wash. Also I am including what would probably be considered EP’s here. Maiden only have a few released truly considered EP’s and I don’t see any point in keeping them out of what is a huge list anyway.
That’s about all for now, the series kicks off next Thursday. Until then, up the irons!
From time to time I like to revisit the topic of vinyl record prices. I talked about them not too long ago and, while returns are still early, it looks like the bottom might not be falling out of the market after all. There’s also a huge piece of news for a highly-coveted album from the 90’s being reissued.
While the US is apparently in an unsaid recession, inflation has been falling a bit and so far most collectibles markets seem to be holding steady. I keep an eye on the price of a few different LPs just to see how the price is moving, and so far nothing is off. No falloffs big or small, everything is holding steady. Maybe the number of sales are declining some, but that’s not information I have real access to.
I said last time that a vinyl crash wouldn’t be a good thing for buyers, even if prices fell. It looks like maybe, must maybe, we won’t see the worst case scenario of an all-out crash. I would expect some attrition in a down economy, but as of now we don’t know just how down this economy will truly be. At least at this point, things appear to be holding steady enough.
There are two ways to lower the price of secondary market titles that have huge price tags -crash the vinyl market to the point of oblivion, or reissue the old material. The second option is much preferred. And there is a heavy hitter coming to the reissue market soon.
In September, the market will see a new pressing of Dirt, the 1992 masterpiece from Alice In Chains. I can’t say for sure how many copies of the new pressing there will be – I thought somewhere said it was 2,000, but I can’t say for sure. Hopefully there will be enough to go around, again I don’t know the details.
It is a fantastic time for a repress of Dirt, because prices were getting out of control. All year it has sold at or near $100 US for a 2009 reissue (the one I happen to have). Not much movement since the reissue news, though a copy did sell for $60. Listing still abound at over $100, but I don’t see many copies moving until the new reissue’s stock makes its way through the market.
And I wonder what happens at the end of it all – will the 2009 press crash in price, or will it hold if the new reissue is limited in scope? I know the Facelift reissue awhile back was somewhat limited in nature, but I also know there are still stray copies out there at retail prices. Will Dirt get snatched up before anyone knows what happened or will it linger on shelves for a little while?
So Dirt is getting bailed out, at least for a bit. But what about the other coveted Alice In Chains records? The self-titled has never seen a reissue and costs an arm and a leg right now. If we are to use 30th anniversaries as a planned reissue guide, we have three years to go before a reissue. That’s a long time.
And what about Alice In Chains MTV Unplugged? The record was at retail prices not all that long ago, in fact I picked one up for roughly $30 late 2020 or whenever. Now? That thing can’t be had for under $200. And there isn’t a reissue in ready sight for it. I’ve said it before and haven’t done it yet, but I’m tempted to cash out on that one and get me some damn money.
That’s the one I’m really gonna watch over the next few months. I’m curious how Dirt does, but with no reissue in sight, how far does Unplugged go? A potential buyer apparently can’t rely on a shit economy to depress prices, so should a seller lean into the good times and cash out? I ask to myself to decide what I should do with a coveted record I could turn into several other records, and I ask in a general sense in our weird, shaky economy when we try to decide what to do with the relative value of stuff.
The Alice In Chains record prices are something I’ll keep an eye on in the next few months. In terms of blogging, I want to see how Dirt does after the reissue. I would think the older reissue, like mine, would tank, but early indications don’t show that. And we’ll see how the economy holds up, and if there are people out there still willing to throw down $300 plus on Unplugged, or if things start going south and demand softens.
There’s the general vinyl economy, and apparently there’s also the Alice In Chains vinyl sub-economy. Let’s see if I should ride it to the moon or get out while it’s hot out.
I’ve written about this a few times now but it’s time again to look at the price of vinyl. It’s a massive topic in the world of music collecting (obviously) and it’s been a thorn in the side of many a collector for the past while. I know I feel the pinch and have tightened up my buying, and several others have relayed that they too are either limiting or cutting out buying altogether.
But – there is a mitigating factor to consider here. It’s a big one too. The economy? It’s a pile of trash right now. Inflation is out the yazoo (though prices are apparently creeping their way back down). Wealth disparity is at some kind of all-time high and everything just seems like a burning wreck right now. Even if things get better, it will be incremental and will likely take time to get to some kind of plateau.
So – what’s the rule about what happens to the prices of collectibles in a crap economy? Collectibles take a nose dive in price when the economy sucks. It makes sense – spending money on collectible stuff is a luxury, and in tough times many people have to pare down and focus on the essentials. It might be a lovely thought to have a collection of every Air Supply single released in all major countries, but who can afford that when rent is quadrupling in price?
There is a bit of caveat here – this possible drop in price likely only applies to the secondary market. New vinyl releases will most likely retain their current price points. New vinyl has been going up, a symptom of supply constraints and the rising costs of everything. Vinyl costs more to make so it will cost more to buy. Maybe there will be some budget-minded reissues or something once the supply issues are fully worked out, but I would imagine the new vinyl market will remain mostly where it is now.
But old records? Those have been priced to the moon in the past few years. Before the great vinyl boom of the 2010’s, a person could hit up a yard sale or flea market and walk away with a nice copy of an old standard for a quarter or a buck at best. Even a copy of a hallowed release like Air Supply’s Greatest Hits could be tripped over at the entrance to a flea market.
Since the vinyl boom, though, prices of even pedestrian old releases can bust $20. Budget record shopping is almost non-existent. Anything with a hint of collectible value is through the roof, and scarce releases like a lot of 1990’s vinyl have insane prices. That is the market that is likely to suffer in an economic downturn.
All out of love AND money
I haven’t noticed much action on prices yet, or much of anything from the vinyl market. But the signs are out there in other collectible categories. The collectible card games market (Magic The Gathering, etc) is seeing soft demand and lower prices on old product. The warning bells are already ringing in that sector, and it only stands to reason that other markets will follow.
Of course any real kind of downturn doesn’t happen overnight. There will still be tons of listings on Discogs for prices well above the listed median. But those records will just sit there. Stores that want to move inventory will begin marking down. And private collectors faced with troubling times will list their stuff in fire sale mode, driving prices down.
This scenario isn’t necessarily a boon for the budget-minded collector. The vinyl boom brought about a host of new record stores, owned and operated as small business ventures. Those stores will suffer during a vinyl downturn. This whole thing won’t just be a price correction because of the economy – it will lower demand and stunt the ability of sellers to find buyers. The ability to get vinyl at lower prices would come after a massive culling and our collecting landscape would not be the same.
Now I don’t know what will truly happen – it could be total doomsday, or it could be some lesser version of events that knocks stuff down a bit but doesn’t have earth-shattering effects on the scene as a whole. But the formula for a vinyl downturn is there – simply put, it’s in the economic downturn as a whole. How it all plays out remains to be seen.
On the note of vinyl and prices – I know myself and many others have been limiting purchases, or given up totally. I’ve only bought a few things this year and I have few plans for future buying – it’s expensive and I need my money for other things.
Here is a video done recently by my buddy David on his YouTube channel Hard Rock Reverie. He talks about this issue and his own suspension of purchases. There are a lot of collecting dominoes falling right now and that’s probably not a good sign for the state of the market.
It is time to update the ongoing Tool Fear Inoculum vinyl saga. I have posted about it before, this was when I brought it up as part of a larger look at vinyl prices. While I want to cover that latter topic again, this Tool thing has grown legs of its own now and deserves its own post.
Last I wrote, the band had offered an ultra deluxe 5 LP, signed version of the album to VIP ticket holders at concerts. The box was priced at $800 for them. A “normal” (or, uh, unsigned) version of the box was made available to the public in April for around $160. I secured a copy, even though I’ve had a bit of a year and have better things to spend my money on.
My last line about the Tool LP package in that post has me cracking up right now:
“These will be flipped very hard when they hit in April, no doubt about it.”
It’s LOL time. Quite the opposite of being flipped hard, it turns out there is plentiful supply of the 5 LP box set. As soon as the boxes hit the market it was clear that supply was going to outpace demand. $160 quickly turned into $130, then the Discogs median crashed into the $99 dollar range. It is very easy to pick up a copy of the 5 LP box set for $99 plus $8 or so shipping today, months after release. Brick and mortar stores will sell them at cost just to get rid of them, which is a touch more than online pricing but should tell you something about just how depressed this asset is financially.
It turns out I was wrong about something. But hey, in today’s climate of Record Store Day flipping and price gouging, can anyone blame me for guessing that the Tool box would go for big money? I was far from the only one – many Tool fans rushed to get their pre-orders in, with good old FOMO (fear of missing out) playing its part in the modern vinyl economy.
Before I move on I do want to mention something – I am not, at all, mad about this. I wanted Fear Inoculum on vinyl and I have it. It’s not “worthless” by any means, though it is worth less than what I paid for it. It is an album I really wanted to have on vinyl and now it is on my shelf – its financial value is not a concern beyond any possible replacement cost from a disaster of some sort. I don’t feel “ripped off” because the price is less than I paid for it. I don’t complain when a record has a secondary market value far above its retail price, so I’m not gonna cry over spilled milk if one isolated album actually was pressed beyond demand.
If the Tool vinyl saga ended here, it would be a mildly funny but not all that out there story. It’s almost a nice thing – in the age of vinyl scarcity and supply constraints, a group of fans got a deluxe format for not a bad price. But, alas, the saga does not end here.
This is actually the third time I brought up the Tool vinyl in a post. I also covered it in a post called “Sticker Shock” when the world first learned of the deluxe box. I’ve updated it once to reflect a lower price point than what I originally anticipated, and I’m about to update it again to reflect that almost everything I said in that post is now bullshit. Or actually, it isn’t.
Here’s a choice cut from the Sticker Shock post:
“After all – if the vinyl takes up 5 sides, that only requires 3 LPs.”
It’s true – the deluxe version of Fear Inoculum is on 5 single-sided vinyl records with etchings on the other sides. That would easily fit on 3 LPs, it’s very obvious. It was obvious to me when I typed it in February and it’s obvious to Tool and their record label, who will be releasing a 3 LP version of Fear Inoculum in August. The price point for this release is running around $65.
On the surface it does seem funny that there will be a $65 version of the record when a $99 deluxe version can be had. But hey, in today’s economy, that $35 difference can add up. It saves money, it takes up less space than the gigantisaur 5 LP box, it (probably) isn’t insanely reflective and impossible to photograph like the 5 LP box. This version also has unique artwork from guitarist Adam Jones, so I’ll bet even some people who bought the big box will also buy this. Tool fans are easily parted from their money, we’ve certainly seen that in action. (I will not be buying the new configuration, for clarity’s sake).
Something else I said in Sticker Shock still rings true – Aenima is not readily available on record, the original pressing is scarce and costs several hundred dollars. And yet that’s better than the status of 10,000 Days, which is 16 years old and has never been pressed on (official) vinyl. But here we are with now two official pressings of the most recent album. That is one point several fans have been up in arms about that I can’t fault them for. I too would like to have vinyl copies of both of those records.
Of course, no one outside of the usual channels knows if there are plans for pressings of those other albums – we’ll find out if an when pre-orders open, more likely than not. It would seem strange to essentially flood the market with Fear Inoculum yet ignore highly sought-after versions of past records. But Tool is a strange band, so I won’t place a bet on it either way.
And so now, finally, I can (probably) lay the Tool Fear Inoculum vinyl saga to rest. My old “Sticker Shock” post from February seems freaking obsolete now, and even the blurb in the other post barely covered the tip of the iceberg with how this whole ordeal panned out. But hey, it’s hard to complain about having a ready supply of something on vinyl, given the scarcity and supply constraints still gripping the industry.
One thing I’ve meant to write more about but haven’t got to much of is the topic of collecting. Though the issue of collecting is not necessary to discuss music, it is an important part of music for me and many other people.
Music collecting looked to be going the way of the dinosaur roughly a decade ago as digital music and streaming took completely over. But just as the digital revolution seemed to be ready to deal physical formats a death blow, something happened – vinyl sales shot up. They shot up big and are still going strong today. In fact, the industry is plagued with delays and shortages. The secondary market has become a nightmare of price gouging and watching stuff that was once a dollar in the bargain bin go for $20 or more.
While vinyl saw a new life in the 2010s, one format that looked to be on the way out was the compact disc. The CD revolutionized music in the 1980’s and especially the 90’s. It bulldozed cassettes and vinyl records into near oblivion, then saw itself outmoded in the face of digital formats. People sold off their CD collections, the prices tanked, and stores tied to the format faced extinction.
2021 delivered a bit of favorable news for the CD – sales were up a bit over 1% for the year. This article from Pitchfork gives the stats breakdown – the CD moved 40.4 million units in 2021, up from 40.1 a year prior. Though not the biggest sales spike ever, this is the first year CD sales increased since 2004.
One wonders how much life the CD truly has in it. The sales spike was prompted by the two biggest names in music – Adele and Taylor Swift. A new Adele album will cause sales to soar, and Taylor is re-recording her music to escape unfavorable rights management of her old catalog.
Is this sales surge a flash in the pan or a sign of a shift back to the nearly-dead CD format? Adele doesn’t release new music that often and can’t prop up the music industry on her own. And Taylor will run out of back catalog to re-do at some point. Are there other sales drivers to sustain a renewed push for CD’s?
A fair portion of my disorganized CD collection
It is easy to write off the CD surge as a one-off event. After all, the CD format is outpaced by the convenience of streaming. While streaming is not generally of the same quality as a CD, it is obviously good enough for the masses. There doesn’t seem to be an indicator that people might move from streaming back to the CD.
Except, well, there are a few. The jump back to CDs might not have anything to do with streaming – it lies in the current state of vinyl.
Vinyl is in the midst of a huge renaissance right now. Sales are huge, record stores have opened across the land and collectors are gleefully shoving handfuls of cash off for the sweet new limited pressing of their favorite acts. It was an unlikely resurrection, fueled in no small part by the much-reviled hipster of the late 00’s and early 10’s.
But there are signs of trouble on the horizon. Right now vinyl is expensive and only growing in price, much like everything else these days. The secondary market is out of reach for most collectors of modest means. And manufacturing plants are backed up enough that some albums are getting their vinyl release almost a year after the same album dropped on CD and streaming. Major players like Adele hogging limited production resources only exacerbate the vinyl supply problem.
I know this shit is getting expensive
I don’t have statistical data in the same way we can track the rise in CD sales but I do have anecdotal evidence that some collectors are backing off vinyl and returning to the CD format. A little money goes a much longer way on CDs than on vinyl. Especially for back catalog collecting – imagine the amount of money someone would need to get, say, the Scorpions extensive catalog on record. Now have a look at used CD prices for the same band the next time you’re out. Much, much cheaper.
There is another issue looming – again anecdotal, but some independent and underground labels are having such fits getting vinyl pressed that they are considering abandoning the format. That might be a bit extreme but there is a realistic possibility that vinyl becomes a very niche and expensive high-end market while the masses may have to find content in CDs or streaming.
I don’t want to be a prophet of doom, except maybe when I’m plugging the doom genre, but it might be looking a bit hairy for vinyl. I’d guess it still has legs under it for awhile but the market forces do need some correction before a segment of the marketplace turns their backs on it. I don’t know if that will equal a new boom for CDs or not, or if this new advent of the format is just a glitch brought about by a few major artists releasing albums at once.
I do know that I and many others will maintain collections no matter what happens with the market at large, but the present and future states of affairs do shape and inform what we do. I hesitate to say that the CD is on the way back, even with some promising signs. The unfortunate part is that the most positive indicators for a CD revival are at the expense of the vinyl resurgence. Only time will tell.
One topic I want to cover more aspects of on here is music collecting. Not everyone does it these days but several of us still have collections of various physical formats. I’ve done one post so far on my own collection, as well as this post specifically about my Iron Maiden collection. And there are numerous issues within the realm of collecting that I plan to discuss going forward.
Today I want to get into vinyl collecting specifically and one huge elephant in the room that comes with modern-day record buying. Overall it’s the price of records today that has become an issue of huge concern among collectors. Back ten or so years ago old records were in flea markets for a few bucks apiece, while new records that were coming out could be had for maybe $20.
The music industry flipped on its head a few times in the past decade though, and now we live in a world where new releases push $30 or more and many old records are sought-after relics that command big prices depending on the shape they’re in. Flea market rummaging these days is reserved for the old polka classics that never had much of a market in the first place.
This isn’t a simple examination that ends with “damn, records are expensive.” There are a number of factors that play into the vinyl price inflation and why the market is the way it is today. Of course the prices of everything go up over time. If that was the only issue here I wouldn’t have a topic to write about. I know people love to lament how much cheaper things were way back when, but it’s a baseline business education fact that prices go up every year. This affects manufacturers, distributors and obviously, consumers. There’s nothing else to see here in regards to increasing prices.
What we have is a resurgence in vinyl interest. The record was a dead format, having been killed off in the early ’90’s in favor of the smaller CD. Then the digital revolution came and threatened the very existence of physical collections. I myself was still buying CDs and even a few records into the 2010’s but by and large people kept their music on their phones. This then gave way to streaming, where all you have to do is pay someone $10 a month to listen to more music than most people could ever bother with.
But then the vinyl boom came around and totally turned the physical market on its head. Records had never totally gone away – they were issued in limited pressings for diehard fans and collectors. Some of those 2000’s releases are now small goldmines. I’d love to have a vinyl copy of Neil Young’s 2007 Chrome Dreams II, but the price of admission is at least $100. And in the same year Nine Inch Nails released Year Zero, one of my favorite albums from them. If I want that record? We’re talking $250, at least.
Now both Neil Young and Trent Reznor have been pretty good about doing album reissues. I don’t have the income or desire to have original presses of everything ever released so I’d be more than happy with a new pressing of either album. Reissues do come around for a lot of albums, some that were scare in the first place or perhaps not even done on vinyl, as with much of the 1990’s. It is the saving grace for the middle-class or modest-income music collector.
But even reissues can be tough to come by, much like new releases. I don’t have a huge problem getting what I want but I have learned one valuable lesson – if I know a record is coming out, I better pre-order it and make sure I get a copy. Some new releases might be available at retail price until the pre-order sells out and will be two or three times higher ever after. And while some labels do their best to make sure reissues of even recent material are out there, the record manufacturing sector is in such short supply that lead times on new pressings are months out. It especially hits independent labels hard when the majors are filling orders in every available plant for Record Store Day reissues of the same ten albums.
I will say this about Record Store Day – I think it’s fantastic for the stores. Retail music stores were nearly extinct before this vinyl resurgence. I don’t at all mind seeing lines of people outside shops I frequent, I want these businesses to succeed and more customers is always going to be a good thing.
But RSD has a bad side, too. Multiple, in fact. It clogs up record plants, which again are in very short supply. But it also feeds into the modern market we have going on in music, gaming, shoes and even toilet paper at times – the secondary “flipper” market. In less savory terms, vinyl has fallen prey to the scalpers and price gougers.
The play is this – a record label offers a reissue or new release in limited scope, between 1,000 and 2,500 copies. Flippers buy up as many as possible and immediately post them on eBay and Discogs for insane mark-ups. Regular fans who really wanted the record but had no shot at the one copy in their local store with 35 people ahead of them in line on RSD are left out in the cold. It’s either suck it up and pay the scalpers’ prices or go without.
This issue plays out in consumer goods everywhere today. Scalpers using bots have turned current-gen gaming consoles into a total fiasco. PC stuff like GPUs are unobtainium these days. But it has redefined music collecting and not for the better.
I honestly have not gone to a Record Store Day. I’m not fond of huge lines for small buildings and also I often don’t see anything I absolutely have to have on the release lists. There’s always a record or two I wouldn’t mind having but nothing that gets me out of the house.
I did miss out on one record I would have like to have, though. In 2020 a reissue of Skid Row’s excellent Slave To The Grind was released for RSD in a limited format with bonus tracks, which is a creative way to get the clean and explicit versions of the album on one release. I was very stoked for a chance to get the record, but that chance never came. None of the local shops were able to get a single copy for their RSD allotments and the record instantly sold for $75 or more the day of release. The current price has gone over $100 on Discogs. It’s truly cheaper to get an original 1991 copy on record which was only released in a few countries and is pretty scarce.
I’m not willing to pay that much for the record even though I’d love to have it. It’s something I’ll just have to live without unless a local store gets a copy in someday and I can trade a bit into it. I’m fine with the CD copy of the explicit version I have that cost me $4.
Even without the dark aspect of flippers and scalpers, sticker shock is getting to be a thing with vinyl these days. Prices had moved to a rough average of $30 for a new copy of either a new release or reissue. But now that needle is moving upward. I’ve noticed a fair bit of new releases going for $40 or more. Hell, I paid $60 for the triple-vinyl copy of Iron Maiden’s new album Senjutsu. Yes, it’s Iron Maiden and yes I’m going to pay it, but I sure as hell noticed.
I do think this combination of factors like scalpers, supply shortages and rising prices might lead to the end of this vinyl boom. Let’s be real – this was never going to last forever. Collectibles as a whole are a weird market with unpredictable rises and falls, and in some cases those markets have now been entered into by investors. Just look at the collectible card game market for a prime example of that.
I’m not trying to be doom and gloom here, if I had my way a healthy vinyl market would continue on for the end of time. My town is lucky to have a handful of local stores that offer great selection and a much better shopping experience than ordering crap from Amazon or Discogs. But there are some alarming signs that, when put together, could lead to reduced interest in vinyl and an eventual crash in the market.
First off, labels are having issues getting records pressed. Smaller labels especially face months-long delays in getting their new albums to press. This causes smaller runs of vinyl, which feeds the scalper market by creating scarce supply to feed greater demand. The prices rise, both because of flippers and the natural or otherwise rise in prices.
What does this do? Seriously – Spotify is $10 a month. The other streaming services are roughly the same price. This is what the vast majority of music listeners use anyway so the economy of that is going to sway yet more people to it versus hunting down overpriced vinyl.
And for the diehard physical collector that refuses to give all the way in to streaming? As luck would have it, there is a much cheaper and more convenient format to consume music with. The CD is still around, though it was a battle for life there for awhile. I’ve noticed more collectors and music fans going back to the CD. Hell, any back catalog release is $5 or less these days and CD’s are literally all over the place. It’s a quiet undercurrent of people returning to that format but it’s noticeable and it’s getting a bit louder.
Should more people be turned off by the array of factors leading to higher record prices, I fear the market will suffer as a result. Many of the stores today are small businesses – they can’t survive a huge drop in demand. The vinyl boom needs to continue or at least plateau to something sustainable for them to continue on. If people keep running from the format or limit their purchases to their absolute favorite artists who often sell directly, it could spell trouble for what has been a fantastic renaissance for record stores.
Again, I hope this doomsday scenario doesn’t play out. In this crazy world that changes and mutates more often than most people change their underwear, I’d like to have something last for longer than a few years. I have X amount of life left and I’d like to spend it as a music fan and collector. Hopefully circumstances change a bit and the market can push through the rising prices, supply issues and scalper problems.
In the end, the price of records is an issue that needs to be dressed for the long-term health of the market. I can’t fix flipping nor do I have any practical ideas on how to, even though it’s a much-despised part of the modern process. But it’s not the only issue the vinyl industry faces today.
As a footnote – let’s give credit where credit is truly due to the vinyl resurgence. The independent and underground scenes in every genre kept vinyl going in a time where no one else cared. But it’s that oft-derided subculture from a decade or so ago that truly brought vinyl back. Give a round of applause to your local hipsters for kick-starting the vinyl revolution. I’ll talk more about them (uhhh, them…) another time but I wanted to throw a mention in while I was talking about this.
One aspect of music fandom/appreciation/worship/whatever is collecting. In our day and age, having a collection is not at all necessary. Collections of anything are cumbersome – they take up space, they cost money, they are at risk to perils like flood and fire, and they cost money.
I came up in the old days, when everyone had a music collection. And I’ve maintained one most of my life, from when I started piling up cassettes in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s. (Thanks, fake names and Columbia House!)
I would quickly move to CDs as the ease of use over tapes was massive. No more rewinding or fast-forwarding the end of a side, just let the album play. The CD would be my primary music format for a long time, probably from 1992 through to 2017.
Then there is the matter of the vinyl record. I would be exposed to vinyl at an early age – it was abundant in the early ’80’s. It was still for sale at retail along with cassettes and the just-emerging CD. I messed around with my parents’ collections, including a bunch of old 45 singles. That was mostly popular ’70’s stuff like Fleetwood Mac and Heart.
My current tape rack. This is only for looks, I don’t have a tape player.
I would wind up with a handful of my own records. I ended up with a stack of Sammy Hagar’s solo records that had originally belonged to my deceased uncle (sadly I no longer have those). I also wound up with other relatives’ hand-me-down records. I do recall having multiple copies of Boston’s first album and Frampton Comes Alive! There was some, uh, other stuff in there too – I kinda recall Captain and Tenille as well as a bit of Barbra Streisand. But overall I got some pretty good classic rock scores from my betters.
Then, of course, everything changed in the 2000’s. The digital music revolution hit – first as a pirated fileshare mechanic, then as a legit sales source innovated by Apple. What used to take up a lot of space on shelving could fit on a hard drive, on an iPod, and later on a phone.
I did not go quickly or quietly into the digital age – I went late as hell, kicking and screaming the whole way. “Only physical formats are real! I’d rather die with an 8-track in my hand than play an MP3!” I’m sure I said a bunch of other stupid shit, too.
My very disorganized CD shelf
Eventually I would give in and truly join the digital wave. In 2008 a buddy of mine upgraded his iPod and sold me his old one. And yeah, I finally understood it. I don’t think I need to explain the nuances of digital music versus physical formats. Can’t play your records on a drive or a stroll through the park, we all know that.
I never did fully adopt buying digital music, though. I kept with the CD as my main purchase point and I wound up with a collection of about 800 before I finally got sick of looking at so many plastic cases taking up so much space. I still haven’t moved on from them to this day but I’m on the verge of actually downsizing and keeping only the ones I really want.
Of course I’m not going to be left without a physical format to collect, and I’m sure most know what every good hipster got into back several years ago. Yes, friends, the LP record is back in business.
I had been buying records occasionally over the years and I finally made the switch to it as my primary format a few years ago. I got a bit panicked by the collectibles price spike of 2020 and quickly fleshed out my Iron Maiden collection, and also bought a bunch of other stuff because fiscal responsibility is for losers.
My first record shelf. Iron Maiden takes up the top left part, not sure how visible everything is.
As I sit today I do still buy records. Hell, I occasionally buy a CD because it’s cheap and I might need to evaluate it for a future project of some sort. But, like a lot of people, the allure of streaming music isn’t lost on me. I use Spotify pretty regularly to keep up on new releases and visit past music I don’t own or explore scenes and genres I haven’t previously had exposure to. And being blunt, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to give them 10 bucks a month than it is to drop a few hundred on any record I might possibly be interested in. I know there are issues of artist support there but I’ll let that thread hang for another time.
It’s been quite an adventure going down these twists and turns in how music is distributed. I like having a collection but I could point to more than a few reasons not to. At this point though I have some pretty cool pieces and there’s stuff I wouldn’t part with unless a total catastrophe hit. I still have a fair bit of Iron Maiden stuff I want to get and that’s before getting into the more expensive things out there. And even if I pare down how much I spend there are still boatloads of old, cheap albums out there I certainly wouldn’t mind having.
We’ll see what roads music takes in the future. The ultimate physical format, the vinyl record, prevailed just as it looked like physical collections were dead. But digital still serves the masses when it comes down to it. Is the next step a sort of neural implant, akin to something from Cyberpunk? Hard to say, but until then, I guess I’ll have some form of music taking up too much space in the house.
The Crooked Wanderer 