Why is Vinyl so much more expensive than CD?

distressed

Grumpyrocker said:

I don't buy many vinyl records. Just tends to be favourite bands where I'll buy direct to help them stay in business. I don't begrudge the high costs of vinyl when most of it is going to the band. 

This. The majority of the vinyl I buy is from the small bands I get to see on tour, or from friends' bands.

DavidR

stickyfiddle said:

And of course no one wants to build a new manufacturing capability because the bottom might fall out of the market and they’ll be left with a load of equipment for an obsolete format. Again…

Is a very good point.

roberty

distressed said:

Grumpyrocker said:

I don't buy many vinyl records. Just tends to be favourite bands where I'll buy direct to help them stay in business. I don't begrudge the high costs of vinyl when most of it is going to the band. 

This. The majority of the vinyl I buy is from the small bands I get to see on tour, or from friends' bands.

Not forgetting the little labels too

distressed

roberty said:

Not forgetting the little labels too

Of course, given that the majority of music I listen to comes from these.

axisus

I still remember the last vinyl album I bought - Kings X Faith, Hope, Love, 1990. After that is was all CDs

viz

Me too - got Duran Duran’s Pop Trash deluxe limited edition on pre-order yesterday

theatreanchor

axisus said:

I still remember the last vinyl album I bought - Kings X Faith, Hope, Love, 1990. After that is was all CDs

Oh I liked that record!

axisus

theatreanchor said:

axisus said:

I still remember the last vinyl album I bought - Kings X Faith, Hope, Love, 1990. After that is was all CDs

Oh I liked that record!

Their first three albums were all brilliant! (that being number 3)

idiotwindow

ICBM said:

Because record companies have identified another excess-profit marketing stream, in the same way as they did when CD was the must-have and vinyl was out of fashion… CDs were more than double the price of vinyl, for no actual manufacturing reason.

It's interesting to think that CDs are roughly the same price nowadays (in actual pound terms, unadjusted for inflation) as they were back in the late '80s. LPs by contrast are 5-6x what they cost back then (again in actual pound numbers). Which is probably not far off where they should be when 35 years of real world inflation is taken into account.

ICBM

idiotwindow said:

It's interesting to think that CDs are roughly the same price nowadays (in actual pound terms, unadjusted for inflation) as they were back in the late '80s. LPs by contrast are 5-6x what they cost back then (again in actual pound numbers). Which is probably not far off where they should be when 35 years of real world inflation is taken into account.

No, according to the Bank of England inflation calculator, £5.99 - the typical price of a single vinyl album in 1985, when I was buying them most - is only equivalent to £17.58 today. They're almost twice that now.

idiotwindow

ICBM said:

idiotwindow said:

It's interesting to think that CDs are roughly the same price nowadays (in actual pound terms, unadjusted for inflation) as they were back in the late '80s. LPs by contrast are 5-6x what they cost back then (again in actual pound numbers). Which is probably not far off where they should be when 35 years of real world inflation is taken into account.

No, according to the Bank of England inflation calculator, £5.99 - the typical price of a single vinyl album in 1985, when I was buying them most - is only equivalent to £17.58 today. They're almost twice that now.

That's why I referred to "real world" inflation. CPI and other official rates only tell part of the story. Income adjusted prices usually tell another story.

sweepy

Average price for an album from HMV is £25, Ltd colour runs etc cost more. Records just sound better/nicer though pressing quality is patchy at best. Best investment  I made was a Project wet/vac record cleaner, this let me trawl the s/h shops for some bargains, usually £6 and upwards 

warhead

mrkb said:

Kilgore said:

Vinyl records are handcrafted by skilled artisans in small workshops.

I thought the artists scratched the grooves in themselves on a potters wheel! If they don’t I can’t see why they cost so much.

Guess you should draw a parallel to why some guitars cost as much as they do and things might get clearer........

roberty

sweepy said:

Average pro ice for an album from HMV is £25, Ltd colour runs etc cost more. Records just sound better/nicer though pressing quality is patchy at best. Best investment  I made was a Project wet/vac record cleaner, this let me trawl the s/h shops for some bargains, usually £6 and upwards 

I got an ultrasonic bath thing shipped from Poland a few years ago. It works really well. A lot of people recommend a vacuum afterwards but I feel like I'm already in too deep. Part of me wants to clean them while another part of me says "what are you doing you said bastard"

fretmeister

Anything that sells in relatively small numbers has to cost more to make the manufacturing worthwhile.

A 300 page book costs X to make and if it is a Harry Potter they can sell it for £4 and make good profits

If a 300 page book is a study on the neurology of mating turtles and will only sell 10,000 copies at best across the entire world then that book needs to cost £300 to make it economic to do it at all.

theatreanchor

fretmeister said:

Anything that sells in relatively small numbers has to cost more to make the manufacturing worthwhile.

A 300 page book costs X to make and if it is a Harry Potter they can sell it for £4 and make good profits

If a 300 page book is a study on the neurology of mating turtles and will only sell 10,000 copies at best across the entire world then that book needs to cost £300 to make it economic to do it at all.

If that was the case, CDs should be more expensive than vinyl! 

https://www.bbc.com/news/64919126.amp

Winny_Pooh

theatreanchor said:

fretmeister said:

Anything that sells in relatively small numbers has to cost more to make the manufacturing worthwhile.

A 300 page book costs X to make and if it is a Harry Potter they can sell it for £4 and make good profits

If a 300 page book is a study on the neurology of mating turtles and will only sell 10,000 copies at best across the entire world then that book needs to cost £300 to make it economic to do it at all.

If that was the case, CDs should be more expensive than vinyl! 

https://www.bbc.com/news/64919126.amp

It's one of the reasons, not the only one. Cds are just massively cheaper to made and there's excess production machinery from their late 90's peak to do so. Vinyl died alot earlier and is a physically larger product on top of that.

RocknRollDave

Labels milking the “it sounds better on vinyl” hipsters.

Serves them right, if you ask me.

darthed1981

fretmeister said:

Anything that sells in relatively small numbers has to cost more to make the manufacturing worthwhile.

A 300 page book costs X to make and if it is a Harry Potter they can sell it for £4 and make good profits

If a 300 page book is a study on the neurology of mating turtles and will only sell 10,000 copies at best across the entire world then that book needs to cost £300 to make it economic to do it at all.

I get that's an analogy, but that hasn't been true of books since digital press became the standard, in the past you needed to make plates etc for printing, these days you need some text that's been formatted for print by software.

Should you self publish a book on Amazon, they will offer to let you have a print-on-demand paperback option.  My brother self-published a novel, he sold about fifty copies, it cost me £5.99

Textbooks might fall in that category, but the "standards", books pretty much any medical student would buy, so thousands of copies sold a year, sell for £40-80... because as people HAVE to buy them.  There is a fairly creepy relationship between publishers, lecturers and "suggested" texts as well.

The reason vinyl has gone from often £10 a record (anyone else remember 2 for 20 vinyl, or £9.99 for loyalty card holders at HMV?  Most of you - why yes... it was only about four years ago) is because...

1. Vinyl is trendy.
2. Trendy things cost more.

There have been some increases in raw materials costs, and a bit of scarcity, but in reality it's gouging, pure and simple.

Shopping around still gets some bargains, and the indies are still maintaining around £21 or so for new albums... 

On the other hand, basically giving away physical media is back!!  Remember 99p or 1.99 CD singles in the 90s that the labels gave to the stores?  I kept getting pop-ups telling me they wanted to send me a cd or cassette of "Vampire" by Olivia Rodrigo for 99p each... will cost more than that to post them to me!

fretmeister