Mailboat: Vinyl?

[Parrot Monkey]

I’ve been noticing that many artists are still releasing their albums on good ol’ vinyl records. Of course, you can’t buy them in stores anymore, you have to go to shops that specialize in music or order online at places like Tower Records. To name some examples, every Beatles posthumous release that has came out in the last 10 years (Live at the BBC, Anthologies 1,2,3, One, Yellow Submarine Songtrack and Let it Be Naked), Brian Wilson’s two releases of 2004 (Gettin’ In Over My Head and Smile) as well as every Springsteen album that has been released in the 90s and 00s (Human Touch, Lucky Town, Ghost of Tom Joad, Greatest Hits, 18 Tracks and The Rising). Just go on Tower Records and to a search for just vinyl. It’s amazing how many artists still release LPs and are loyal to the format.

The point is, seeing how Jimmy has a soft spot in his heart for the vinyl format (read the liner notes to TT&S), why in the world has he not been releasing his albums on vinyl in addition to CD? Granted MCA considered it a silly, pointless waste of money to release new albums on the old format, and that’s probably why we don’t have Fruitcakes, Barometer Soup, Banana Wind and Christmas Island on record. But now that Jimmy is on his own label, just what is holding him back? Why no TT&S, Far Side of the World and License to Chill on vinyl? Yes, it is true all these albums contain running times that are optimized for the CD format and it would take a 2 LPs to cover each album now, but so what? That’s what was done with Springsteen’s The Rising. If they were to release LTC on vinyl now, they could give it something the CD doesn’t have: a lyric sheet with songwriting credits (seeing how they have permission to use re-print most, if not all of the lyrics now for the covers) which is a piece of documentation many wish to have.

So why not?

[Key Lime Lee]

Vynil is a niche market - catering to nostalgic audiophiles with an aversion to digital. As a mainstream market it's dead. Why waste the money to master and produce something for a small segment of the population?

[Parrot Monkey]

Well yes, it is a fact the minority seeks vinyl, and on that note I think it’s a good idea to keep the vinyl issues of new albums in limited editions. This way, the collectors and audiophiles can have what they desire and the record companies won’t be overloaded with a high price to mass-produce so many records.
Seeing how you can’t find any recent vinyl releases in stores and the fact that most seem to disappear from Tower Records after awhile, it appears that this is just what the labels are doing.

James Taylor is another artist I wish would do this. New Moon Shine, Hourglass, October Road and the new Christmas Album are only on CD…

[Key Lime Lee]

But again, labels are in business to make money, not to cater to audiophiles. From a production point of view, it's not cost-effective to run a limited release unless you're charging $45 a record.

Production is an economy of scale - not the other way around.

[meisinger]

Vinyl can be a tough sell to retail. It's just about always non-returnable.