Shady scams and other silly business ideas to take advantage of earnest new vinyl collectors

live aid and its big issues big sound big hair crap to blame

for instance, sister feelings call wasn't released here in the u.s. until 6 years after its release. due to their newfound fame.

all the new horrible phil collins recording tech blowing up by 1985 too. all the stuff that makes everything sound like 1985. 1984 was the end of an era. that's why Crass broke up in 1984.

early simple minds is great if you like velvets/bowie/roxy music/eno/kraftwerk/magazine. real to real cacophony is the best if you like weird artpunk, the next couple (empires & dance, sons & fascination) move towards towards taut funkier sounds, then they start getting a bit more widescreen from new gold dream onwards

scott, life in a day was the debut, real to real cacophony is album #2

my copies of empires and dance and sons and fascination sound wonderful... at the time i thought "hmmm must seek out other polydor stuff from this period"

just for "fidelity" reasons

sorry, i mean ~warmth~

wait a second, simple minds were on virgin. i must be thinking of somebody else.

siouxsie? the passions?

There should be a Simple Minds subscription service... Get on it, VNYL!

small town record stores are the best, really. i went to one in Ithaca this past summer that was in the basement of a bookstore and the prices were wonderful. i'd have bought fifty records if i wasn't on a budget and could easily get them back to L.A.

― nomar, Friday, February 19, 2016 3:30 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes! I've been there, and it's fabulous. Only store that matches it is Scott's (also in a small town!).

Besides the lower dynamic range, there are other issues that make vinyl worse in sound reproduction, such as the fact that low bass sounds have to be mastered in mono to stop the needle from jumping out of the groove.

― Tuomas, Friday, 19 February 2016 14:15 (9 hours ago) Permalink

Not an issue, because the omnidirectional nature of deep bass makes it difficult to place where it's emanating from. The same reason you only need one subwoofer even on multichannel systems, and why subwoofer placement is far less crucial than midrange or tweeter placement.

Anyway, where is everyone getting their dirt-cheap CDs that have been repeatedly mentioned? Yes I see occasional "I'm selling my whole CD collection for $25" offers that can be major paydirt if their musical tastes overlap mine, but I don't know of anywhere to go to pick out individual CDs for very low prices (save for a few places with very small selections).

idk why anyone would want to own a CD in this day and age. if you want digital files just grab MP3s, is how I see it.

CDs are cool, come on now

Anyway, where is everyone getting their dirt-cheap CDs that have been repeatedly mentioned?

thrift stores, record shows, book/library sales

record stores still seem to think their standard issue used CDs are worth 8 bucks, but they are wrong.

sometimes I can score decent CDs in their budget bins for 3 bucks or something

I don't think I've purchased a CD in ten years.

i just kind of hate the feeling of having all this music crammed onto my laptop.

MP3s are lately starting to cost more than used (and sometimes new) CDs. Also, weird copy protection gremlins, varying bitrates, and hard drive failures all count against MP3s (to say nothing of long-term storage). All of my vinyl records play, but worse than when I bought them; all of my CDs play, and all of them sound the same as the day I first heard them (the oldest is 28 years old). The few MP3s I've purchased, some still play fine (though are at lower bitrates than I would like; didn't know anything about those at the time of purchase), and some mysteriously won't play at all.

and hard drive failures

you can back up your hard drive easily + often but a scratched or ruined CD is permanent

That's true, but a scratched CD is one CD; a hard drive failure -- or a virus, or multiple hard drive failures -- is potentially all of your music.

A lot of catalog stuff is really cheap on Amazon & such. Brick & Mortar selections are getting worse, it's true.

I went to a little area record show a few weeks back, and it looked like the two guys doing the most boffo business were this one dude who basically buys out estates and then liquidates the sellable vinyl at reasonable prices w/low overhead (doesn't bag up stuff or anything), and another guy who was the one dealer with copious CDs, with most of his table space devoted to deep catalogue $5 titles, including UK imports. Seemed like his average sale was $30-40 a customer.

yeah and I've lost a drive and had to reconstruct my library twice - which is why you have backups just like you should with any other large set of data. My CDs just sit in crates, unlistened to and unloved.

lol that article made me listen to simple minds last night. I agree about the first 7 albums, except for the first!

but a scratched or ruined CD is permanent

If you take care of your CDs and avoid top scratches (on the label side, through the foil reflective layer, which takes effort to do) you can usually polish out the scratches if you have a local store with an Azuradisc machine, or you can send a batch to Azuradisc directly. We have a machine at work and I've resurrected many a scratched-to-shit Japanese hardcore CD purchased from crusty punx. Like my whole G.I.S.M. collection is stuff I got for a buck and polished to playability.

yeah Tarfumes, i used to go to that shop when i was in school, i lived two blocks from there. it was once located opposite of where it is now, and they sold records out of the basement then as well, but it was a dusty room lit by a single lightbulb with a couple dozen crates of seriously underpriced jazz, blues, and classic rock. not like the full size shop it is now.

I found things there that I never thought a) I'd ever see, and/or b) I'd ever be able to afford (e.g., original US The Who Sell Out for $10).

uh xxpost but real to reel cacophony is simple minds' second album and it's very good, in the unlikely chance that anyone bothered to think I was knocking it

That's cool to know the CD buffing machines work, I always wondered about that.

right, 2nd album it was a long day nerds!

sold a lot of records today...

and yeah their first album is kinda my least fave too since someone mentioned it. but still good. kinda in the same zone as that first japan album.

i don't think i've ever scratched a cd. i'm really careful with stuff though.

I somehow scratched the hell out of a brand new Christoph Heeman CD... ruined one whole track. I should have it buffed.

he's a pal of mine i could probably ask him to send you a new one.

he's nice like that.

I put a $3 DVD of the Roky Erickson doc You're Gonna Miss Me back on the thrift store shelf after deciding it was too scratched up to be trustworthy. Wonder if it works for DVDs.

Anyway, where is everyone getting their dirt-cheap CDs that have been repeatedly mentioned?

In addition to the places mentioned, there are a lot of smaller chain-style places that still deal in used books, music and movies. In Tennessee there's one called McKays, and there's another place (Southeast? Northeast?) called Half Price Books. These places usually sell CDs for a dollar, and I've found some great stuff over the years.

And Amazon is a goldmine for this stuff right now, even if you don't buy stuff used (many, many used CDs start at a penny, with $3.99 shipping). Over the past year I've stocked up on Creedence, Sonic Youth, Steely Dan, AC/DC, BB King, shit like that, for between $4.99 and $6.99. If you have Prime, shipping is free. As a few have already pointed out, this is cheaper than MP3s, and lossless, and you get a real booklet, liner notes, etc.

Amoeba is pretty great for bargain CDs, their dollar bin has a lot of gold. and generally speaking their regular used CD section is priced to move.

is freakbeat in LA good? was tempted to check it out on a work trip to LA last weekend but it would have involved a cab where Amoeba was only a 90 minute walk.

listening to the MFSL CD of Johnny Mathis's Heavenly. NOT GREAT. if you turn it up too loud all hell breaks loose. see, case by case.

Just found out the other day that these existed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elcaset

the DAT of its day.

"The Elcaset system was abandoned in 1980, when all the remaining systems were sold off in Finland."

oh tuomaspaws...

https://theedit.replyyes.com/

so many of these dumb things

as far as get rich slow schemes go there are probably better ways to spend your time.

"Thanks for feeding me good music on the regular, you take all the anxiety out of selecting what to buy next!"

— Steve

yeah it was pretty hard to know what to buy next before a site that labels Paul's Boutique with the album title of "Beastie Boys." but now i really feel like i ra friend in the record business.

er.. like i have a friend

"[Texting] is just a crazy visceral experience. It's a perfect fit for vinyl."

— Sarah

is freakbeat in LA good? was tempted to check it out on a work trip to LA last weekend but it would have involved a cab where Amoeba was only a 90 minute walk.

i don't know, it's pretty good if you're in the area but i don't want to promise that it's worth the trip. i've found some good deals there, though.

sarah's quote makes me insane. I saw that last week. texting is not a crazy visceral experience. it's not perfect for vinyl. every single word in that is wrong.