Vinyl Buyers: The Premium Price Vinyl v. Cheap Vinyl Ratio

The market share of vinyl in new recordings is driven to a large degree by willingness of vinyl buyers to pay premium prices. Nevertheless, there is a huge pool of cheap vinyl out there; records that sold millions so there’s hundreds of thousands of copies on the market and on down. To listeners who buy a lot of vinyl these days, what is the ratio of your budget between premium price/collector price albums vs. low price albums?

In the world of vintage vinyl DJs & Record Collectors it’s easy to make popular previously unknown vinyl. Public podcasts and even youtube channels (where people post and play their discoveries) are very popular and watched worldwide by many thousands. When a certain Rare and Unknown record was played by a BIG record collector or deejay other collectors immediately put this record in their wantlist and start looking for it, auction prices go up as the result of rising popularity of previously unknown records. The fixed prices on discogs also goes up (sometimes they are crazy). Every seller nowadays can simply check price statistics on discogs or on popsike.com (if it’s an auction). They don’t want to sell you this and that for $5 when market value is $100 and so many younger collectors (especially from Japan) are happy to pay more to get it quickly.

So it’s always important to discover music, to find something unknown before it will be popular among collectors. Then a chance to buy it for nothing is much higher.

Problem with audiophiles is that they want a classic albums (they don’t want to discover music), they want a well know classics, recorded on major labels by internationally renown artists. Look at the Jazz albums for example, the prices are already high on that type of music for almost every album from the 50’s and so on.

Record collectors are capable to discover music from different continents in different genres. They are looking for UNKNOWN stuff, this is the only reason why some good records can be very cheap - because they are unknown (google will not show you much about them, they are not on youtube and you can’t listen to them).

A typical audiophile re-issue label are not interested in unknown stuff, they want to reissue an LP that they can quickly sell in a huge quantity, this is why you can see ONLY classic titles in Rock, Jazz whatever popular. This is extremely boring in my opinion! They can only "sell you" a higher quality of the same well known albums, nothing new. And they want premium prices for the quality, even if the album is boring as hell and every dog have heard it million times.

This is why a second hand vinyl market is much more interesting for people who’re looking for something interesting and unknown, it’s about new discoveries, original pressing can be in a perfect quality (but not always).

I just buy what I like on original pressing (mainly from the 70’s), I don’t care about audiophile reissues because 99% of what they re-issue is boring as hell (and often more expensive than original).

At the same time I can pay premium prices for some Very Rare Originals with amazing music on them, they will cost more in the future if the music is good (reissue or digital will not affect the price for original press anyway).

Speakers Corner (Germany) is doing some great reissues, the latest being Ry Cooder’s Warner Brothers debut. The Analogue Productions catalog is simply amazing, and their Beach Boys LP’s by far the best sounding versions ever made, by a country mile. I have original 1960’s "rainbow label" Capitols (terrible), DCC reissues (mastered by Steve Hoffman, and pretty good), and some later Capitol pressings (US, UK, Japan), all of which I no longer need. The AP Tea For The Tillerman is an audiophile delight, far better than the Island original, even the "pink label" pressing. For a great pink label Island, look the second Traffic album.

One under-acknowledged group of LP’s are the "swirl-label" Vertigos. I can’t speak about their Black Sabbath LP’s (which reportedly "rock" ;-), but the Manfred Mann Chapter Three album (’69 iirc) is fantastic (musically and sonically). If you like English Rock/Jazz fusion (I as a rule don’t, this being the sole exception), keep your eyes open for a copy.

The Mobile Fidelity titles introduced after the company’s purchase by Music direct are in general good, though there are exceptions. The older pre-MD MoFi LP’s should in general be avoided, as Stan Ricker had a signature sound he was after, featuring bloated bass (he played upright). The MoFi Beatles LP’s are not good. Music Direct hired Tim de Paravicini (EAR-Yoshino) to completely redo the MoFi mastering chain (he had previously done it at Pink Floyd's London recording studio), and you can hear the fruits of his labours. If you think non-audiophile labels care that much about the sound quality of their LP's, sorry, you are mistaken. There are also a number of non-reissue labels making great records containing new music, number one being Acony Records, owned by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

The whole Analogue Productions catalog is nothing but a playlist of Chad Kassem, his personal choice, it was confirmed in many interviews. Old gentlemens might find it awesome, but younger people will find it awful as Country, Rock, Blues, Mainstream Jazz and Classical is not for everyone (especially Country:) I’ve noticed that many of his titles available in 50 more different versions while some very interesting rare records (that will never be a part of Analog Production catalog) are not available at all and only made once in 500 copies ~40 years ago on a small labels somewhere in America, Africa, Colombia or Brazil.


The business model of Analog Production is completely different from the business model of some small reissue labels. Chad is trying to make super mainstream records better (sonically) and he must sell many thousand copies to justify the effort. But musically it’s nothing special, everybody heard those titles before.

Some small reissue labels try to spread the light on virtually unknown stuff, and they will press only 500 copies on a “7 inch single in a plain white sleeve. This is a different business model. It’s also a different style as those records are not something from old billboard charts. It can be unknown Caribbean Funk, Disco from Africa, Latin music from Colombia or Samba Rock from Brazil… that is attractive for younger audiences today and previously unheard of by anyone except for serious record collectors.


Some records available only as original press (reissues do not exist at all).

Most of the audiophile reissues I have purchased (usually under $50) have been good. But there have been some real bad ones… I remember getting one of my favorite albums from my youth, Who’s Next, and being completely disappointed… thick vinyl, terrible sound. 

Yeah, I've had trouble finding decent price good-sounding Who albums, both early pressings and reissues. One exception is this reissue of Quadrophenia
https://www.discogs.com/release/3353094-The-Who-Quadrophenia

Cheers,
Spencer