Hi Rob:
I work with statistics all day and use that line often, also double nothin' is still nothin'.
However, the vinyl niche is profitable if it's played right. Yes, there is a long history of
goofball fan-boys with no business sense taking a bath in the audiophillic corners of the music
business, but vinyl has moved more mainstream than that and there are other players (Chad Kassam
(sp?) at Analogue Productions, Tam Henderson at Reference Recordings, Kai Seaman at Speakers Corner,
and others who I am forgetting to mention) who have played for years now and watched their
businesses succeed as the niche grew. As long as you can charge premium prices and base your
business on high quality, you will win. You also have the benefit of working in smaller numbers and
so a bust is a small bust instead of a mega-bust like Universal had with Mariah Carey, for example.
Finally, you are dealing with fewer retailers and the whole thing is more direct to the customer so
there is better feedback up the chain.
The megaglomerates have also entered this niche, with their own "boutique" departments putting out
product. It looks like Warner Music is most aggressive, because this is in Rhino's DNA, but Sony and
Universal are also doing LPs and some of their products are excellent, in my opinion.
You have a luxury product in a growing niche, compared with CD's being a commodity losing its
market, but still having a huge-scale market. The whole pie will shrink as CD's die off, but there
will be a nice little corner where money can be made from vinyl and a rabid, happy customer base
exists, I think.
As I say in all discussions of this topic, the door was opened for the vinyl niche market by lousy
CD mastering and customer pushback on overpriced lousy-sounding CD's. Another element, but I don't
think the major element, is the desire to have a nicer physical artifact. LP covers will always beat
CD booklets, game over.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob DeLand" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2012 5:25 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] "It's Alive! Vinyl Makes a Comeback" -- Wall Street Journal
> Of course going from one drop in the bucket to two is technically a 100%
> increase...
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Clark Johnsen <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> The LP still represents just a sliver of music sales. But last year,
>> according to Nielsen SoundScan data, while CD sales fell by more than 5%,
>> vinyl record sales grew more than 36%.
>>
>>
>> http://topics.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204573704577184973290800632.html
>>
>
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