It is cool. but is it sustainable. See my baseball card thread. There's a huge vinyl section at Barnes and noble, but nobody thumbing through the $30 Chicago greatest hits reissues. I heard cassettes are making a come back.
NYT had a nice story about a pressing plant in Eastern Europe.
Guy who owns it knew vinyl was on the way out when he bought it.
Now he is scouring Africa for more presses.
Still he does not expect it to last.
I think it's gonna level off but ultimately enough people are buying now that to prove that the current resurgence is more than a fad. Agreed that record companies need to quit with the $30 "audiophile" reissues of classic rock chud though.
I think newly pressed records will always have a niche - it's a bigger niche now than a few years back but not huge, and never will be. But that's what niche means.
And as it stands now, with mustache-twirler types buying 30 dollar Fleetwood Mac reissues or whatever, there obviously aren't enough presses to cope with demand without original music ending up on 6-month pressing plant waitlists. There's totally room for expansion of production, even if at the consumer level it plateaus and levels off again. Plus I've heard nightmare service stories about pretty much every major pressing plant out there, so the more competition they have the better.
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Guy who owns it knew vinyl was on the way out when he bought it.
Now he is scouring Africa for more presses.
Still he does not expect it to last.
B/W http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-09-01/the-last-audio-cassette-factory
And as it stands now, with mustache-twirler types buying 30 dollar Fleetwood Mac reissues or whatever, there obviously aren't enough presses to cope with demand without original music ending up on 6-month pressing plant waitlists. There's totally room for expansion of production, even if at the consumer level it plateaus and levels off again. Plus I've heard nightmare service stories about pretty much every major pressing plant out there, so the more competition they have the better.
https://www.cascaderecordpressing.com/