Some interesting views from the artist-label point of view come up here.
From a consumer's point of view I'd say that vinyl is not the only
area of life where we are facing a transition from physical to digital
objects. The same problems come up with things like books.
I have two opinions on the whole thing. I buy quite a lot of vinyl
(I'm not a collector as such but many of the people who know me would
completely disagree), my house is full of the stuff. I'm also quite
computer literate and have all my digital stuff well managed.
As time goes on I'm less and less likely to buy vinyl, unless it's a
must have release. I'm less tied to that physical object and the huge
advantage to having everything digital is that I can have access to it
pretty much anytime, there and then. Since managing all my music
digitally (digitised vinyl and downloads) I listen to the music I buy
a lot lot more and for the digital stuff the total cost of the music I
buy has dropped considerably (for the same amount purchased).
Now, I don't know how representative I am of the market for techno/
house out there but I know a lot of friends who used to spend all
their money on this stuff and now they've moved on in life (jobs,
kids, houses etc) don't buy music at all because of the cost/space etc
of vinyl. Because of digital I'll never get to that point where I'll
stop so in a sense digital could be a way of retaining some part of a
lost market.
All that said I'll be very very sad when vinyl disappears but I am
resigned to it going eventually.
robin...
