As a guy who loves music and grew up in the 80s, I always loved LPs. My dad did not because I was a kid and my jumping in any section of the house would always, without fail, make the record skip and the only times that a record would be playing was when he was recording to tape for the car.
I didn't grow up in an incredibly musical household, but did grow up in an incredibly musical car.
Anyway, CDs hit in a big way (obviously) and now MP3s are starting to take root, but there are some out there like me who prefer to have at least a copy of their music that is as tangible as music can be. A CD that can be ripped to any computer that I happen to need it ripped to and something that I can read the liner notes of and stare at album artwork.
And growing up the little punk that I did, I like LPs. I used to sell them at Hot Topic when I worked there and have always been a fan of BIG artwork on the covers. CDs are way too small and because of their size, you find a lot of musicians not really seeing a need for a gripping cover.
I see it though. I think that if you're going to say that music is art, you might as well embrace the whole package as art too and make it a fully immersing piece of artwork from the music to the visuals.
But LPs are bordering on dead. Not many people want to pay for them and their fragility or their non-ability to potentially last a lifetime like CDs.
On an interesting side note, my copy of Metallica's Ride The Lightning actually came with an insert that said how to take care of your CD and even went so far as to say that there is no reason that, should proper care be used, the CD shouldn't last your entire life (at least).
How about that?
But at Best Buy today I saw Metallica's Death Magnetic in LP form. It was actually packed with TWO LPs, which threw me for a REAL loop considering that the album is only ten (glorious) songs long.
It made me IMMEDIATELY think that maybe this has something to do with the recording quality I talked about previously but have not been able to find any information on the subject though I DID find another LP version for 110.00 with FIVE LPS and a CD.
Doing some more quick research a bunch of people on Amazon.com (so take this with a grain of salt) said that they used the same mix for all renditions of the album so, the two LP version is confusing, but a FIVE LP version just blows my mind. What could possibly be on these LPs?
Anyhoo, I kind of hope they ARE coming back. If you think about it, it would be kind of cool to have an LP collection you rip to MP3 (easy enough) and maybe the transfer rate would be better (going to have to look into that one) so your MP3s would sound better and theoretically you'd only need to rip it once and then just use your MP3 player to listen to it, much like I now only use my CDs once.
Art could be embraced again and we could see amazing covers.
Man, I'd love for LPs to come back!
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Hey, Pappy, it's Stole_life from Gretsch-Talk. The fewer songs on an LP, the wider the space between grooves. Therefore, better sound and less apt to scratch and skip. Also, lots of stuff I seek out and listen is vinyl only. I don't seek it because it's vinyl; I seek the music, but it's only available on vinyl--and I mean new releases. For example, I collect music from a label, that I think is run out Georgia, called Table of the Elements. Lots of cool experimental guitar work, and their current guitar series is only available on one-sided 12' vinyl in limited editions of 3,000 copies each. The other sides are etchings by the artist Savage Pencil. Blast First Petite label is doing a year-long series of tributes to the band Suicide for Suicide's singer Alan Vega's 60th B-day. Artists over the year will include Bruce Springsteen, Sunn 0))) (totally a favorite of mine), Julian Cope, Primal Scream and other great acts. These are only being released on 10" vinyl. Sunn 0)))'s newest release is only being issued on vinyl, and their label Southern Lord issues almost everything they put out on limited edition vinyl. So, it's definitely out there and always has been. It just seems to be more of a specialty collector thing now. No matter what, it sounds better. Not as durable or portable, but definitely analog formats have it all over digital in terms of sound quality. Digital has made improvements, but . . .
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