They’ve been a better investment than the stock market. The same applies to many of the gold CDs that were sold. Most are worth more than $100, several go for over $500. Once again, the audiophiles and collector types. I sure can’t hear the difference.
I grew up with LPs. There’s no way that I’m going back to that pile of album covers on the table, fine-tuning of the turntable and mandatory cleansing of the records. All LPs have going for them is the larger artwork, and if Steve Jobs was as smart as he claimed to be, he would have added holographic projection of album covers to the ipod.
But neither am I moving forward. I like physical product and CDs sound better than most digital files. No lossless digital format has been introduced that can top a CD’s sound, although Neil Young is reportedly opening a new download site that he claims will be superior to any existing music format.
The electronics place I used to manage sold some turntables and accessories (when I first started there we had record player needles and drivebelts), and we had a surprising number of people around my age (mid-20s at the time) coming in asking about them. FWIW I grew up with records in the house because my parents had a record player and many LPs, so I knew a bit about them.
The people coming in often said - and it sounds reasonable to me - that they’d found Dad/Grandad’s hi fi system/record player in the garage (or whatever) and since it still worked, they wanted to keep using it (either for their parents or for themselves), Also, there were a lot of people buying them to plug into computers so they could convert vinyl to MP3, too.
And since records were practically free from any Op Shop in the land, or seemed to be at the time) and record players had a sort of cool retro thing about them, there was an increasingly mainstream market for LP players and parts. And the vast majority of them were not, IME, trendy hipsters (who were into vinyl when it was made from bakelite :p) but rather average punters who were rediscovering something that might have reminded them of an earlier time.
It may have to do with the sense of smug superiority displayed by some (not all, mind you!) vinyl fans, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that vinyl is technologically inferior to CDs. Listen to vinyl all you want, there are many valid reasons to (I listed some in the second post of this thread), but please don’t tell me it’s “better”. You may prefer it, but that’s your personal feeling.
I just remembered another reason I got into vinyl- the theory that the data on all CDs will start randomly rotting away over the next couple decades, and there’s nothing we can do about it. As far as I know there is still no proof that this will happen to CDs (many '80s CDs are still good), but at least we already know that vinyl can last a lifetime if properly stored and not totally worn out from overuse (which feels like a fairer form of media death, since you got enjoyment from wearing out your record). I want to be able to revisit some of the records I bought when I was 20 when I’m 80, if I can still hear by then.
CD rot exists, according to the Library of Congress, which has a massive digitizing program going on. The problem is, from a consumer point of view, it’s undetectable and unavoidable. CD manufacturers are continually reformulating the ingredients that make up the discs, and one batch from the same assembly line may have several times the longevity of the batch before or the batch after. The consumer has no reliable basis on which to make purchasing decisions.
According to me, it exists, but is not ubiquitous nor universal, hence my hedging.
I’ve written again and again on SDMB that media (tape, disc) cannot be categorized by age and type alone. Brand, batches, not to mention storage, are a large enough factor that you cannot say “All 1950’s magnetic tape is dust.” I have personal archives from 1950 to today of various media that contradicts that as a blanket statement, both good and bad.
