Did most of the underground vinyl scene die in recent years?

Back in 2000-2004 many unknown artists had a vinyl release. There were many idm releases even by small unknown artists released on vinyl. Today you still have major releases on vinyl but many of the smaller acts stopped putting out vinyl. It even goes as far as some smaller scenes stopped vinyl releases at all. Sure you can buy all this on bandcamp now but I have the feeling something is lost by this.

vinyl is too expensive these days.

probably because the market is saturated with those POS exorbitant ultrarare artisan releases by the bigger names. People want to grab them first as they are ULTRALIMITED COLLECTORS ITEMS, and since they each cost approximately the price of two months rent in a Chicago flat, there is no spending money left on the entrepreneurs struggling to get they shit out.

yeah, im pissed about it. yeah, im opinionated.

The trendiness of vinyl has its up and downs. Give it a few years and it will be trendy again.

It reminds me of dollar stores. All of the sudden there are like 4 or 5 stores in your area, they last a few years, then they go under or disappear only to repeat the cycle again a few years down the line.

agree a bit with Smetting, but i say there's loads of vinyl being released still...? a lot of 'upstart' labels are doing it, i don't think you're looking in the right places.

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:09 PM, noise said:

agree a bit with Smetting, but i say there's loads of vinyl being released still...? a lot of 'upstart' labels are doing it, i don't think you're looking in the right places.

yeah they still do but back in 2002 I knew about 10 people personally who did run one or two labels. now there are only 3 left from these all others switched to digital or stopped at all. on the other hand new ones filled the gap so there might just be a shift in genres

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:17 PM, o00o said:

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:09 PM, noise said:

agree a bit with Smetting, but i say there's loads of vinyl being released still...? a lot of 'upstart' labels are doing it, i don't think you're looking in the right places.

 

yeah they still do but back in 2002 I knew about 10 people personally who did run one or two labels. now there are only 3 left from these all others switched to digital or stopped at all. on the other hand new ones filled the gap so there might just be a shift in genres

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:17 PM, o00o said:

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:09 PM, noise said:

agree a bit with Smetting, but i say there's loads of vinyl being released still...? a lot of 'upstart' labels are doing it, i don't think you're looking in the right places.

 

yeah they still do but back in 2002 I knew about 10 people personally who did run one or two labels. now there are only 3 left from these all others switched to digital or stopped at all. on the other hand new ones filled the gap so there might just be a shift in genres

it's just that people grew older and didn't have patience/smarts/the right music to release this sort of stuff anymore. it takes an immense amount of effort/quality/constant hype to be able to put out vinyl nowadays, unless you've got good money coming from somewhere else.

I would guess this has more to do with IDM's steep decrease in popularity—I still see a lot of small vinyl releases.

Or electronic artists are early adapters to digital distribution?

it's all about cassette now

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:20 PM, KY said:

I would guess this has more to do with IDM's steep decrease in popularity—I still see a lot of small vinyl releases.

Pretty much. Most of the local bands I follow here in Melbourne have a small run vinyl release available.

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:07 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

probably because the market is saturated with those POS exorbitant ultrarare artisan releases by the bigger names. People want to grab them first as they are ULTRALIMITED COLLECTORS ITEMS, and since they each cost approximately the price of two months rent in a Chicago flat, there is no spending money left on the entrepreneurs struggling to get they shit out.

 

 

yeah, im pissed about it. yeah, im opinionated.

Ye this. All that wank limited shit killing it.

  On 5/9/2012 at 12:19 AM, BCM said:

it's all about cassette now

Ahh, shoot me! If I was going to release something on cassette I'd want it to be something that you could only do on cassette, like an instructional and speed test tape for tuning the speed of your cassette player motor.

I did a bit of research into this late last year...

Small vinyl runs(50-100) are $6 a piece minimum after pressing, sleeves, shipping, etc.

500+ can get you down to $4, but anything fancy(higher quality, printed sleeves, etc.) will send you right back up.

So you're looking at $1000+ initial investments, and then you are tasked with actually selling all of those electronic music vinyls in the year 2012.

Which may be doable(or even easy!) if you're somebody like EOD but it's going to be hard for a lot of artists to even break even that way.

Real record label owners like awepittance may be able to give more accurate figures.

  On 5/9/2012 at 1:25 AM, Face Culler said:

I did a bit of research into this late last year...

 

Small vinyl runs(50-100) are $6 a piece minimum after pressing, sleeves, shipping, etc.

 

500+ can get you down to $4, but anything fancy(higher quality, printed sleeves, etc.) will send you right back up.

 

So you're looking at $1000+ initial investments, and then you are tasked with actually selling all of those electronic music vinyls in the year 2012.

 

Which may be doable(or even easy!) if you're somebody like EOD but it's going to be hard for a lot of artists to even break even that way.

 

Real record label owners like awepittance may be able to give more accurate figures.

thats interesting - where can you get small amounts like 50 vinyls pressed ?

Anywhere, but you'd still pay the ludicrous setup fees.

  On 5/9/2012 at 2:02 AM, o00o said:

  On 5/9/2012 at 1:25 AM, Face Culler said:

I did a bit of research into this late last year...

 

Small vinyl runs(50-100) are $6 a piece minimum after pressing, sleeves, shipping, etc.

 

500+ can get you down to $4, but anything fancy(higher quality, printed sleeves, etc.) will send you right back up.

 

So you're looking at $1000+ initial investments, and then you are tasked with actually selling all of those electronic music vinyls in the year 2012.

 

Which may be doable(or even easy!) if you're somebody like EOD but it's going to be hard for a lot of artists to even break even that way.

 

Real record label owners like awepittance may be able to give more accurate figures.

 

thats interesting - where can you get small amounts like 50 vinyls pressed ?

It's easy to find places that will do small runs for high prices...

http://www.urpressing.com/ will do 100 12" for $879

http://www.mobineko.com/ will do 50 12" for $725

But it's not very economical. The $6 figure is for 100 that I found last year but I can't find the site anymore.

If you're serious about it I imagine you can negotiate a better deal, especially if you plan on doing periodic 100 run releases.

  On 5/9/2012 at 12:57 AM, chassis said:

  On 5/8/2012 at 11:07 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

probably because the market is saturated with those POS exorbitant ultrarare artisan releases by the bigger names. People want to grab them first as they are ULTRALIMITED COLLECTORS ITEMS, and since they each cost approximately the price of two months rent in a Chicago flat, there is no spending money left on the entrepreneurs struggling to get they shit out.

 

 

yeah, im pissed about it. yeah, im opinionated.

 

Ye this. All that wank limited shit killing it.

This. I don't get this. As an artist, why do you want to limit the number of fans who can enjoy your music? For money? To generate a buzz? To keep the fanboys drooling? It all smacks of pretentiousness. In this day & age there's no reason you can't or shouldn't make a digital version available.

no

On Alternative Planet first was Cronyism river, crossing quality landscapes anyway

Then crossed Internet river which brought individualism

MTV which was good yet at the source slowly brought tons of shite in Cronyism

Distributors tribe didn’t take any risk then to make the effort of putting something good into a shit river, it wouldn’t appreciate

Now we are at the estuary, where Cronyism flows into the OCEAN OF SHIT

I didn’t see the word “distributor” anywhere, they are yet one of the most important piece in the machine, for example if you try in 2012 to do a 300 copies run with something other than House/Techno, first most of them won’t answer, then 2 on the 3 who answered will say either “top stuff but no techno/house -> can’t sell sorry” or “in order we to distribute your stuff you have to get the proper promotion around your label”… if you’re lucky, one of them will buy you 50 copies, cool.. and do I play Frisbee with 250 others ?

Where to begin then.. Too small to have a distribution plan but you only get bigger with releases or live acts. Live acts come after releases, which you can’t have.

Only thing is to get a release on a label, ok, pull already 90% netlabels out, most of the 10% left again won’t answer, maybe 0.01% will be interested into putting a track on a compilation, if you are lucky, and approx. 0% will give you an EP, -1% a LP.

UNLESS you’re a good mate of a good mate of a label owner which is a good mate a distributor which is a good mate of a promoter and everything will be more easy.

A good internet crash, some bombs on Disney channel & MTV offices, and things would already go in a better way…

And btw also teaching our kids about 128 kbps vs. wav on a good amp system before they don’t notice it anymore.. ah, already too late ? fuck..

"On Alternative Planet first was Cronyism river, crossing quality landscapes anyway

Then crossed Internet river which brought individualism

MTV which was good yet at the source slowly brought tons of shite in Cronyism

Distributors tribe didn’t take any risk then to make the effort of putting something good into a shit river, it wouldn’t appreciate

Now we are at the estuary, where Cronyism flows into the OCEAN OF SHIT"

what the actual fuck

Small metaphoric view of what happened since 90's.. ;)