Could Vinyl Ever be Mainstream Again?

The vinyl LP ... the once and future king?

God, I'd love it if the 12" vinyl record would the dominant media once again - or at least be a preferred choice, roughly equal to the various alternatives.

And from lots and lots of news reports of the meteoric growth it seems to be experiencing you might conclude that it is simply a matter of time before it reclaims it's usurped throne.

Despite the buzz, and the growth, and its currently small slice of the music pie, the LP is likely to be a niche format for awhile.  There are a few things people aren't talking about that explain why.  We call them "Challenges" rather than "Barriers" since it is very possible to overcome them if the popularity growth proves to be solid, not fleeting as many lazy journalists seem to think.

Estate Sale of Vinyl - this will be hotly contested by
various used record shops.

Challenge 1:  Used Vinyl is becoming harder to come by and is rising in price

If you are fortunate enough to live near a decent record store that has used vinyl, you may have seen the prices creep upwards over the last 5 or so years.  Back when vinyl was considered dead, and new vinyl pressings were few and far between, you could buy LP's for about $1 per inch of stack.  You had little choice, but for $5-10 you would be pretty much guaranteed to find a gem of a pressing or record you actually wanted.  People were dumping collections, and the used record shops, reeling from CD and MP3's, were trying to shift their inventory before demand for LP's dried up.  A few years later things changed.  Our favorite record store, The Bop Shop, went from nearly going out of business in the mid to late 2000's to booming business.  But prices have followed this path, too, after the dark ages.  When people started buying again, a "typical" popular used LP went for $1-4.  Then $4-8 per LP.  Now you are seeing stores "test" the $8-15 range for a good condition used disc that is popular.  This price increase is being driven by a couple of things. Demand for popular records in good condition is high.  These shops after decades sucking wind, are getting to make some money again.  This is great, a healthy record store is a great asset to a music fan.  But another part of it becomes obvious when you look a little deeper.  Much of the record stores' used selection comes from Estate sales now - not people "getting out of" LP's anymore.  And the lament I have heard in a couple of shops is how hard it is to buy large collections of desirable records to keep the store stocked.  What that means is that when estates come up for auction that include a few dozen boxes of LP's, you have more and more people bidding for them.  Of course, any price increase is passed on to all of us.

That might explain why the record store owner, despite nearly doubling prices in recent years for used records, is still driving the same beat up old Toyota Corolla she always has. 

Why does this matter? One of the strengths of vinyl used to be the inexpensive record collection you could build for not a lot.  Now the gap between used and new is narrowing, and the "cheaper than CD and MP3" angle isn't really true anymore.  I suppose the conclusion to all this is that used vinyl will become a collectors game again, and not an inexpensive way to build up a collection of pre-1990 music.

Ancient record presses = Cheaper Vinyl
Nobody knows when the supply of refurbed machines
will give out... and with them?  Cheap vinyl.

Challenge 2:  All the presses are ancient/refurbished - new ones are prohibitively expensive

The dirty little secret that nobody seems to talk about is the vast majority of record pressing machines are rebuilt/refurbished from the heyday of vinyl.  When "they" talk about expanding capacity, they are usually buying these older machines second hand and fixing them up.  They were built like tanks, so they are still as capable as they were before.  For repair, you can always have replacement parts custom machined forever, so current capacity isn't in any danger.  The barrier comes in when you compare the price of a refurbished machine vs a new one.  Given a refurbished press can be made operational for under $100k, but a new one can run over $500k, once all the record presses that can be rebuilt cheaply, are ... then we'll see rising prices until it "pays" to start building new presses (unless some new fabrication method takes over - like 3D printing eventually).

The only real questions would be (1) if the higher prices that go hand in hand with this growth would kill off demand or reduce it before it hit the critical mass that would make a new pressing machine a good investment; (2) how much capacity could be restored with refurbished presses; and (3) at what point do used records end up being the minority (compared to new pressings) in a record store through explosive demand and a lack of secure sources of used vinyl.

We feel that there is enough demand to blow through the challenges above.  Once we start seeing plants built with new pressing machines (or some unexpected technical equivalent), we really will be witnessing the return and main-streaming of vinyl.