Oh it's 100% better. Everything's better about it. Yeah, it's the best format ever made.
Ever since I got a car I went out looking for vinyl every day and I just love it. And I've been just searching for years and years for the weirdest stuff I can find.
It's much, much warmer than a CD and CDs are so compressed and vinyl you get all the frequencies coming out.
It's great, great sound.
There's something about vinyl that it's very soft. You can get lost in it. It can pull you in. If you really take the time to listen.
And even after years vinyl kind of gets this character to it. You get these little pops and hisses and cracks. And there's just something about it.
The first thing obviously is the recording itself. The key to making a good record is mastering the recording for vinyl.
You don't want a square sound wave which is typically what happens with CDs because they only make it really loud coming out of the speakers.
The neat thing about that from a vinyl perspective is that allows you to capture the nuances on the low and the high end that you otherwise don't really hear when you compress that sound wave.
From there it goes to a lacquer cutter who etches the original groove into a lacquer. That lacquer then goes to a plating shop where a metal image called a mother is made.
And then through electroplating a negative of that image called a stamper is made. So think of a record, a metal record with raised grooves.
Those stampers fit on top of our dies and the bottom to be on the top. Those raised grooves allow for the vinyl to actually accept the grooves themselves in the record.
The vinyl has actually gone up year after year since 2006. Every year has been bigger than the last. I think it was 2013.
It was the biggest year for vinyl since 91. 2014 was roughly 40% higher this year. Again, first quarter results are about the same sort of dynamics.
Record story A certainly puts a little bit more pressure on because you've got one date and a bunch of releases trying to get to distribution roughly a month ahead of that date.
Well, the first guy in line was here before I went home last night. He got here at 10 o'clock last night and he waited all night to get the record that he wanted and he got it.
So that was really cool. I mean, because being a collector myself, it's heartbreaking. I know the feeling when somebody wants something and they come in and then they can't find it or somebody else beat them to it.
I've been there. I know what it feels like. So it's like, I really want everybody to leave half.
Record story A certainly is a big factor in exposing vinyl again to particularly the younger population and it's gotten more and more popular.
Every plant is very busy due to record story A. We could have taken a lot more record story A orders, but the demand for vinyl is such that it's just steady all year round.
Previous iterations of the way to deliver music like cassettes and 8 tracks and CDs and Walkman and MP3 players and all that was all about portability taking music with you.
Now with the cloud and streaming, really the portability argument's over. So you still have then the second of a population who wants to own something physical.
Now if you look at a physical format, some people think vinyl sounds better. I prefer not to get caught up in that debate, but certainly the experience of vinyl, the artwork, tactile nature of it, it really makes for a different experience.
So I think there's always going to be a second of a population that likes to own. There are, if you will, it's the same as some people prefer physical books versus kindles and things of that nature.
So yeah, I think it's going to continue. It's going to be a niche business. It is a niche business, but that's a growing niche and I don't see any signs of it stopping soon.
Thank you for watching.
