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Good morning, everyone! And happy Friday!

We had a spectacular launch on Monday that surpassed all our expectations, and we are truly thrilled to see that so many people care about the business of vinyl records.

As we saw in the last article, vinyl is growing and will continue to grow, so we have every reason to bring more awesome newsletters to you.

So, stay tuned!

- Simon Honeyville

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If it ain’t broke… 🤔

There has been a recent craze over the past couple of years to improve on the vinyl record. What I’ve been hearing passed around is something called “HD Vinyl”.

Now you may be thinking to yourself “What? Isn’t vinyl already superior to other mediums?” And you would be fully justified in asking that.

To start, this isn’t really a new idea. It came about by a man named Gunter Loibl in 2018, when he put together his passion of music and technology to create the company “HD Vinyl” (great branding).

The whole idea is that instead of recording the sound right into the master with a needle like you would a standard record, they would use a laser engraver that was pre-programmed with the recording to cut a stamp. This would mean you no longer need to rely on the master to print records or go through the finnicky prosses of cutting it. You would always just be able make another one^[1].

This can be great because it could lower the cost of doing a pressing, provided making a stamp was the same price as it would be with making a copy of a lacquer (the original cut).

You’d be skipping a whole step!

Unfortunately we don’t know what the price of this, so it’s viability is not guaranteed.

In fact, HD Vinyl went bankrupt last year^[2], so to me it sounds like this might not end up being as lucrative as the visionaries might have hoped.

WARNING OPINION: I think this misses the point of vinyl. It’s about getting the most tactile and authentic version of a record, and looking for ways to “improve” it are not what the market is looking for. In terms of “logical business”, vinyl doesn’t make the most sense. It costs a bunch of money to print, costs a bunch for someone to buy, and they’re fragile,b ut there is a magic there that is very important for the people to buy them, and that’s what the consumer is buying.

But hey, if you think I’m wrong, let me know! Hit that Reply button to tell me how dumb my opinion is!

180g Meme

Check back on Mondays and Fridays at 10:00 AM Central for another post.

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