1. Home
  2. music
  3. 196009-177593

Prices of Records/Vinyl in 2025

Is it me or have prices of vinyl recently surged to an average of $35 or more ? Just a couple of months ago the average seemed to be around $30. I bought around 30 records to play on my exorbitantly expensive turntable and its multi thousand dollar cartridge, its hundred of dollars of cables, the $1000  phono preamp etc and immediately had 7k invested before buying any records. After buying 50 albums or so and finding about half to be shitty recordings I had $1500 invested in realistically 25 playable, great quality recordings. I just went back online to look for a few more and I'm certain prices have jumped from $30 average to close to $40. WTF ??? More gouging I assume. Is this industry truly sustainable when people are expected to have close to 10k invested to play some records? Insane. I protest, with my wallet. Let's see, hmmm....stream a million tracks for $20 a month with perfect sound, no cleaning, snaps, pop or crackle and hiss and- jump tracks and artists the second I don't like what I hear- or- invest $40 in a crappy recording on vinyl, suffer through it or toss it in the trash because the recording or the music suck. I could literally light two $20 bills on fire instead of bothering to gamble on ordering a record online. 

 

speedthrills
sokogear
1,162 posts
 

@viridian - gotcha. Very interesting - now I get it.

I can't overlook the surface noise, pops, ticks and clicks - those artifacts kins of ruin the album for me. I only have one turntable, 1 MC cartridge and an old MM backup that hasn't been played in 15+ years, so I guess I keep things very simple. No extra other equipment.

I try to make as few decisions as possible. Even have my records in a pretty tight rotation, except the 10 or so that are one in a blue moon plays. Of course I stray once in a while or if I get a request. But those strays will still move that record to the back of that artist's subrotation. I guess I'm kind of choosy with what I like.

Post removed 
larsman's avatar
larsman
3,156 posts
 

@sokogear - People wet-clean new records (I am one of them) because all kinds of paper, gunk, etc from the pressing plant can and often does get into the grooves. This is especially a problem with those white paper sleeves with no polylining. 

sokogear
1,162 posts
 

@larsman - I don't have a paper sleeve on any record, and new ones I get either are rice paper or poly lined paper (those get replaced with all rice paper ones). I am sure that inferior volume runs with lower QA all around have some issues, but I would be surprised if I could find any on any ones I get.

Post removed 
More to discover