Can I Have My Money Back?

This is great news for vinyl! I can only imagine how many of those P.O.S. Ion or Crosley "record players" sold. Lets hope this will put to rest the this is hip / fashion statement image by the media. I only hope the LP prices will drop a bit.

Drop to what price point?? I think vinyl prices are inline with inflation...An album in 1978 may have cost about $7.00, that would put that value in 2015 at $22.00 roughly.
Considering the volume of vinyl being pressed at that time, compared to today, paying $30.00 seems reasonable to me.

just discovered a very nice new / used record store that has been open over a year and is doing very well (far west suburban chicago area, wheaton, IL). nice owner and he has some really hard to find used titles. been there several times and on saturday afternoon it was really busy, filled with young hipsters, middle aged rockers and older music lovers. quite a beautiful thing.

That used prices are all over the place, I am speaking of only NEW vinyl. Again, I am fine with the prices today since you get a 180gram pressing, usually a dbl vinyl, since most mastering is cutting back on the # of minutes per side. Which seems to help with SQ...Then add in the bonus CD or 320kbps download and that makes the prices even better IMO.
Packaging is much better today than back in the 70's. Also SQ in general seems to be better....Yes we all would LOVE 100% analog meaning tape to vinyl AAA, but not much of that will happen I fear.
Digital recorded music saved to 24bit, then mastered for analog sounds pretty darn sweet!

Also consider in the late 70's, US minimum wage per hour was about $3.00, I have seen reports that as of Dec 2014 it was about $10.40 per hour.

For me I am fine with NEW vinyl prices....Sure there are some prices I do dbl takes on, but normally it when window shopping and not something I listen to anyways...

Cheers

250,000 tables sold just by Project. Amazing!

I wonder what market share Project has? Are they the BSR of modern turntables? (Old vinyl joke from the early 70's.)

A news item I saw somewhere said that the 'Crosley x Peanuts' turntable may be the largest seller of all.

Would it be fair to guess 2 million total turntable sales last year?

For LP's....8 million "new" records were sold in 2014.

Given potential turntables sold per year, and factoring in the number of pre-existing turntables, the average record buyer either has a <5 record collection size....or the real news is hidden in the used vinyl sales!

Man, I wish we had numbers for that!

I would guess....vast.

That project info was fascinating. Thanks! Before you provided that data, I would have guessed "a thousand." I was off by 250 times!

for Pro-Ject! 250,000 turntables it's great news for them!
I'm a bit biased because they are a European company I truly respect.
Great design and engineers not only in turntables but in most stuff they make.
Every time I see a Pro-Ject turntable I'm tempted to buy one...
As for sales, it would be nice to have some numbers from the vinyl used market but turntable are also a good indicator.

Back when we all bought vinyl in the 60s, the price was $3.98 or $4.98 for an LP.

But price isn't the real issue in a comparison to LPs of then and today: The real problem was, towards the end of the LP era manufacturers were grinding up old LPs and melting them down to make new ones.

Yes, they left on the paper labels when grinding up the old LPs.

Yes, the LPs were shrink wrapped so they were guaranteed to melt before you got them home.

Yes, we adjusted tracking force with dimes, pennies and nickels, and we cleaned our LPs with imported (from England) mixtures of alcohol and silicone, and our stylus with thumbs.

BTW, our old LPs used to have raised outer edges and label areas so when the changer dropped them down, the grooves wouldn't contact each other. And the groove area itself was made extra-thin and flexible to achieve the same effect through air resistance.

(Anti-skate? What anti-skate? Why some of my 50s/60s stereo LPs ain't got no left channel nowadays, neither.)

Fact is, a modern $20/$25 LP of 180 g. hasn't got anything in common with our mid-century LPs. For example, back then, the noise from the recording tape almost drowned out the ride cymbals. Nobody would stand for that today.

Comparing a 50s/60s LP of $4-$5 to a $20 180g LP of today is like comparing an early H-P calculator to today's Mac Pro. Or, even better, an iPhone.

Seeing real numbers that prove just how much record, and record player sales have grown is interesting, and very important numbers to an industry, and the companies that make it up. But there is certainly no doubt that it is up! That much is already certain.

I also agree that new records are far superior to the vast majority of albums I bought in the 70's and early 80's. I mean, who wouldn't love lower prices? But the price is fair. I personally can tell that the demand for records is up by the price of used records! Just 4 or 5 years ago I was loading up on used albums from The Online Market Place, at around $1 to $2 each! And the last ones I purchased were $7 and $9 each! More than they cost when new I suspect. Sure there are still some junk out there for a dollar, but popular records in reasonable condition have shot up in price in the used market by a large amount in a very short time. This is where the popularity of vinyl today becomes very real to me, demand is really up. So, while it costs me more to build my collection, it also makes the collection worth more.

Please advise when I might see the turntable sales figures. I need some market data for a business plan to launch my recently patented tangent tonearm idea as a product.