Well, 5 years ago, as soon as one DJ popped up and said "Vinyls on its way out", 7 other DJ's would pop up and reply in sychronised chorus "Vinyl forever".

2 years ago...maybe it would have been a one-on-one thing...

However...nowadays, with better hardware tools available at reasonable prices, more and more DJ's are favouring other formats - leaving vinyl to crumble, rust, or whatever it does when its left alone for a while.

Here are some industry figures to bring the whole revolution into perspective. These figures were part of a BPI handout. All figures are in thousands.

..........................Jan/Mar2003........Jan/Mar2004.........% Change2003-04
12” Singles Value........£3,202 ................£2,733 ...................-14.6%
Cass Singles Value........£418 ....................-....................... -100.0%
CD Singles Value......£12,401.............. £8,420...................... -32.1%

Total Singles Value ......£16,159 ...............£11,357................. -29.7%






LP Value.................... £1,274 ..................£1,197................... -6.0%
Cassettes Value .............£751 .................£478 ......................-36.4%
CD Value ................£197,719 ................£191,987.................. -2.9%

Total Albums Value ..£199,754 .................£193,662 .................-3.0%


It should also be noted that these figures are the value (At TRADE price, from the record companies to the distributors) and compare a 3 month period last year, to the same 3 month period this year.

Overall, singles (in any format) are becoming less and less popular, in fact 29.7% less popular. Albums (in any format) however only dropped by 3% overall, across all formats.

However, its the vinyl DJ's 12inch that has dropped by a notable 14.6% which makes interesting reading, as this very much a marker in the changing trends of DJ'ing formats.

I'm still using vinyl, but I havent bought any for about 5 years.

Ahh, well now you should be using Pioneer CDJ1000 CD turntables. - Teehee

Gary, these are fascinating figures. I have had my CDJ1000s for two years now and I do occasionally get 12" vinyl when I cannot source a promo on CD. I will then burn it straight to CD so I can use the advanced features on the CDJs. All my 'vinyl forever' buddies are notably changing their tunes now they have played with my CDJ1000 and PARTYCHRIS's DN-S5000 cd players.

Well, with CD compilation albums becoming the new "normal" medium, Im finding that my CD-Decks ability to let you mix two tracks off of the same CD simultaneously (Alpha track) more & more useful.

The alternative would be to make a copy of every cd in the collection.

Updates to the above statistics are released every few months, so I'll post the next set of figures when I get them.

Vinyl forever

Vinyl forever
Vinyl forever

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Vinyl foreverVinyl foreverVinyl foreverVinyl foreverVinyl forever

Vinyl foreverVinyl foreverVinyl foreverVinyl foreverVinyl forever


regards

DJ Marky Marc

Tell you what Marky as you still like ol' vinyl soooo much.

I'll bring my vinyl boxes to you one at a time, you record them in WAV format onto a huge harddrive, then I'll collect the vinyl, and buy the harddrive...

(said Gary, ever so hopefully, and just a little too optimistically...)

Record shops here stopped selling vinyl OVERNIGHT and boy was i glad i didnt have to lug it on and off airplanes anymore!

these figure do they take into account the amount of vinyl sold in independant record shops who do not have chart return machines, of vinyl made by small independant labels, and white labels etc

I still buy the odd bit of vinyl say once or twice a month ( iused to be adicted to buying vinyl, i still am adicted to colecting music ) and i still take half a box with me to dj the clubs but for all other djing i don't get the point

I went to the global gathering dance music festival last sat and nearlly all the djs were using cds at some point in there sats and at least half used just cds so that has got to say something.

vinyl is great, but its time to move on, soon it will become obselete, and gotta face it, soon the only vinyl u can get will be on Ebay.

its a shame, but we shudnt be complainiing, man the vinyl boxes were so heavy, now the CD boxes are nice, hence the C of CD (compact)

I still have my MJ vinyl collection, which will be forever

Yep and eventually cd's will be going out to as in my gigs i only use cd's for backup and have two minidisk players and a laptop for the rest. They are so much more reliable than cd players as I have found wen doing stage productions for theatre there is no telling wen a cd is going to skip or jump it just does it with no warning. Which i guess where minidisks came in and have a lot less chance of skipping better sound quality and longer life. Also you have mp3 starting to knock out cd's as well. I wonder what will be next

Matt

I had to explain to a young teenager about 2 weeks ago what a 12inch record was...they fiddled with the Technics SL1210, like it was some sort of World War II mangle...which too them, it might as well have been...

I had a 30 min argument/conversation with a bed room viyal dj last night at the wedding but after showing him that my denon can do every thing a technics can do then i showed him everything else it could do he was blown away yet still a little reluctant to admit i was right

i disagree with Buck Rogers.....

u say a laptop more reliable than 2 CD players?

What for example, if the laptop crashed? ud have nothing then, at least when a CD skips, u can take it out and replace it.

and Mini Discs? Where, pray, do u buy Fully Legal Mini Discs where the PRS wont catch u, and uve lost ur whole collection...hm?

and they most certainly arent better quality in my opinion. the sound is "crunched" just to fit more onto 1 disc.

I think mini disc sounds better than MP3 !

Hmm the old 'My Medium is better than yours' appears again, one point that often goes astray, is that whatever media you use, there may be other issues to consider!.

NO ELECTRONIC ITEM is 100% reliable whether its CD Player, Laptop, Mp3 Player, Turntable. And ANY Electronic item can fail at any time.

Of course, you always carry with you at least one Spare CD Player, Spare amplifier, Spare mixer, Spare leads (Very important), Spare fuses, spare lamps .... YOU do don't you?.

It won't matter what media you use for music if your Mixer or Amp fails will it?, I mean you'll be handing out refunds and apologies if they go down...and they do! - the evening will be over for you if you don't carry any form of back up, you'll have no choice but to pack away and return home.....your name and reputation in tatters.........

It never fails to amaze me the amount of DJ's who work miles away from home and don't even have the basic 'Survival kit' in the car / van / trailor. A Walkman CD Player costs a few tens of pounds, A small 150W Mono Amp less than £100 and a bog standard mixer often less than £30. Non of these are ideal Dj tools but then again, letting a client down through equipment faliure is also ideal???.

Of course it's often impractical to carry large items such as speakers, but there is little in them to fail. More likely to go down, are the items mentioned above, suggested replacements of which will often fit behind the seats in your car, and will get you out of the brown sticky stuff with mimimum embarrassment. Having a spare in the garage at home isn't much use to you if the failure occurs at 10pm, and your 45 mins from home .

Of course, spending money is a dirty word when it comes to back up equipment, it will never happen to me etc etc. A one-off investment of £150 - £200 will ensure that you have the basic 'get you through the gig' tools needed to get around the total failure of your gear SHOULD you be unfortunate enough to suffer it.

[SARCASM] Or perhaps a one off peace of mind £200 investment isn't worth it, when compared to some who may be refunding a £200+ booking fee when their amp blows up!. Maybe the £200 would be better spent on a 7th lighting effect, which of course will be a lot of use to you when your mixer dies![/SARCASM]

Moral of the story? - whatever you use, MP3 Player or Gramophone!, Don't get caught with your pants down!