I’d agree with you that record shops seem to be closing down all over the place. After looking in to it myself I’m hardly suprised. Mainly due to increasing property prices and business rates making it hard to make money from the limited mark up that vinyl offers.

As for counterfeit vinyl I don’t think there is anything to worry about. No pressing plant (of which there is only one left in the UK I think) would cut a copyright tune which means any counterfeiters would have to use dodgy cutters or the plastic vestax cutter things which are of questionable quality. Any dj would avoid crap vinyl as it sounds shit when played loud and doesn’t last long.

I’ve never come across this kind of trade anyway, other than HTFR who seem to have very dubious poor quality white labels. So I’m not sure it would put too much of a dent in the labels/distributors pockets.

If you want my opinion then the reason why vinyl is having problems is because of the new trend in MP3’s. I know some of you play MP3’s and I’m sorry to moan but if you ask me it’s slowly destroying vinyl and will eventually damage dance music in a big way.

I realise there are sites selling mp3’s (which is good in theory) but there is far too much sharing and illegal downloading going on. When we hire the soundsystem out at parties I see 50% of tunes being played via CD decks with CDR’s. I bet that most of those tunes were not paid for.

I realise vinyl is expensive but by downloading mp3’s (that are not paid for) you are taking money from the artist and labels pocket which will eventually mean the artist will not be able to produce anymore as they will have to find work elsewhere and not be able to afford studio equipment etc and the label will fold due to poor sales (which is happening at the moment).

Vinyl is slowly being killed off, but not because it’s not a viable format (it still has the best sound if you ask me) but because people have no respect and are blatently ripping people off so they can have the “latest tune”. Although looking at the Drum & Bass scene it’s hardly suprising. It’s their own fault when the dnb elite horde all the new tunes to themselves and keep tunes on dubplate for up to a year.

By the time they get released they have been cained and the dj’s who aren’t in the “dubplate” loop just get left with the tunes from 6 months ago. You can hardly blame them for trying to better their set and get people interested by trying to get hold of the newer stuff. DnB artists and labels should stop being so selfish and maybe that would help their scene and vinyl sales.

:get_you:

Ye but its like sum record shops have basically closed their shops down because theyre internet businez is booming atm, like red eye records

The internet will eventually take over quite a few more industries, becoz people are fat and lazy these dayz and would rather sit on their arses while buyin woteva than gettin up and goin down the highstreet

ye agree wiv dat totally, but theyre will always be an underground scene and truss it moves so much faster than mainstream music
And itz the underground that will keep our music alive and out there
It wil neva fade away

Does anyone here use final scratch or any of the other ones?

If you’ve never heard of it basicly you can play an mp3 through a vinyl with the same quality and feel as a normal record, used alot in the states I think but i’ve never actually seen anyone over here using it. As I mix oldskool almost everything I buy is 2nd hand wether from ebay or a record shop so I supose to don’t contribute any money to the scene anyway, could be worth the investment just not sure wether it’s actually as good as people say…

Yeah I think mp3 is the future for buying on the internet

Asia is a fucking huge continent BTW which goes all the way from India/Pakistan to the other side of China/Japan/SE Asia – all these different countries have different rules, although their law (apart from mainland China) is often loosely based around British law having been once part of the Empire (incidentally this is where stuff like ASBO laws come from, re-working laws used to prevent “trouble amongst the natives”)

Only the SE Asian countries are really harsh on drugs and in many cases the laws they tell international bodies such as the UN are different from what actually goes down on the street.

The laws in China/India are about the same as those in the UK (although prisons aren’t anywhere as clean as British ones and way more crowded!)

The image of “hard working Asians” is deliberately projected by certain countries so they can wrestle away work such as call centres from the West. The reality can be somewhat different! (BTW a lot of my family are in Malaysia)

Thailand can be dodgy sometimes as the official law means prison/death penalty for drugs, the full moon parties often only happen because cops are corrupt and are taking payoffs.

There is also a lot of hidden (and not so hidden) racism and hatred towards the foreign tourists from the West and recently that young girl from Reading was raped and killed there…

some bits are. Sadly a lot of the country has been trashed now by over-development and there is massive inequality and poverty. When I was there last in 1994 one moment you’d see new yuppie flats and then a shanty town within metres of them..

I hope in 10 years time or so that when our generation is in power in these countries do end up as better places; there is a lot of good stuff happening there (nearly all our high tech kit is built and designed in these countries and there is some amazine natural phenomena in the region..)

A friend had an earlier version and didn’t think much of it, it may have improved these days. OTOH whilst these may give you more creative control over mixing an MP3, it cannot undo the effects of digital audio compression on the music (particularly 128K MP3s…)

I’m surprised so many people seem not to be able to hear the effects of compression – OTOH the use of ketamine does odd things to hearing as well..

I’ll admit to using MP3s for obtaining long deleted tracks but would always rather have vinyl.