Came across this from a guy who has a huge store and does great business on all music but mostly vinyl, online and in store, but Universal is jacking up prices on 2500 titles in its catalog, from 2-3$ but on some $10-15$. The you tube link below shows this. But for those who NEVER realized why actual music stores had to charge more on cds than "Best Buy" or "The Wiz" back in the day, this is why. Labels set the price for which you buy the product from them, so back in the day when CDS were selling like crazy, people wondered WHY is tower and sam goody charging 14-15$ a cd and Best Buy 9-11, WELL because Best buy and the Wiz were not and never were in the business for music, they sell elctronics, gaming, washing machines, computers, headphones etc...all this stuff is how they made their money, and on cds they took it flat or in most cases when they had a new cd for 9.99 they were losing about 2$ but they didnt care. Now stores that only did the music thing, had to at least make a dollar or two or they had to fire all the employees, and work with no electricity, but the consumer NEVER understood this. Well it is happening again, Universal is doing a HUGE markup on the cost of how they sell to the stores, so though you may not instantly see a hike in a store you go to for vinyl, once they run out or if something new comes out at this point you are going to see HUGE hikes, expect this record store day and the black friday one to be the most expsensive records yet I can tell you i heard from a store owner for this past RSD and he said though things were selling the biggest complant was the pricing that was higher this time. Get ready for more.

[youtube](43) Outrageous Vinyl Pri... - YouTube[/youtube]

kitbradley said:

I dont buy all that over priced vinyl but I notice the upcoming Universal Japan CD reissues are $19.99 on amazon. Before Covid those types of reissues were around $13 or $14. But there are other sites that still offer reasonable pricing.

The expense of vinyl mainly is in the pressing of it, and all the manufacturing. even if you are an indie artist, you cant escape these costs its not going to happen, some may be able to do 20-25$ for a vinyl but that is almost a loss of money to them. CDS probably will see a bump from this because at the moment they have not seen a rise in costs because it costs almost nothing to do them. Vinyl has had a huge back log and shipping and plants that do the pressing not being able to meet the demand, some think that Universal is purposely raising to actually kill off demand for now till they can catch up, besides them just being a greedy company that owns almost everything. Its funny but this is a day after someone sent in a video/photo to a youtube vinyl guy, of a target that literally had about 100 copies of the new Adele on vinyl priced at 37.99 (which is insane, that better come with a free show ticket) but they had thought this was going to be in demand but they were wrong, they were blaming some of the backlog on other albums, on pressing so many adele that did not sell, because you cant ship them back in most cases.

I don't think people are saying the vinyl crisis is over as much as they are saying that the "craze" and interest in it is. My argument to this is basically it depends on who is out there putting things out, just like anything else. The years the concert industry saw increases you had big name artists on the road doing shows, when you don't you don't have the increase. I believe more that UMG is doing this to squeeze what they can out of the catalog, like mentioned stores that have the stuff already generally won't raise the prices, some will, but once an item runs out and they have to re-order, you will see these hikes everywhere.