enframed wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:11 am

Justin Foley wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:45 pm
Is vinyl still the goal or are we cool with online only?
I like vinyl and I think there's a shared sense of value about it in the community where we release music. So it's worth it for us to create records when we think it will meet our big goal/constraint. But vinyl means additional expense, wait, and – I suspect this will become more of a deal over time – environmental impact.

Is the environmental impact of records really any worse than that of server farms and rare earth metals or whatever kinda mining they are doing to make computers? Could it be any worse?

Yep, agreed. The shrinkwrap on the jacket (which I forego if I have a say in it) is more wasteful than the record itself, even if it becomes glorified shelf filler or eventually recycled.

The plastic blobs in the ocean are a catastrophe but for whatever reason humans seem to hold on to Herb Albert records..

Vinyl is such a pain in the ass. Expensive to make, long lead times, and expensive to ship. I’ll be fine if I never put out another record again. I’m totally content with downloads and a short run of CDs.

penningtron wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:25 am

enframed wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 10:11 am

Justin Foley wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:45 pm
Is vinyl still the goal or are we cool with online only?
I like vinyl and I think there's a shared sense of value about it in the community where we release music. So it's worth it for us to create records when we think it will meet our big goal/constraint. But vinyl means additional expense, wait, and – I suspect this will become more of a deal over time – environmental impact.

Is the environmental impact of records really any worse than that of server farms and rare earth metals or whatever kinda mining they are doing to make computers? Could it be any worse?

Yep. The shrinkwrap on the jacket (which I forego if I have a say in it) is more wasteful than the record itself, even if it becomes glorified shelf filler or eventually recycled.

I'll give you the shrinkwrap, but I'm not sure the rest of it is as bad as servers/CDs. USA should do it the way UK used to do it: ship without shrinkwrap and then provide reusable sleeves.

enframed wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 12:06 pm I'll give you the shrinkwrap, but I'm not sure the rest of it is as bad as servers/CDs. USA should do it the way UK used to do it: ship without shrinkwrap and then provide reusable sleeves.

Yeah, I was agreeing with you. Records are pretty far down the list as far as consumption and wastefulness, as people actually keep them, or find other uses for them (use them for scratching/samples, turn 'em into bowls or clocks or whatever..).

CDs are another story. Not much you really can do with bad or unwanted discs other than toss 'em in a landfill.

If we're getting into the environmental impact, we probably have to talk about the chemicals and waste involved with the process of making lacquers and metal stampers.

Is the cassette release trend still going? That puzzled me, though I kind of liked it while I was still driving an old Camry with a cassette player. Once my car changed, all the tour cassettes I bought became unplayable. As a listener/consumer, I've acquiesced to online releases at this point. Bandcamp for purchases and evil Sp*tify for streaming.

I just listened to the new Neko Case interview on the Aquarium Drunkard podcast, and she talks about grants and arts funding for bands in Canada and how alien that's always been in the USA. Definitely true that pretty much any band with any audience putting out a cassette or CD in Canada in the 90s got some kind of grant money even if just a few hundred bucks. Definitely true of music videos, too. I don't know how the arts funding stacks up for bands today compared to 25 years ago. The flipside is that geography, population density, and climate in Canada are not friendly for touring or sales.

There is no question that making, packaging, and distributing a series of 500 vinyl records has a much larger negative environmental impact than keeping a release digital. Especially because that same record is going to be available digitally anyway.

= Justin

Justin Foley wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 2:26 pm There is no question that making, packaging, and distributing a series of 500 vinyl records has a much larger negative environmental impact than keeping a release digital. Especially because that same record is going to be available digitally anyway.

= Justin

Ah yes, I overlooked that little fact they'll be digitized anyway. You're right.

Still. I mean maybe it makes me look like a heel to say that the environmental impact of vinyl records is negligible compared to almost every other consumer product out there. But there, I said it.


Justin you probably have some figures on this (?) and I'd be curious, but also curious how records compare to everything else. Just seems like energy should be spent elsewhere, like canned cocktails and hard seltzers or shit designed to be thrown away.

enframed wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 2:37 pm

Justin Foley wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 2:26 pm There is no question that making, packaging, and distributing a series of 500 vinyl records has a much larger negative environmental impact than keeping a release digital. Especially because that same record is going to be available digitally anyway.

= Justin

Ah yes, I overlooked that little fact they'll be digitized anyway. You're right.

Still. I mean maybe it makes me look like a heel to say that the environmental impact of vinyl records is negligible compared to almost every other consumer product out there. But there, I said it.


Justin you probably have some figures on this (?) and I'd be curious, but also curious how records compare to everything else. Just seems like energy should be spent elsewhere, like canned cocktails and hard seltzers or shit designed to be thrown away.

IANJF, but if you are pressing 500 copies of a 180 g vinyl record, that is about 200 lbs of PVC being used. Compare that to the 40 million tons of PVC that is produced worldwide on an annual basis, or t he 400 million tons of total plastic annually, the environmental impact is truly negligible. Especially considering that the record will go on your shelf and remain there rather than being tossed out like shrinkwrap, and with PVC being a more easily recyclable plastic, almost all of the waste left over from stamping those records will get recycled back into the pressing plant's stock of vinyl chips to be used on the next run of records.

tl;dr: yes, pressing a small run of records has a much higher environmental impact than keeping it all digital. On a an overall basis, even on a regional scale, the environmental impact is negligible.

The marginal environment impact of people making, moving, buying, and disposing of vinyl records is tiny in comparison to many other things. That's not the same as saying it won't become more of a factor in whether or not people continue to do it. I think it people will care more about it in the future, but I could be wrong. It hasn't yet stopped me from buying records, but I'll also admit that part of my desire to buy a record is irrational.

Not really the thrust of this thread, though.

turnb - Apologies that I didn't really see you were the original author of the post. I wrote my first response imagining it was for someone without your level of experience; hope I didn't come off to pendantic.

= Justin