Ep486: The State of Vinyl Collecting for 2025 w Billy Fields and Dillon Smith
The Vinyl Guide - Artist Interviews for Record Collectors and Music Nerds
Nate Goyer
4.7 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2025
⏱️ 117 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Three vinyl nerds – Billy Fields from Warner Music Group, Dillon Smith of Noble Records and Nate Goyer of The Vinyl Guide - discuss the state of vinyl collecting in the year 2025 - trends, changes, evolution and thoughts and predictions on what's to come in the near future.
Topics Include:
- Introduction of Billy Fields as vinyl expert at Warner Music Group
- Dillon Smith introduced as Noble Records owner
- Initial discussion of 2024 vinyl market trends
- Billy mentions focus on maintaining subscriptions with Third Man Records
- Discussion of discovering Lee Dorsey records through social media
- Impact of online discovery versus traditional record store hunting
- Dillon reflects on personal collection growth in 2024
- Store inventory mix discussion: 70% used, 30% new
- Dillon describes efforts to prevent burnout through regular collection buying
- Changes in modern vinyl collections coming to market
- Impact of overpressed modern releases on secondary market
- UK vinyl market showing strongest growth internationally
- Release schedule alignment with digital affecting market success
- Taylor Swift's impact on vinyl sales globally
- Discussion of fewer bands in current charts versus solo artists
- Evolution of vinyl market since 2006-2008
- Economic factors affecting entertainment spending during tough times
- Local UK pressing plants helping market stability
- Changes in used record collections coming to market
- Impact of deceased collectors' collections entering market
- Discussion of subscription service impact on used market
- Original pressings versus reissues value discussion
- Impact of Tone Poet series on Blue Note original prices
- Quality improvements in modern pressing techniques
- Availability of better playback equipment today
- Discussion of collecting original pressings versus reissues
- Dillon's perspective on psychopathic collector mentality
- Voice of America collection acquisition mentioned
- Discussion of historical pressing quantities versus modern numbers
- Billy's approach to collecting versus hunting original pressings
- Impact of audio system quality on listening preferences
- Youth market engagement with vinyl discussion
- Different collecting approaches between generations
- Modern retail challenges with Target/Walmart pricing
- Discussion of variant pressings and market saturation
- Impact of FOMO buying on market
- Sustainability in vinyl production discussion
- PET vinyl alternatives being developed
- Plant efficiency improvements and environmental considerations
- Declining genres discussion - 1950s rock and traditional pop
- Rising interest in country music records
- Discussion of 90s country potential on vinyl
- Garth Brooks box set marketing strategy failure
- Predictions for 2025 vinyl market
- Direct-to-consumer strategy concerns
- Sustainability developments in record pressing
- Personal collection management strategies
- Discussion of recent records giving participants "goosebumps"
- Discussion wrap up
Video version available on the Noble Records YouTube channel
Commercial free, high resolution verion of this podcast is available at: www.Patreon.com/VinylGuide
Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/2Y6ORU0
Listen on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/36qhlc8
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before we start today's episode, I gotta tell you about this amazing vinyl furniture I just got from |
| 0:05.5 | sidetracked workshop.com. I now have the double sidekick model in my front room, and it's |
| 0:11.1 | absolutely killer. It holds a couple hundred records and looks beautiful. Check it out on my |
| 0:15.8 | Instagram. It's very handsome indeed. And when you get a moment, check out sidetrackedworkshop.com and show off your |
| 0:23.1 | vinyl in style. That's sidetracked workshop.com. Welcome to the vinyl guide. The podcast for |
| 0:30.7 | record collectors and music nerds. Here's your host. The biggest record nerd of them all, Nate Goyer. |
| 0:36.2 | Oh, well, hey hey everyone it's Nate |
| 0:37.9 | Welcome to episode 486 |
| 0:40.6 | The Vinyl Guide |
| 0:42.5 | The podcast for record collectors and music nerds |
| 0:45.5 | And uh today's a long one people |
| 0:48.0 | It's uh |
| 0:48.6 | It's nearly two hours |
| 0:50.4 | But uh let me set it up |
| 0:52.4 | Because I think it's going to be pretty interesting, especially |
| 0:55.4 | for you hardcore record collectors. So in recent weeks, I've been thinking we're coming upon |
| 1:02.5 | 10 years of this podcast. We're nearly at 500 episodes. And over that time, unsurprisingly, |
| 1:10.3 | there's been a ton of changes in the vinyl |
| 1:13.8 | record collecting community. And of course, the overall economy kind of moves that as well. |
| 1:20.5 | And I thought, you know, maybe we should pause for a bit and have a chat. Let's talk about |
| 1:26.4 | some of the topics and the evolution of record |
| 1:30.0 | collecting and, you know, some of the trends that we've seen, some of the things that we've |
... |
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