My band has been wrestling with a number of issues recently. But one of them which has come up repeatedly over the past year or three is the issue of vinyl. Specifically, releasing an ACTUAL record.

Now the biggest issue is obviously record players. I have one and a lot of other people do as well but how many others do? There has been a growing trend over the past 5 or so years in the surge of records being released - most larger record companies still do offer their artists releases on vinyl (usually through special order or specialty shops).

On the other hand - I love iTunes and my iPhone and various [older] iPods. Without weighing in on the whole digital vs. non-digital audio question - I can't imagine a world now WITHOUT a digital version of some sort.

In our case - we have a 5 song EP which is pretty much ready to go. It's been done for a bit and we've been sitting on it for a little awhile. Our original plan had been to release a 10" record (3 on side A / 3 on side B) PLUS offer a coupon code for the download of all the tracks as high quality audio files (MP3s and/or some other format). The further plan was to make it available on iTunes soon afterward. The economic reality is that unless you're printing thousands upon thousands of copies or have great connections pressing vinyl records has fairly significant cost - technically probably more than CDs. But it's also more of a niche specialized product.

Records take up more space, are more unwiedly to handle (due typically to size), they have the propensity to warp (sorry David Bowie) or melt (sorry Germs). But CDs suffer from their multitude of issues also - occasional audio differences, scratches, skips, and the like. Digital files also have their issues as well digital pops, audio compression changes and of course the propensity for being lost due to a hard drive crash.

Working within the tech industry it's easy to forego "things of the past" for the latest and greatest technology. I love iTunes but I also love records and it's hard to sometimes quantify the two in the same space. I wonder how many other people are in that boat? For our own sake or maybe as the broader question if a band only put out a record (not a CD) with digital downloads available - how would it sell?

As a sidenote and probably my own answer to this - we've decided to go purely digital. The EP will be available ONLY via iTunes and some of the other larger digital music stores (Napster/etc). The economics for us just don't make sense especially during a time as we're not extremely active.