That’s perfectly valid. There was a long time where I just could not afford to buy CDs from my favorite artists. It’s actually how I cultivated the “rule” I mentioned in my previous post. I’ve actually begun buying stuff from Japan only recently (as in just a few months ago). Buying visual kei CDs are an expensive hobby even now, because the cost of shipping is just painful. This scene ran on goodwill even during the boom, because someone had to buy the CD to put everyone else on, so to speak. Things really haven’t changed in that regard either.
But I digress. That still doesn’t mean that they can’t do it. It just means that the demand is a fraction of what the demand for their CDs are, which is why I said it only makes sense for the biggest bands to pursue it. Instead of guessing how many people might be interested, have people sign up. Be transparent about the price ahead of time so people can budget. It can work.
Even in international waters, they don’t print a lot of copies of vinyl. I wasn’t dropping the number of copies of each pressed to show off (well maybe a bit ^_^) but to put some context around how few pressings there are for even established American artists. For more context: Spiritbox pressed about 20,000 copies of Eternal Blue on vinyl across all the different finishes (21,150 to be exact). That’s not a lot, and some are still available for purchase from their site. I bought Only for Dolphins by Action Bronson on vinyl for $60 and there are only 1000 copies of those. There’s another version that was sold out that had yellow vinyl instead of green, and that was 1000, and then another pink version that was 750. There are only 1000 copies of No Idols by Domo Genesis & The Alchemist.
So I’m under no impression that there would be any more than 1000 copies of any of these reprints, or that they would be cheap, or that they would even be practical. But they would be cool.
On a more practical tangent, the lifespan of an average CD is 25 to 50 years before it succumbs to bit rot. You need a special CD-R treated with phthalocyanine dye and a gold metal layer to get over 100 years. CD-Rs and audio CDs with that dye but a silver alloy metal layer cap out at 100 years and may only last 50. Literally anything else caps out at 50 years, with some forms of media only being good for 5 to 10 years. A vinyl can last for 100 years easily with good care under good conditions, and it can last up to 1000 years before it begins to decompose. Let’s be completely honest - most visual kei bands are not breaking the bank to make sure they get great quality CD-R’s. There are already CD’s from the 90’s that are quickly reaching their expiration date - and if they remain in those cases and they aren’t ripped and preserved digitally then someone is going to have a nasty surprise when they finally crack that case open and find a pristine CD with garbled, unreadable data on it. Ripping and preserving Japanese rarez digitally is going to be essential and I fear that by the time the scene “realizes” this we will have already lost quite a few things to bit rot.
We are essentially on the same page - physical CDs are nice but expensive and digital preservation is going to be the way forward. I’ve just reached a point where if I’m going to buy physical media of an artist, I only buy the CD if I have to. If I already have digital files, I’m opting for buying a vinyl or cassette as a collectors item (trivia: cassettes under good conditions can last for about 30 years). It just so happens that vinyls last longer than CDs under optimal conditions.