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This is an idea that has become very popular in recent years: the idea that Vinyl Is Coming Back. Type “vinyl popularity” into Google and you will be presented with over four million results describing a new surge of interest in vinyl as a format (although one article high in Google’s PageRank entitled The whole market is converting to vinyl is actually about fencing). Earlier in 2008, Time Magazine ran an article wittily entitled Vinyl Gets its Groove Back in which we are told that “...vinyl records.... are suddenly cool again.” Apparently “...increasing numbers of the iPod generation are also purchasing turntables (or dusting off Dad's), buying long-playing vinyl records and giving them a spin.”
Wow. In a culture obsessed with cutting-edge technology and the latest gadgets, it is refreshing to know that a recording format from nearly 60 years ago is proving to be popular all over again. Or it would have been refreshing if it were true. Unfortunately (and with all due respect to vinyl enthusiasts, of whom I am one) a little research tells a different story. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sales of vinyl records in 2007 made up 0.7% of all music sales. This figure is indeed up from their estimation of vinyl sales in 2006, which made up 0.6% of the market. By contrast, according to the RIAA, digital downloads in 2007 constituted 11.2% of the market, while our old friend the CD accounted for 82.6%. If this is how vinyl “comes back” it is going to be a very subtle revolution. Of course statistics like these are notoriously hard to verify. Indeed Christina Dell in her Time Magazine article quotes a different set of numbers, taken from Nielsen SoundScan, which puts the 2007 figure for vinyl at 0.2%. “...up 15.4% from the...units bought in 2006,” she announces.
When you factor in the popularity (if that is the right word) of Classical Music, the numbers become even more stark. Going back to the RIAA, they calculate that sales of Classical Music in 2007 represented 2.3% of the market.
Would anyone care to calculate 0.7% of 2.3%?
What this means, if the numbers are accurate, is that of all the recordings sold in the US in 2007, approximately one out of every six thousand or so was a Classical LP. These numbers, while harsh, are not meant to denigrate the Classical Long-Playing Record in any way.They do suggest, however, that vinyl, and especially Classical vinyl, is not coming back as quickly as all that. The rumours, however, continue to surface in news stories, music journals and of course on the internet: Vinyl is coming back! CDs have had their day, more and more people are re-discovering LPs! At the heart of these rumours are the perceived advantages of vinyl: the sound is “warmer” and “richer”. Digital sound is “harsh” and unpleasant and it is only a matter of time before the general public realises this. The problem is that CDs have now been around for twenty-six years, and while the format is indeed in danger of being rendered obsolete, it is not vinyl that poses the threat; it is the mp3 file.
This should not be surprising to anyone. It has never been in the nature of consumer technology to move backward; once a format has been replaced, it does not generally re-appear. Video stores do not sell new releases on 8mm film, and modern computers do not accept 5¼-inch floppy discs. This is partly a natural development of technology, but it can also be seen as an excuse by the recording industry to sell us the same recordings over and over again. For better or for worse, mainstream media has moved away from vinyl, especially in the Classical community, where CDs were embraced quickly and enthusiastically. Anyone buying Classical Music in the 1980’s will doubtless remember the speed with which LPs vanished from the shops. By 1987 it was very difficult to find a retailer that stocked vinyl, even if a recording had been issued that way. By 1990, Classical LPs were little more than a slightly quaint memory of a different generation. New recordings were issued on CD and cassette (remember them?) and the major labels were racing to re-issue their back catalogue on the shiny silver discs. Anyone who wished to remain faithful to the LP format was presented with a dilemma: no new LPs were being issued.
Of course music did not stop happening just because there was no more vinyl. In the quarter of a century since the launch of CDs, hundreds of thousands of new recordings have been made, many of them by musicians who were all but unknown during the LP era. There are very few LPs of Joshua Bell, for example. Singers Sumi Jo, Thomas Hampson, Bryn Terfel etc. would be mostly absent from a vinyl-only collection. The Early Music movement, which was still on the margins of establishment in the 1980’s, blossomed into the centre-stage of the 1990’s. Important figures such as Rene Jacobs, Marc Minkowski, Jordi Savall and Philippe Herreweghe have all made essential - but CD-only - contributions to the musical community. And then there is the new music. Anyone who professes an interest in the development of music in the late 20th Century would do well to accept the Compact Disc; composers such as Steve Reich, John Adams, John Corigliano, Thomas Ades, Krzysztof Penderecki etc. have all been working steadily in the last twenty-five years. To collect their music is to collect CDs.
None of this means that vinyl is dead. But it is important to recognise that the storage device is perhaps less important than the music being stored on it. Recordings allow us to experience performances that are no longer live. If we limit ourselves to one format over another, we are focusing on the packaging at the expense of the content. The problem with technological advancement has always been that we, as consumers, are at the mercy of the formats that are endorsed by the industry. Vinyl records can only be enjoyed as long as there are record players to play them. If the industry ceases its support of a format, all recordings stored in that format become so many useless objects. Unfortunately, no recording technology has yet been developed that allows the recording to be heard without some form of “playback device” (a CD player, a turntable, an iPod). As long as recordings require a player, the consumer market will be obliged to listen to music on the player chosen by the industry at any given point in time. If major record labels were to stop releasing music on CDs tomorrow and begin issuing all recordings as mp3 files, music lovers would either invest in mp3 technology or do without any music recorded after 2008. Vinyl represented the industry’s format of choice for over three decades. CDs have represented the format of choice now for two and a half decades.
Vinyl is unlikely to disappear any time soon, for the simple reason that there are still too many recordings to listen to, and too many people to listen to them. Classical vinyl may only represent 0.7% of 2.3% of the market in 2007, but it also represents the whole recording industry as it was between 1950 and 1982. To listen to a recording on LP is to experience the recording as it was at that time, just as the recording itself allows us to experience the performance as it was at that time. This doesn’t mean vinyl is going to “come back” any more than 1950 is going to come back. But it does mean that vinyl is still relevant, and always will be. This is, after all, what recordings do: they allow us to re-experience the past.
Shawm Kreitzman
October, 2008
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Updated: 2008-10-16
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