There’s a major comeback underway in the music industry, and I’m not talking about the Backstreet Boys’ latest sonic atrocity. With the commercial advent of the compact disc back in 1982, pretty much everybody expected that vinyl records were finally on their way out of the mainstream and into the history books. And while vinyl did suffer at the hands of new digital formats, the gramophone record has refused to die, and is now once again on the rise.
In an interesting twist, the compact disc may now be in danger of becoming obsolete. Now, when most people buy a CD, the first thing they do is slip the disc into their computer and import the songs into a music management program like iTunes. The next step sees the compressed song files transferred to an MP3 player for listening on the go. Just like that, in about three minutes, the job of the CD is finished completely. The disc and jewel case just sit around collecting dust.
So with the adoption of digital music players, and the personal-computer-as-your-stereo trend, the role of the once-mighty compact has been reduced to that of a temporary container, a way to transport music from the shelf at HMV back to your PC at home. In that case, why not just download the music instead (legally, or otherwise), and save yourself the trip to the mall?
This is the revelation that more and more music buyers are having everyday. Traditional music retailers have also realized this, which is why they’re either closing up shop (like Sam the Record Man) or devoting an ever-increasing amount of shelf space to hawking DVDs, video games, and electronics.
As new technology forces the whole paradigm of music consumerism into weird, uncharted territory, some record labels are now trying to stake out a new middle ground between the CD and the 99-cent download. A good example is EMI/Parlophone, who recently made their deceptively timed Radiohead box set—not to be confused with Radiohead’s own box set of their brilliant new independent release In Rainbows—available on a customized USB key (ironically in the shape of Kid A’s greedy-looking, killer teddy bears). This choice highlights not only the fact that CDs are now viewed as glorified file-transfer devices, but also touches on one of the downsides of downloading: the lack of a tangible artifact to accompany the purchase.
A lot of people really like collecting music in an easily discernable form, just to have a copy of the album artwork, or to feel they have a real connection to the band or artist. Amongst people who enjoy music the most—audiophiles, DJs, nerdy fans, and collectors— vinyl records are actually making a comeback as the tangible companion to digital downloads, compared to the sliding sales of compact discs.
The long and resilient history of the gramophone record should humble those who thought the format dead and gone. Only the third major music format ever invented, the record made its predecessor, the phonograph cylinder, obsolete way back in 1929, became commercially available as vinyl in 1948, and later successfully fought off format coups by reel-to-reel tape and the campy eight-track. With the introduction of the compact disc, it looked like the end of the line for vinyl records, but even before digital formats began to threaten the CD, a protective niche emerged. Audiophiles claimed that CDs sounded too sharp and tinny (likely caused by vinyl mastering techniques being used to prepare music for CDs), and preferred the warmer, fuller sound of records. At the same time, professional DJs relied on their ability to directly manipulate the sound source on a record to slip-cue, beatmatch, and scratch—something which wasn’t even possible (let alone stylish) with CDs until the recent invention of CDJ technology. So while compact discs took over the store shelves, the vinyl presses kept running— albeit in a much more limited capacity.
The 1990s saw another niche take an interest in vinyl: independent artists and record labels. While electronic, hip-hop, and dance artists still continued to issue some vinyl for DJ purposes, mainstream rock music was largely relegated to compact disc and cassette tape. Luckily, punk and hardcore bands still had an affinity for pressing seven-inch records, and as punk music merged with indie-rock styles in the American mid-west during the early nineties, this tradition endured, and flourished in indie culture.
All of this created the necessary groundwork for an emerging trend: the people buying the most vinyl in today’s resurgence are the young music fans, not the old and nostalgic. Indie labels convinced a whole new generation to adopt this seemingly defunct technology. These young consumers are attracted the classic design of records, their aforementioned sound quality, and a considerable “retro cool” factor. Bands also like to have their music released on vinyl, and many of them see it as a badge of honour to have their music cut into a hot slab of wax.
What’s really interesting are the many ways vinyl and digital are teaming up to cut CDs out of the loop. Indie bands and labels—major labels have largely slept on the vinyl resurgence— now often issue free digital downloads with the purchase of a vinyl record. For example, when local indie-label Dead Astronaut released a split 12-inch featuring music by militant post-punk outfits Anagram and Creeping Nobodies, they also included a slip of paper with a secret URL, username, and password that the customer could use to download high-quality MP3s of the record.
But leave it to DJs to find the ultimate combination of vinyl and digital. On the market for about three years, programs like Scratch Live by New Zealand software company Serato Audio Research, allow DJs to combine the control of vinyl with the ease of selecting and editing tracks in a digital environment. The setup includes two classic turntables, a laptop, the DJ software, and two specially-printed, time-coded vinyl records. Once the two records are spinning on the turntables, the DJ can manipulate digital audio files stored on their laptop using the time-coded vinyls as controllers— just as if the music on the hard drive was actually on the record.
So while CDs aren’t down-and-out just yet, vinyl’s numbers are clearly on the rise. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, vinyl sales have doubled as the percentage of music sales since 2000, to become a $110- million industry. In that same time period, overall music sales have dropped from $14.4 billion to $12.2 billon. Conversely, according to figures from the British Phonographic Industry, the number of seven-inch singles sold rose from just under 179,000 in 2001 to over a million in 2006, marking the first time seven-inch sales reached that figure in the U.K. since 1998.
With high-quality MP3s (that never skip) and software like iTunes quickly surpassing the utility of compact discs amongst casual music listeners, and with audiophiles and hardcore fans taking a newfound interest in the classic, analogue world of vinyl, the CD’s days could be numbered, and the biggest twist in the audio format wars could already be in play.
