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I’ve often lamented the loss of key pieces of my own collection of vinyl. I have always loved the smell of a record, the feel of it, the way the static charge is released from it when you crack the plastic for the first time and pull the record from its sleeve. I love the warmth of vinyl records, the way it sounds, and even the inconvenience of having to turn the record over to hear the other side. My love affair with vinyl is lifelong and, up until recently, I thought it made me a dinosaur in the animal kingdom, clutching desperately onto the last shred of my childhood memories in some foul attempt to recapture the magic.
It came as a huge surprise to learn that there is a resurgent interest in vinyl — so great, in fact, that sales of 45 RPM records in Great Britain surpassed the 1 million mark in 2005. It’s the first time since 1998 that vinyl record sales have even reached the 1 million mark, and it appears to be no random occurrence.
The reasons for this resurgence make a great deal of sense if you sit down and think about it. One possibility is that the sons and daughters of the working class are searching for symbols of their importance to artistry through music. The same kids whom our world has pressed and pressured towards learning and embracing technology have, in some ways, shunned technology as a way of demonstrating their independence from the status quo. In their music and their art, they see technology as representative of the establishment against which anxious youth are bound for rebellion. While millions of young people are downloading and burning music to CD’s, the working class have neither the wherewithal nor the interest to learn how to burn CD’s. This generation finally got tired of being pressured into upgrading their technology and said, “Why should we?”
In the same regard, vinyl records, while not piracy-proof, offer limited options to consumers for conversion to digital format. Though there are products on the market like the Numark TTUSB Turntable with USB output which allows a user to convert their vinyl records to MP3’s, it’s not a very convenient option. Sure, you can slap that vinyl on the turntable and boot up your computer. However, if you’re used to ripping a CD to MP3 in a few minutes, you’re in for a surprise. Unlike conventional CD methods, vinyl records have to be converted at standard speed. In our busy world, people don’t really want to take the time to convert their records one at a time to MP3’s because they don’t have time.
Yet another important thing to remember is that owning a vinyl record represents a special connection to the music you love. It’s like a tiny piece of art that an individual person can have for themselves — beautifully packaged or brightly-colored vinyl has never lost its collectible value. With recent limited runs of vinyl from any number of modern artists (including Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys and White Stripes) pushing individual sales of records, music fans are proving that they continue to have respect for the art and artistry of the music and the representative releases of those creating the music.
In this day where MySpace, MP3 blogs, and P2P drive the tastes of popular music, it’s actually warming to my heart to see that vinyl is not dead. I know what its like to have that love of vinyl, to embrace the physical record and place it on the turntable, to put the stylus down on the groove and hear the sweet sounds come pouring out. Since the music industry is responsible for steering everyone towards the compact disc over 20 years ago, why not employ the same steering methods to start a backwards momentum? If they want to, it’s an excellent time to revisit their power to steer popular culture by starting to release music exclusively in vinyl or digital format. I say if the kids want a CD, they can burn them for themselves. For all our modern conveniences, there are times where mere technology is not enough to keep art alive. To all you kids out there going to record stores and buying vinyl I say thank you; you’ve chosen wisely.
1Taylor on Dec 21, 2006 at 11:12 am:
sadly, I think there’s also a kind of pretension in it. owning and listening to things on vinyl has become the equivalent of listening to bands before they get big, etc. it’s a whole new exercise of showing the extents of your music nerd-dom and music snobbery. though, personally, i love records for how they can completely change the sound and listening experience of an album. some songs sound better on record, some sound better on cd. it’s one of the kinds of versatility of sound that i love.
2Jim on Dec 26, 2006 at 2:10 am:
I have to disagree with the above replyer stating that there is a kind of pretension to vinyl collecting. Sometimes it is the only way to get an artist’s recorded work _at all_. I would gladly buy the CD versions of certian LPs in my collection if the pigopolist labels would open their vaults once in a while.
3E.J. on Dec 26, 2006 at 6:04 am:
There are a million sides to this issue. One is that labels don’t see the bigger value in opening up the vaults for anyone because of the upfront costs associated with doing that. It’s not the actual manufacturing costs, it’s everything else — promoting and distributing stuff that they don’t see as worth what someone else sees in it.
Another is that some artists have made the decision not to re-release items over which they have say so. The first example I can think of is Neil Young. Neil Young, for his part, has a great deal of control over his masters, apparently, and he hasn’t had (nor, as it’s been reported, wanted to have) an agreement in place to crack open those vaults until recently. As a result, there’s tons of old stuff surfacing from Neil Young 25 years into the CD era. However, Time Fades Away is still out of print even after that, never pressed to CD and probably never will be because Neil doesn’t want it.
What Taylor is talking about, Jim, is fashionation rather than fascination, the act of enjoying something for purely style reasons rather than a love of the music itself. Personally, I don’t care either way, at least people are buying the music and that’s enormously refreshing. Perhaps in the owning of the records on vinyl, those fashionistas will someday develop an appreciation of what they have in their hands beyond the value of style points.
4Henry the Wax Man on Dec 27, 2006 at 8:32 am:
If it’s music I want, I buy CD’s. They can be played in the car, they can be ripped to my Ipod (no silly Apple DRM) and if I want to turn my friends on to something I’ve discovered, all I have to do is rip it and burn it (heavens, call the RIAA! He’s a (gasp) PIRATE!). I buy vinyl when it’s something that’s not available easily on CD. There’s lots of stuff out there that’s not going to ever be on CD unless you put it there yourself. And if some CD is only available as an import costing $30.00 and a local thrift shop has the vinyl version, in mint condition, for $1.00, which would you buy?