VINYL – THE REAL BUSINESS
From college dorm rooms to high school sleepovers,
an all-but-extinct music medium has been showing up lately. And we don't mean
CDs.
Vinyl records, especially the full-length LPs that
helped define the golden era of rock in the 1960s and '70s, are suddenly cool
again. Some of the new fans are baby boomers nostalgic for their youth. But to
the surprise and delight of music executives, 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.
Like the comeback of Puma sneakers or vintage T
shirts, vinyl's resurgence has benefited from its retro-rock aura. Many young
listeners discovered LPs after they rifled through their parents' collections
looking for oldies and found that they liked the warmer sound quality of
records, the more elaborate album covers and liner notes that come with them,
and the experience of putting one on and sharing it with friends, as opposed to
plugging in some earbuds and listening alone.
"Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot
of people going back to vinyl," says David MacRunnel,
a 15-year-old high school sophomore from
The music industry, hoping to find another revenue
source that doesn't easily lend itself to illegal downloads, has happily jumped
on the bandwagon.
Contemporary artists have begun issuing their new
releases on vinyl in addition to the CD and MP3 formats. As an extra lure, many
labels are including coupons for free audio downloads with their vinyl albums
so that Generation Y music fans can get the best of both worlds: high-quality
sound at home and iPod portability for the road.
Also, vinyl's different shapes (hearts, triangles)
and eye-catching designs (bright colors, sparkles)
are created to appeal to a younger audience.
Vinyl records are just a small scratch on the surface when it comes to total
album sales--only about 0.2%, compared to 10% for digital downloads and 89.7%
for CDs, according to Nielsen SoundScan--but these
numbers may underrepresent the vinyl trend since they
don't always include sales at smaller indie shops
where vinyl does best.
Still, 990,000 vinyl albums were sold in 2009, up
15.4% from the 858,000 units bought in 2007.
Mike Dreese, CEO of
Newbury Comics, a New England chain of independent music retailers that sells
LPs and CDs, says his vinyl sales were up 37% last year, and Patrick Amory,
general manager of indie label Matador Records, whose
artists include Cat Power and the New Pornographers, claims, "We can't
keep up with the demand.
Big players are starting to take notice too. "It's not a significant part
of our business, but there is enough there for me to take someone and have half
their time devoted to making vinyl a real business," says John Esposito,
president and CEO of WEA Corp., the U.S. distribution company of Warner Music
Group, which posted a 30% increase in LP sales last year.
In October, Amazon.com introduced a vinyl-only
store and increased its selection to 150,000 titles across 20 genres.
"I'm not saying vinyl will become a
mainstream format, just like gourmet eating is not going to take over from
McDonald's," says Michael Fremer, senior
contributing editor at Stereophile.
"But there is a growing group of people who
are going back to a high-resolution format." Here are some of the reasons
they're doing it and why you might want to consider it
Sound quality LPs generally exhibit a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs and
digital downloads.
MP3 files tend to produce tinnier notes,
especially if compressed into a lower-resolution format that pares down the
sonic information. "Most things sound better on vinyl, even with the
crackles and pops and hisses," says MacRunnel,
the young Missouri record collector
Social experience Crowding around a record player to listen to a new album with
friends, discussing the foldout photos, even getting up to flip over a record
makes vinyl a more socially interactive way to enjoy music.
"As
far as a communal experience, like with family and friends, it feels better to
listen to vinyl," says Jason Bini, 24, a recent
graduate of