Viva la vinyl

by Joachim Treasurer

Many music fans who can remember buying a cassette tape of their favorite album for under a fiver will probably tell you that those days were the best. Fast forward a few years later to an age where the average music fan now chooses to download their music digitally. Whilst the good old cassette tape is classed as being ‘retro’, the current re-emergence of the vinyl as a popular listening method is somewhat surprising.

Although vinyl has always been popular amongst avid collectors and old school music fans, lately vinyl records have seen a huge increase in sales, a 41% rise from 2010 - 2011.

Last month, HMV announced that they are looking to increase their in-store vinyl stock due to high demand. So why have people decided to go back to this old school media? 

After wax cyclinders and bakelite records made sound portable in the early 20th Century, the introduction of vinyl brought music to the masses in the late 1940s, and was hugely popular with music fans with millions of seven-inch singles and twelve-inch albums sold every year.

Music Industry

Then came the cassette tape, later followed by the CD and just as it seemed that the music industry would settle, the digital age brought with it the latest evolution of music recording.

The music industry has had to adapt hugely over the last five years or so, in order to match the public’s demand for instant access to music and the ever increasing amount of music piracy that allows fans to download music for free.

Today’s music industry is mainly digital and with CD sales declining rapidly, it is unlikely that many would have anticipated the re-emergence of vinyl. So why the affinity for the fragile fomat?

According to Central Saint Martins Graphic Design student and vinyl enthusiast, Ollie Hanlen, the attraction of  vinyl lies in the way that they sounded and were recorded in the past.

“I just love the whole history behind the vinyl as well as the sound it gives with all its imperfections and glitches. It seems to me that if you want to listen to how artists like The Beatles intended their records to sound then you should listen to the original recording. Nowadays you have all of these over-produced, perfect sounding records, which to me sound boring and lack character.
I DJ occasionally and for me there is nothing better than playing a classic vinyl.”

The return of vinyl

With 2011’s vinyl record sales the highest they have been in five years it would seem logical for companies to tap back into a market that once seemed very niche. Last year Radiohead’s The King of Limbs sold more than 20,000 vinyl copies and whether or not this is due to singer Thom Yorke avid fan-base, there is no doubt that there is now a real market for vinyl records.

According to Nick Brown, owner of Intoxica record store on Portobello Road, there are many reasons why he thinks that record sales are continually increasing and why more and more people are abandoning CDs as a physical record in favour of vinyl releases.

“Vinyl is just cooler isn’t it? I mean you look at some of those classic releases from the ‘60s and ‘70s like the Velvet Underground and David
Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album and it’s not only how they sound when you play them on a vinyl player, but also the artwork on the front. The album sleeves of these classic albums have become
synonymous with the artists and the whole era.”

Whether the new influx of vinyl buyers is just a fad or a niche market that is coming more to the fore remains to be seen.

Although there is the fear that a mainstream company like HMV have noticed this trend and could commercialise it, credit should still go to the music buyer. If the sales in vinyl records keep rising, it will be a real testament to music fans and their unwillingness to buy into whatever
is out there at the moment.

Hopefully more artists will release vinyl records in the future and tap into a market that before now seemed dead and buried.

Brown concluded, “I don’t actually think vinyl sales were a problem before. If they were we would have gone out of business a long time ago.I think it’s more mainstream now; we’re very specialist so I think there will always be a market for vinyl. It will never die.”