Vinyl in the Time of Covid-19

 

On Thursday I was interviewed on the fruity American television programme LIT Entertainment News about a turnaround: in America vinyl records are outperforming compact discs. Trade figures for the first half 2020 demonstrate that vinyl sales constituted 62 per cent of the revenues for physical formats. It was the first time since the 1980s that vinyl had generated more money than CDs.

            This is something that had been predicted. Sales revenues for vinyl records have increased every year since 2006. Sales revenues for compact discs, in contrast, have declined annually since the millennium. When 2019's trading figures were announced it was predicted that, if trading patterns continued, vinyl would be on course to surpass CDs. Some people called this a long time ago. In my book Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record, I quote the music journalist Adam Woods, who stated in 2004, ‘it is easy to believe that the format could thrive even as the CD begins to lose ground to the Internet’. I also have a 2011 quote from Lyor Cohen, who was then the CEO of the Warner Music Group, stating that ‘vinyl will definitely outlast CDs’.

It should be noted that vinyl is outperforming compact discs in terms of revenues but not in terms of units sold. One of the reasons why vinyl is generating more money is because each album typically costs two and a half times more than a CD. It is also the case that, in our time of lockdowns, it is more likely that consumers will purchase vinyl than CDs. The former format appeals to collectors and remains accessible via mail order. The latter format is more casually purchased and will be neglected in times of shop closures. Trade figures also indicate that the overall market for physical records is paltry. Vinyl accounts for four per cent of the American market. Streaming, on the other hand, accounts for 85 per cent.

Yet the figures are still remarkable. Vinyl looked on course for obliteration twenty years ago; it is now firmly established as a recording format that both consumers and the recording industry will invest in. Pressing plants have struggled to keep up with demand. Equally impressive is the fact that vinyl sales have continued to increase despite the strictures of Covid-19. In the United States they are up four per cent year-on-year. In the UK the trade magazine Music Week has reported that vinyl has defied ‘coronavirus chaos to post big rises’. Sales for the third quarter were up 41.4 per cent on 2019. This is largely due to the rescheduling of Record Store Day, but is demonstrative of the public’s commitment to this format.

After fifteen years of sales increases and a resolute performance in the face of coronavirus we should probably stop talking of vinyl’s revival. Instead, our focus should be elsewhere. The compact disc has been defeated. Will it now become an object of fetishism for collectors?

 

 

Vinyl in the Digital Age

My review of Vinyl: The Analogue Record in the Digital Age by Dominik Bartmanski and Ian Woodward is available in the May 2016 edition of Popular Music. It is easy to see why I was asked to review it: it has a similar title to my own book and it covers a similar theme. There are nevertheless few genuine crossovers between the two works. We have the vinyl record as our object of study, but we take it in different directions. And this is a good thing. One odd factor of the Bartmanski and Woodward book that I don't mention in my review is its lack of consistency about what their analogue record is called. Sometimes they talk about 'vinyl', at other times it is 'the vinyl'. They do, however avoid 'vinyls', which is common in some countries and among some age groups. Maybe an international standard should be set?

The Single Goodbye

Ten years ago, when I was working on my PhD, I would regularly bump into Travis Elborough in the British Library. Little did I realise that we were exploring similar themes. I was writing my thesis about vinyl, which in adapted form became my book. Travis was also investigating recording formats. He believed that iTunes was destroying the album as a source of income and a ‘thing’. The fruits of his labour became The Long-Player Goodbye, which was published by Scepter in 2008.

            His predictions have not necessarily come true. 159m albums were sold in 2005. This figure was for physical formats only, as the download album was not yet generating any income. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) published the sales figures for 2015 yesterday. They claim that there were 122m album sales last year. While this represents only three-quarters of the sales of a decade ago, it is probably more than anyone expected. Travis, for example, had suggested that the album appeared to be ‘severely imperilled’. But rather than being at risk, the album has revived. The sales figures for 2015 were up 3.7% on the previous year.

            Or at least that is how the record industry has chosen to present things. When we look more closely at the figures we find that genuine ‘albums’ - a collection of songs that a user purchases or consumes as a combined body of work - are not doing so well. CD sales are surprisingly resilient, but they are definitely not increasing: at 55.8m they were down 3.9% on the previous year. Digital albums are faring worse. Standing at 25.7m, they were down 13.5%. Back in 2008, Travis had glimpsed stirrings of a vinyl renaissance, describing it as a ‘peculiar rearguard action’ in the face of the defeat of the album. It is now more than that. In their report on the 2015 sales figures, the BPI note that vinyl was facing ‘near extinction’ in 2007, but its ‘fairy tale revival’ has seen sales reach a 21-year high. 2.1m units were sold last year, an increase of 66% on 2014. This does, however, still represent less than 2% of music consumption in the UK. In total, these formats accumulated 81.5m sales. This was five million fewer than the previous year, and just over half the albums figure for 2007.

            How, then, has the BPI reached its total of 122m album sales? First, they have quantified all individually downloaded tracks as ‘album equivalent sales’. Each download is only allowed to represent a tenth of a purchase, however, in deference the average number of tracks an album. In addition, each individual stream is counted as an album sale. These are divided by a thousand, in accordance with a ‘standard music industry metric’: ‘100 streams = one track sale and 10 track sales = one album’. Using these calculations, individual downloads were equivalent to the sale of 13.3m albums in 2015. Although this was down 14.7% on the previous year, any shortfall was more than made up by the popularity of streams. These were equivalent to the sale of 26.8m albums, a huge 81.7% increase on 2014.

            These mathematical shenanigans are not to everyone’s taste. Tim Ingham, founder of Music Business Worldwide, has described them as ‘self-evident madness’. I don’t think that Travis would approve of them either, albeit that they do provide evidence that some of his hunches were right. These ‘equivalents’ have helped to crack open ‘any notion of the album as linear, unalterable whole’.

            The larger question, however, is why should the record industry want to present every use of music as an album sale. Economics surely come into it. These figures help to downplay the popularity of streaming. This is useful in a climate when the low royalty income from streams is widely criticised. There were 26.8bn individual audio streams in the UK last year, as opposed to 81.5m physical and digital album sales, and yet despite this vast traffic streams are only generating around a third as much money (£251m as opposed to £687m, according to the BPI’s figures, which due to the low income from ad-supported services only feature the income from streaming subscriptions). The division by 1,000 makes this income appear just, as streams represent a third of physical and digital album sales when employing the ‘equivalent’ calculation. However, the BPI’s streaming figures are not only divided by a thousand, they are also halved. They fail to include the 26.9bn streams of music that took place through video sites. This includes YouTube, the most popular provider of music in the UK.

            If these figures tone down the popularity streaming, they also boost the importance of physical formats. When the equivalents are in place, the CD emerges as the leading product. In addition, vinyl’s percentage increases enable this format to be widely praised. It remains important for the record companies to promote these products, as this is where their main profits lie. The companies may well be deriving more income from streaming services than their artists do, but those royalties are dwarfed by the money they rake in with the sale of vinyl and CDs. Tim Ingham has calculated that Adele’s 25 would need to have been streamed 16.4 billion times to equal the $115bn it has thus far generated via physical formats and download sales.

In some cases, however, it costs the industry money to describe products as albums rather than as singles. Simon Fuller’s company 19 Recordings has taken their parent label Sony Music Entertainment to court, alleging a number of contractual misdemeanours. Among them is the fact that Sony regard individually downloaded tracks as singles, whereas 19 Recordings believes they should be classified as ‘segments’ of albums. These definitions have financial consequences, derived from the days when all records were physical, as the plaintiff’s case makes clear:

Because of the high costs of promoting the ‘single’ to radio as well as the relatively high costs of manufacturing, and distributing and marketing it to the ‘brick and mortar’ retail stores that then existed in comparison to those comparable costs expended on an Album, virtually all record labels historically paid lower royalty rates to artists on this less profitable ‘singles’ product. In contrast, the Album, with its relatively small incremental additional costs to manufacture and distribute, but with its 3 to 4-fold higher selling price, permitted labels to achieve a substantially higher profit margin in comparison to the ‘single’, and thus the labels were able to pay a significantly higher royalty rate on albums, including escalations in that rate based on sales success since those profit margins only increased as sales volume went up.

Sony has paid 19 Entertainment a royalty rate for singles that is 25%-35% lower than their album rate. The album rate has the further advantage that, if worldwide sales of 1m are achieved, the royalty increases.

Fuller’s company is furious at the treatment they have received in the download world. First, Sony Entertainment has allowed iTunes to ‘disaggregate’ albums without 19 Recordings’ permission, thus making all tracks available individually. Second, Sony have claimed that these individual tracks should be paid at the reduced ‘records other than album’ rate. Third, Sony are not allowing the sales of these individual tracks to count towards ‘the equivalent of the sale of one Album ... for purposes of calculating sales escalations on that Album’. Consequently, 19 Recordings believe they are being cheated in respect of some ‘albums’ whose disaggregated tracks total the equivalent of 1m sales. There is much in 19 Recordings’ argument. In the online world the costs of manufacture and distribution cannot be used to justify a lower royalty rate for singles. Moreover, the fact that trade bodies are keen to report all online activity as ‘segments’ of albums should surely help 19 Recordings cause.

Given these royalty implications, there must be reasons beyond the financial why record industry personnel remain so devoted to albums. One explanation, perhaps, is that they are not so different to Travis Elborough: they admire the beauty of the LP. This is not as fanciful as it may it first appear. The industry’s major awards, whether these are Grammys, Brit Awards or Mercury Prizes are for albums, and these are (supposedly) based on artistic merit, rather than upon sales. The artists that the industry admires most are those who consistently make important albums. It has commonly accorded greater merit to rock than to pop. Simon Cowell, from this perspective, is not an industry mastermind; he instead suffers from the industry’s snobbery – his artists are consistently frozen out from the most important industry awards.

Of course, these values are as financial as they are artistic. One of the reasons why the record industry praises rock artists over pop artists, and album sales over single sales, is because it is here that longevity lies. And with longevity lies profit. Development costs are paid off and break-even points are achieved. Nevertheless, it is not only consumers who value ‘product’ for its aesthetic worth. Industry personnel work best when they are promoting music they admire. They can also appreciate the beauty of the product itself: industry figures are capable of being spellbound by the look and feel of LPs. Tony Wadsworth, who retired as chairman of the BPI last year, left his post to help set up a vinyl-only branch of the record shop Sister Ray.

There is one further reason for the industry love of albums that mixes the financial with the emotional: patriotism. In 2015, seven of the 10 best selling albums artists were from Britain. In 2014, all 10 were British, the first time this had happened. The situation is different for streaming. The ten most popular streamed tracks in 2015 came from a variety of sources, with only a third of the artists hailing from the UK. This is reflective of a longer historical pattern. For the past ten years the best selling album in Britain has been by an artist from the UK, but the singles charts have been more international. The trade figures issued by BPI downplay the importance of singles by only reporting album sales and album equivalent sales. The triumph of international artists in the singles charts has been decimated, and it has been reduced by a thousand when it comes to streams. Meanwhile, the triumph of British artists in respect of conventional album sales is left to stand as it is. Overall, by kissing the single goodbye and recalibrating streams and individual downloads as albums, these trade figures promote the locals and give a lower profile to the foreigners. The British Phonographic Industry is putting British music first. 

Vinyl: A History of 2014

I’ve been slow at offering a report on vinyl sales for 2014. There’s a good reason for this: there were plenty of others willing to get there first. Stories about vinyl are now mainstream, just as the product is itself. The vinyl market is no longer niche; it is an established part of the music economy. In 2014 vinyl album sales in the UK topped a million. They were 65.1% up on the previous year, eventually selling at 1.29m units. According to PIAS, one of the UK’s main distributors of physical formats, vinyl now makes up 20% of their market. Meanwhile, in the US, 9.2 million vinyl albums were sold last year. This represented a 52% increase on 2013. More significantly, these albums accounted for more than 6% of all physical album sales.

            What needs to be borne in mind is that vinyl albums are expensive. They can make people money. Edwin Schroter, managing director of PIAS, has acknowledged that ‘at the higher dealer price this is good business to be had’. He also attributes the rise in the number of independent record shops to the growth in vinyl sales.

            This type of success doesn’t go unnoticed. In last year’s annual report, I noted that independent record labels were disproportionately successful within the vinyl market, accounting for nearly 60% of the trade. The majors are now raising their game. 2014’s Record Store Day was underscored by complaints that some indie labels couldn’t get their product pressed up for it on time. The shelves were instead filled with titles from the major’s stars, among them One Direction and Herbert von Karajan. This activity led to complaints from indie distributors that the day had been ‘appropriated by major labels’.

            The major record labels went on to dominate vinyl’s top 10 as well. In 2014, all but two of the top ten were on majors. Number one was Pink Floyd’s The Endless River. This was in contrast to 2013, when indie labels released all but three of the best-selling vinyl albums.

            Music Week published 2014’s sales figures on 9 January 2015. In the same edition of the journal there was an interview with Tony Wadsworth, marking the end of his tenure as chairman of BPI. Prior to looking after the UK record industry’s trade body, Wadsworth spent 26 years with EMI, where he rose to the position of CEO. This pillar of the UK music establishment has marked his semi-retirement by joining the indie record retailer Sister Ray, with whom he has set up a vinyl-only branch of the shop. In undertaking this move Wadsworth has indicated that he was in it for the love of music all along. He’s also provided further evidence that there is good business to be had. 

R4949 Starr

I’ve had a couple books on the go recently and they’ve both had something to say about the status and economic worth of vinyl records. First, there’s The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume 1: 1950-1967, a brilliant collaborative venture between Simon Frith, Matt Brennan, Martin Cloonan and Emma Webster. The book seeks to redress the balance of most accounts of the music industry, which, as the authors rightly point out, ‘over-privilege the recording sector at the expense of the sector in which most musicians in all genres have been located historically: the live arena’.

In the period that this first volume covers even the most well known musicians made more money from touring than they did from recording. The authors quote Gordon Thompson, who states that in the mid-1960s ‘recording contracts provided so little money that a band such as Herman’s Hermits needed to tour because most of their income came from live performance’.

            As so often, what was true of Herman’s Hermits was also true of the Beatles. The second book I’ve been reading is another opening volume: Mark Lewisohn’s Tune In, the first part of his trilogy of books covering the Beatles’ history. The book is unusually forthcoming about recording contracts. It reveals just how little the Beatles stood to earn from their record sales. Lewisohn writes:

the everyday business of management was the stage. No ‘pop stars’ could live off broadcasting fees and only the very biggest of chart stars could live off record royalties, so miniscule were the percentages. No one even tried. The sole object of making records was to attract a bigger profile and so earn higher fees from concert and ballroom shows – and, if the artists were lucky to be chosen, to appear in summer seasons in seaside resorts.

The Beatles’ initial contract with EMI gave them a royalty rate of one penny for each single sold (taking into account both sides of the record). This was payable on only 85% of sales (the other 15% was kept by the record company in lieu of ‘records returned and/or damaged in transit and/or used for demonstration of advertising purposes’). Albums were calculated proportionally, ‘usually as six or seven singles’. The royalty rate was halved for sales outside Britain. Lewisohn does the maths:

In the Beatles’ case, this penny they’d get on 85 per cent of sales would have to be divided five ways: 15 per cent to Brian [Epstein, for his manager’s commission], the rest split between John, Paul, George and Pete [Best]. If they sold a thousand records, they’d get fifteen bob each, and if they ever managed such a famous, gilded, pinnacle-of-career accomplishment as a million-seller, they’d each get £750. If this happened in America – which was, quite obviously, ludicrously unlikely – it would be £375.

He also has the figures for their first EMI royalty statement, which rewarded the band for the sale of 36,868 copies of ‘Love Me Do’. The total received was £130 11s 6d, out of which the Beatles took just £27 15s each. Lennon and McCartney earned more from their songwriting royalties for the single than they did from their record contract. According to Lewisohn, the ‘mechanicals’ for this volume of sales would bring in £325. After Epstein’s 20% commission on this income, this would give the composers £130 each. However, this songwriting income paled in comparison to the money the band was earning from live performance. At the time of ‘Love Me Do’ the Beatles were commanding £50 for each concert appearance.

            And yet it was not live performance that the band venerated, it was records. Here’s Ringo, recalling the experience of seeing ‘Love Me Do’ pressed up as a 45:

[It was] The most momentous moment – that we had a record out, that we had a bit of plastic with us on it. Just the idea of being on a bit of plastic was really incredible after all those years of playing. My God, a record that you hadn’t made in some booth somewhere . . . you don’t believe how great that was.

Ringo, lest we forget, would earn less from recordings than the other Beatles. He wrote the fewest songs. He’s not alone, though, in lauding the moment of seeing yourself on record for the first time. Here’s Keith Richards, talking about the Rolling Stones and their contemporaries:

In a way, in those days, being able to get into the studio and get an acetate back sort or legitimized you. ‘You’re now a commissioned officer’ instead of being one of the ranks.

If only someone would ask him, I’m sure Peter Noone has a similar quote up his sleeve.

            Reading these books made me think about my own work. In Vinyl I argue that one of the distinguishing features of the analogue disc – from the 1880s to the present day – is that it is very difficult to manufacture copies within your own home. This is a format for professionals. As Keith Richards says, it legitimizes you, and it does so in a way that live performance can never do.

            Thus far Ringo and Richards back up my claims. I have paused for thought, however. In the fourth chapter of Vinyl I write about the desire of musicians to escape the commodification process, focusing in particular on the the negative comments rock musicians have made regarding the transformation of their art into serially produced consumer goods. However, it is clear that most musicians (myself included) loved the experience of being pressed into a record for the first time. Consequently, I would now temper my analysis in two ways. Firstly, mass manufacture is not always spurned. There are many artists (and consumers) who place their faith in the most multiplied of products. Jimi Hendrix was amongst them (at least when it came to guitars). According to Charles Shaar Murray:

he seldom bothered with special left-hand models, both because right-handed guitars were more plentiful and easier to obtain, and because – with a touchingly American faith in mass-production – he believed that they were likely to be manufactured to a higher standard.

This depiction of the performer as consumer leads me to the second aspect that I would now change. In the chapter I make a crude distinction between artists and audiences. In doing so, I draw upon the work of Jon Stratton, but I now realise he may have led me up the wrong path. Stratton’s argument is that, in creating a vinyl record

The music is not only commodified; in the process it is also distanced, alienated, from the artist, and becomes an object which is understood to exist in its own right. It moves from the private domain of the artist to the public domain of the market place. Reciprocally, the artist experiences a distancing from his or her music as it becomes product, and is experienced as existing in a different social context. The record company, like a book publisher, acts as a gate-keeper shifting the experienced position of the music from the artist’s individual identification with his/her music to the experiencing of the music as a commodity in the market place.

He suggests that, as this happens, the artists aren’t only distanced from their music; they are distanced from the fans. The musicians stand at one end of a process, their audience is at the other. In between is the apparatus of recordings, gatekeepers and mediation.

He’s clearly right that the music becomes a product and that it exists in a different context. He’s wrong about other things, though. By entering the market place, the music isn’t distanced from the artists: they are consumers too. In fact, one of the reasons why artists are excited about seeing their work on record is because it enters shops in which they have browsed their whole lives. This isn’t alienation; this is coming home.

            What’s interesting to note, though, is that artists’ excitement about the commodity form always seems to come in relation to their first record releases. In the Beatles’ case they each knew by heart the R4949 catalogue number of ‘Love Me Do’. It had become etched into their memories as they had gazed at the record label for so long. And yet, once they had a few releases under their belts, the band members struggled to remember in which order those records were issued or which songs each album contained. Maybe the point at which pop stars become alienated is not when their music is turned into product, but when they stop hanging out in the market.

LitPop: Writing and Popular Music

Late last year, Asghgate published the collection LitPop: Writing and Popular Music, edited by Rachel Carroll and Adam Hansen. The book includes a chapter from me, titled ‘Audio Books: The Literary Origins of Grooves, Labels and Sleeves’, which expands upon research I undertook for Vinyl, concentrating on the moments where the packaging of the analogue record drew inspiration from the packaging of the novel. The chapter can be accessed here.

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Vinyl reviewed by Roy Shuker in Popular Music

The latest edition of Popular Music (34/1) has a review of Vinyl by the great popular music scholar Roy Shuker. Happily, he likes the book, saying that it ‘makes an important contribution to the now extensive body of work dealing with the development of recorded sound and its cultural implications’, and adding that ‘A wealth of detail is included, with many informative asides and extended footnotes, all in the service of a frequently insightful general account’. In conclusion he states, ‘This study of vinyl as both a recording format and a material artefact is informative, entertaining and thought provoking, showing the complexities which lie behind what are often taken for granted in musical practices and products’.

Vinyl Reviewed by Stephen Wagg in Leisure/Loisir

A great review of Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record has appeared in the Canadian journal Leisure/Loisir. Stephen Wagg of Leeds Metropolitan University describes the book as an ‘absolute must’ for anyone with a specialist interest in the subject. He states that it is ‘a work of impressive scholarship’, adding that ‘It’s painstaking in its attention to detail’ and that it ‘strikes a perfect balance’ between this detail and the ‘broader sweep of history’. While welcoming Stephen Wagg’s praise, I also agree with his moments of reservation. He states that the book has ‘the very occasional excess’, and he’s right that I should have toned down some of the claims for vinyl. He also points out that the first chapter is different in tone to the rest of the book. I agree with him here as well. This chapter was written first and it is more pretentious than the others. Despite several revisions, some of this pretention would not be washed away. The full review can be accessed here. 

Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record now in Paperback

The paperback version of my book, Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record, is now available. The publishers, Ashgate, are selling it for $31.46 on their American website and £16.19 on their rest of the world website, making it more affordable than the hardback version. The paperback has a new preface and new, full-colour sleeve. There’s also an interview with me about the paperback, which can be found on the Ashgate blog.

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Record Collecting 3: Obsolescence and Scarcity

Record collecting isn’t only about foot fetishism; it’s also about obsolescence and scarcity. As indicated in the earlier post, these factors have helped to fuel the fetishism of the vinyl record. They do nevertheless require some analysis of their own.

            Obsolescence was originally the result of advances in technology. The analogue record experienced a series of significant developments: the change from analogue to electric recording in the mid-1920s; the substitution of shellac for vinyl in the 1950s; the battle between vinyl and the CD in the 1980s and 1990s. While some consumers were quick to take on board these new technologies, others rued the transformations taking place.

            Compton Mackenzie, the first editor of the Gramophone, served as a prototype for a certain strand of record collector. In 1925 he railed (almost incomprehensibly) against electrical recording:

The exaggeration of sibilants by the new method is abominable, and there is often harshness which recalls some of the worst excesses of the past. The recording of massed strings is atrocious from an impressionistic standpoint. I don’t want to hear symphonies with an American accent. I don’t want blue-nose violins and Yankee clarinets. I don’t want the piano to sound like a free-lunch counter.

In 1949 he also questioned the introduction of the vinyl LP:

I ask readers if they want to feel that their collections of records are obsolete, if they really want to spend money on buying discs that will save them the trouble of getting up to change them, and if they really want to wait years for a repertory as good as what is now available to them? . . . The substitution of a long playing disc is not a sufficiently valuable improvement to justify the complete abandonment of present methods of reproduction.

Robert Crumb, meanwhile, found the shorter playing time of the 78 superior to the LP, ‘I don’t like to have music on as background, or listen to while I work. That’s what I like about 78s, they force you to get up every three minutes and decide what you want to listen to again. It keeps you focused’.

Mackenzie and Crumb might sound as though they like making life hard for themselves, but they also sound like lovers of vinyl. Some vinyl advocates (me included) commend the fact that the format has a shorter duration than the CD. They also valorise the fact that you have to turn the records over. Sean O’ Hagen has stated, ‘One of the many awful consequences of the invention of the CD, that curiously unlovable artefact of Eighties-style musical modernity, was that it put paid to the notion of the A-side’. Other vinyl fans have found virtue in having to fight through dust and blemishes to reach a layer of musical sound. Evan Eisenberg has written, ‘We listened harder in those [vinyl] days. Music was made doubly precious by the thicket of noise from which it had to be plucked’.

Each ‘advance’ in technology has provided an impetus for collecting. There are those who have rejected the new ways and searched for prelapsarian records instead. 

            There are other ways by which records have become scarce. Shellac discs were worn down by styli and were easily broken. In addition, in times of shellac shortages, record buyers were encouraged to return old records so that they could be pulped to help to make new ones. There were also more piecemeal advances in technology – improvements in recording techniques and advances in the constitution of records – that quickly rendered recordings out of date.

Labelling practices helped to limit the reach of recordings. In the first half of the twentieth century, genres were targeted towards particular groups of listeners. Race records, for example, were supposed to be the preserve of black Americans, while hillbilly records were aimed at a rural white audience in the southern states of America. It has been argued that some of these audiences did not look after their records. One of the early white jazz record collectors, Stephen W. Smith, complained that ‘Copies which found their way into private homes were usually not given the best of care since many of the Negroes, for their own reasons, did not care to change the needle frequently enough to save the record surface’.

The net effect of each of these practices was that many early records automatically became scarce. Discs that record companies had considered outdated or marginal nevertheless managed to attract interest beyond their expected lifespans and beyond their expected constituencies. Some of these discs also began to change hands for large sums of money. The record companies hadn’t expected this.

They did, however, cotton on to the idea. Independent companies were quickest off the mark. By the late 1970s they were artificially manufacturing ‘rare’ records. Here, Thurston Moore identified a significant change:

‘50s and ‘60s collectibles were created by accident. Some rare performance or unique label design would get issued without much thought and the item would get discovered later. But by the time new wave happened, people had had enough ‘historical resonance’ with records that they self-consciously created collectibles.

As John Cooper Clarke pointed out, the late 1970s was a period in which gimmicks played loud. Chiswick released a limited edition LP that played at 45 rpm (Skrewdriver’s ‘All Skrewed Up’), while the Private Stock record label released a 12″ that played at the abandoned speed of 78 rpm (Robert Gordon’s ‘The Fool’). Richard Myhill’s ‘It Takes Two to Tango’ claimed to be the world’s first square-shaped single; Alan Price’s ‘Baby of Mine’ was the first in the shape of a heart; Cooper Clarke’s own ‘Gimmix! (Play Loud)’ was triangular and orange. The latter was among a rash of coloured vinyl records, reaching a peak with the 1978 Devo LP Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, which was issued in grey, red, blue, yellow and green vinyl, while black was ‘also available’. Records were also given double grooves: Cooper Clarke’s ‘Splat’ / ‘Twat’, featured parallel clean and rude versions of the same poem. What made many of these gimmicks stand out even more was that they were issued in limited edition runs.

These techniques did not pass without comment. In 1977 New Musical Express produced a special edition about the cult of collecting, which pointed out that ‘The record as artefact has become the standard ploy of the record business in 1977’. In ‘Part-time Punks’ the Television Personalities sang about the collector’s dilemma: ‘They like to buy the O Level single | Or ‘Read About Seymour’ | But they’re not pressed in red | So they buy The Lurkers instead’. The major record companies reacted with consternation (Maurice Oberstein of CBS fretted, ‘Suddenly we are not in the music business, we are back to selling plastic’) and with imitation (in 1978 the NME reported, ‘Thanks to the independents showing them the way, the major companies have now discovered a new way to sell you things you perhaps didn’t want in the first place’).

            Record Store Day is a direct inheritor of this tradition: all of its releases are limited editions. There is nevertheless a crucial difference between these records and the punk-era collectables. The late 1970’s records were meant to be heard. In fact, the aim was often to attract a mass audience; by today’s standards these ‘limited’ pressings were issued in large numbers. The idea was to sell a significant quantity of records in a short period of time, thus gaining higher chart places and increased exposure. Jake Riviera, head of Stiff Records (perhaps the most inspired late-1970’s label when it came to gimmicks) stated that he was going for either ‘stabs at the chart or collectors’ items’. Record Store Day is focused on collector’s items only. It’s not just the records that are scarce, so are their sounds. The danger with this is that if the vogue for vinyl is centred on the format’s cuteness, rather than on its ability to harness and signify music, the cycles of fashion could render it obsolete.  

Record Collecting 2: Foot-fetishism

Record collecting isn’t only about articulation; it’s also about foot fetishism. Several years ago I gave a talk above this subject, which opened with these words from Georges Bataille: ‘No collector could ever love a work of art as much as a fetishist loves a shoe’.

            I used this quote to explore the dual nature of analogue records, suggesting that they are works of art and that they are like shoes. On the one hand, there is an aura around vinyl records because they are original artworks; there is usually no manuscript or performance that precedes them. As Sarah Thornton has argued:

Initially, records transcribed, reproduced, copied, represented, derived from and sounded like performances. But, as the composition of popular music increasingly took place in the studio rather than, say, off stage, records came to carry sounds and musics that neither originated in nor referred to actual performances. [...] Accordingly, the record shifted from being a secondary or derivative form to a primary, original one.

This is one of the reasons why collectors have sought out the first pressings of vinyl records. It is these items that come closest to revealing the author’s intentions. In the era when vinyl was the leading format, the work that took place in the recording studio was focused on what the music would sound like as a vinyl disc.

On the other hand, physical records are shoe-like: their appearance and texture enables them to be fetishised. Shoe enthusiasts and record fans are attracted to certain designs: there are particular labels that are their quarry. With both shoes and records, fetishists feel the pull of rare items, whether these are in diminished numbers because they have been retrieved from the past or because they have been artfully manufactured in limited edition runs.

What shoes and records also have in common is they both endorse and problematise theories of articulation. The shoe can be disconnected from the foot, just as music can be disconnected from the sound carrier. So far, so good: the links between the two have to be articulated. However, in neither case are the component elements as separate as Hall’s theory would wish them to be. Shoes have a direct effect on feet: they can squeeze them into elegant shapes or puncture them with blisters and bunions. Feet also have an effect on shoes: they stretch them and strain them in accordance with the owner’s pedal extremities. In like manner, formats have an effect on music: they set tonal and temporal parameters. And music does some stretching of its own: it has tested the boundaries of the sound carriers' constraints. Sound recording has a further complicating factor: some of the people who help to get records made could be regarded as being both artists and cobblers. Where, for example, do we place the record companies? While in some cases they can be hands off, in others they make a direct contribution to their musical output. They also make a direct contribution to the physical production of the discs. Consequently, as well as being articulated, the connections between feet and footwear and between music and formats are entwined.

But what about festishists – what are they doing with these items? Stuart Hall would argue that they articulate them anew. The foot fetishist removes both feet and shoes from their regular use. They are abstracted and objectified. There are some record addicts who follow a similar pattern. Their love for vinyl has overtaken their love for music. The lyrics to Pearl Jam’s ‘Spin the Black Circle’ spring to mind: ‘See this needle / See my hand / Drop drop dropping it down oh so gently / You’re so warm / Oh, the ritual / When I lay down your crooked arm / Pull it out / A paper sleeve / Oh, my joy / Oh, I’m so big’. Eddie Vedder’s swelling love would come as no surprise to Georges Bataille. For him the format always wins out over the artwork.

Few record collectors would own up to this, however. Instead, they would argue that their excessive amassing of records is evidence of their excessive love for music. They use their vinyl and they use it as it was originally intended. This use of records (and of art in general) is problematic for theorists of collecting. Russell W. Belk has described collecting as the ‘perpetual pursuit of inessential luxury goods’, and stated that it is ‘the process of actively, selectively, and passionately acquiring and possessing things removed from ordinary use’. W.N. Durost similarly suggested that:

If the predominant value of an object or idea for the person possessing it is intrinsic, i.e., if it is valued primarily for use, or purpose, or aesthetically pleasing quality, or other value inherent in the object or accruing to it by whatever circumstances of custom, training, or habit, it is not a collection. If the predominant value is representative or representational, i.e., if said object or idea is valued chiefly for the relation it bears to some other object or idea, or objects, or ideas, such as being one of a series, part of a whole, a specimen of a class, then it is the subject of a collection.

The word ‘predominant’ is important here. There are different types of record buyers. There are those who value records mostly for the music that they contain and there are those for whom non-utilitarian stockpiling starts to take over.

            Are the latter on the rise? It is notable is that where people used to speak of record collecting they are now asked if they are into vinyl? The word ‘record’ implies both the object and the music; the word ‘vinyl’ is focused on the object only. Moreover, vinyl is no longer closely entwined with the creation of music. While there is some music production that focuses primarily on the vinyl record, most new recordings are not made with this sound carrier in mind. Consequently, vinyl is no longer ‘primary’ or ‘original’ in most music-making practice. There is also the widely reported phenomenon that many younger vinyl purchasers don’t own record players. This isn’t to say that they’re not fans of the music that their vinyl contains, but they’re not using vinyl to access it. The general movement is towards the vinyl's objectification. We are heading there feet first. 

Record Collecting 1: Articulation

I’m continuing to think about Record Store Day and why it appears to have upset more people this year. In my previous blog entry I focused on the corporatisation of the event, but other themes couldn’t help creeping in - articulation, structuralism, cup cakes. What much of it comes down to, I feel, is the changing nature of record collecting. There is a distinction between being a record collector (which was the old way of viewing of things) and being ‘into vinyl’ (which is perhaps taking over). There is also a question of just what it is that we’re collecting when we collect records: is it music, is it a format, and in what ways is it a bit of both?

Across a few blog entries I’m going to propose some different ways of looking at record collecting. I want to start by looking again at articulation and by trying to unpack the complex statement made by Spencer Hickman, the organiser of Record Store Day in the UK. He raised the following complaint about this year’s event: ‘It now feels like it’s not celebrating the culture of the record store and why they’re so good; it’s about the releases’.

            It’s hard to get to the bottom of this. Hickman could be arguing that record stores are about more than the music they sell. They are also hubs for people to get together; they offer a community service. He could be suggesting that not all of this year’s Record Store Day releases contained appropriate music. They are luring in One Direction and Herbert von Karajan fans, whereas an independent record store should be the preserve of Butthole Surfers and Gaye Bykers on Acid. He could be suggesting that records have a life of their own. As well as being the bearers of music, they are objects in their own right. This year’s Record Store Day could have attracted people who are interested in vinyl per se, rather than caring about the music it contains. 

            This duality of the analogue record has been a long-standing interest of mine. Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record is, in part, an attempt to analyze the relationship between the format and its music. This is the reason why I co-opted Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation. Hall stressed two uses of the word ‘articulate’: it can mean to speak forth and it can mean to join two items together. He argued, ‘An articulation is thus the form of connection that can make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions’. For Hall, this unity has to be forged and it has to be argued for.

            This is what the indie community did with the vinyl record. They wished to unify this format with their own musical and economic cause. They did so in a structuralist manner. In his theory of linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure argues that ‘signs’ gain their meanings from their contrasts with other signs. For indie record labels and musicians the vinyl record was a sign, one that gained its meaning because it was everything that the compact disc was not. Vinyl was (or became through their agency) organic, hand-crafted, lo-fi, DIY. The format articulated the music and the music articulated the format.

            Hall argues that articulations can become disengaged and that different connections can be made. My previous blog entry was an attempt to look at some of the newer vinyl articulations that this year’s Record Store Day highlighted. Whereas indie record labels utilized the format to provide contrasts with the CD, independent record shops are advocating the format because of the alternatives it provides to the MP3. This is the whole ethos of Record Store Day: to encourage physical punters to buy physical records.

            As I stated, there is a potential danger in this. Record Store Day is perhaps too strongly focused on vinyl, rather than on music. In fact, it celebrates the way in which analogue records can restrict access to sound. Spencer Hickman has discovered that the effects of this are pernicious. In the first instance, the focus on records rather than music has allowed some unwelcome genres and record labels to enter the shops. Secondly, it has opened the shop doors to a group of punters who might be articulating the vinyl record in a different manner to either independent record labels or independent record stores.

            This is where I raised the spectre of the cup cake. It is possible that there is a new breed of vinyl collectors who articulate the format as a ‘kitsch frippery’. They like it because it represents quaint, old-fashioned values. If this really is the case, then it’s not surprising that Hickman is worried about the records taking over the stores. 

Whose Vinyl is it Anyway?

In Vinyl I argue that the analogue record has been articulated. It is a physical object and it is a carrier of music. Because of this dual nature, any associations with particular types of music have had to be forged. I also write about the way in which indie music sought jurisdiction over the format, in particular the 7” single. In the 1980s and 1990s, as the major labels turned to the CD and advanced that format for their own major stars, the vinyl record began to signify everything that was different. The indie labels articulated it for their own cause: it became the small-is-good format for small-is-good forms of music. This association continued. As I have written elsewhere, independent record labels were pre-eminent in the production of vinyl records in 2013.

            This year’s Record Store Day has revealed that this jurisdiction is under threat. For indie labels, the vinyl revival could have become too successful. The first Record Store Day was held in the US in 2007, when 700 independent record shops grouped together to celebrate their ‘unique culture’ and increase trade by selling records that were made exclusively for the day. The UK came on board in 2008 and Record Store Day now incorporates record shops in every continent except Antarctica. For vinyl, it is the most profitable retail day of the year.

In the UK the amount of exclusive releases has grown from around 250 in 2011 to nearly 650 this year. Record Store Day is like any other large orbiting body: its gravitational pull throws normal life out of joint. In the run up to the event, production in the few vinyl pressing plants that remain is taken up with limited edition Record Store Day products. There isn’t enough capacity to continue producing regular vinyl releases.

Some indie labels and distributors have grown suspicious of the pressing plants’ priorities. In an article in The Quietus, Phil Hebblethwaite has tabulated their woes. As early as 2011, Rob Sevier from the Numero Group was arguing that, for the record business, the logic of Record Store Day is ‘what can we shit into the form of a record and shove into the hands of the wanton masses’. This year the distributor Kudus has complained that ‘it feels like [Record Store Day] has been appropriated by major labels and larger indies to the extent that smaller labels who push vinyl sales for the other 364 days of the year are effectively penalised’. The label Modern Love has stated, ‘Fuck Record Store Day and all you self-righteous wankers who think it benefits anyone “independent”’ and ‘Fuck you to all the pressing plants out there who have made major labels their priority’.

Some independent labels are now boycotting Record Store Day. They feel that its original impetus is getting lost. For them, the sale of vinyl was supposed to serve independent record labels, which were supposed to release independent music, which was supposed to be sold in independent record shops. Despite the common cause of independence, the links between these parties can come loose. One potential source of tension is that independent record labels and independent record stores can have different reasons for advocating vinyl. While the labels' embrace of the vinyl record arose in opposition to the major record companies' advocacy of the CD, the independent record stores' current promotion of vinyl stems from their reaction to the MP3. This produces a different outlook. Record Store Day is focused wholly on limited edition records; what distinguishes vinyl from downloads and streams is that access to music can be restricted. And so, what if the Record Store Day releases are being bought and not heard? This doesn't do much to further the cause of indie music. Moreover, vinyl has no natural allegiance to indie ideals. If anything the format represents the opposite of DIY. It is the one form of sound carrier that is exclusively professional: there is no easy way in which you can make your own vinyl records at home. It is also the format that lends itself best to production gimmicks – coloured records, picture discs, shaped records, limited runs, and so on. It’s a great way of packaging shit for the wanton masses.

A lot has changed since the 1990s. CD sales have declined, while vinyl sales have risen (although it should not be forgotten that the former still vastly outperforms the latter). And where the CD used to be priced more expensively than vinyl, the two formats have traded places. Consequently, the majors have returned to vinyl. They have thought again about all those old gimmicks and realised that they are a great means of promoting their artists and of making money.

They clearly have the means to do this (reclaiming the pressing plants is a neat capitalist ploy), but why should independent record store shoppers buy the major label's vinyl releases? Here, it is once again worth thinking about vinyl and its articulations. There have long been problems regarding what it is that distinguishes ‘indie’ music: is it a generic type or is it the means of production? The problem for indie could be that vinyl has been articulating the music, rather than the other way round. If the major record companies choose to reacquaint themselves with indie's beloved analogue format, how easy is it to tell the difference between their releases and those of the indie labels? 

This is the point that is raised in a Record Store Day thought piece written by John Harris. He describes the event as being a ‘benefit for a struggling musical genre’; one that, like vinyl records themselves, is an object for nostalgia. This genre is massive, however. It is guitar-driven rock music, predominantly made by young white men and predominantly bought by older white men. Harris conflates the output of independent labels and major labels, as well of separate rock genres, such as psychedlia, punk and indie. More cruelly still, he sees little distinction between the new records and re-releases that are issued on Record Store Day. If the old records are retrospective, then so are the newer guitar-led groups. In this scenario, indie is no more than the genre that used to have jurisdiction over vinyl. It is now lost amongst the general drone of guitars that have taken hold of the format. In supporting all of these rock records, independent record stores might do well out of Record Store Day, but independent record labels' are losing one of their distinguishing features. 

In Harris's scenario, vinyl is at least still being associated with a particular strand of music. Elsewhere, there is evidence that the format has taken on a life of its own. Spencer Hickman, the organizer of the UK event, shares some of the concerns of independent record labels and distributors. He also raises some new ones. Not only is Record Store Day failing to support independent record labels, but the vinyl releases are failing to support independent record stores. He has stated, ‘this year feels like the first time it’s been entirely driven by capitalism. It now feels like it’s not celebrating the culture of the record store and why they’re so good; it’s about the releases’. In this vision it is as though the records have taken over the shops and are disrupting their normal practice. It’s not Hickman’s fault that the stores aren’t full of appropriate music, just look at what the vinyl has done?

This year’s Record Store Day included releases from One Direction and Herbert von Karajan, so any argument that it could be associated with a single genre – even one as broad as rock music – is moot. The question that then presents itself is whether the day could be associated with any music at all.  Perhaps the biggest fear for anyone with a longstanding interest in vinyl is that the format has slipped from being one that was the leading sound carrier in a golden age of popular music, to one that was fetishised because it was the leading sound carrier in a golden age of popular music, to one that is fetishised because it is old. Were the patrons of Record Store Day there because they like music, or were they instead celebrating the collection of outdated objects? Was their ‘culture of the record store’ just one of nostalgia for the days when people used to go to shops? In her excellent book Clampdown Rhian E Jones has added her voice to those who are worried about the retromania of our times. She states that ‘popular culture seems currently consumed by pastiche, recycling, solipsistic navel-gazing and pantomimes of authenticity, preoccupied with kitsch fripperies and politically disengaged, with previous traditions of protest and consciousness weakened, compromised, commodified, confused or forgotten’. One of her most dreaded objects is the cup cake. If any vinyl lovers are worried that their format is being constructed as a similar ‘kitsch frippery’ then they had better start articulating and they had better start agitating.