The Removal of Approval

The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind.

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)

For Walter Benjamin ‘that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art’. He believed that audiences feel overwhelmed and inhibited when in the presence of an original artwork. On top of that, they feel that curators and aesthetes are setting the conditions for their appreciation. In contrast, when dealing with a reproduction of the same artwork, the audience can have a direct and involved relationship. They meet it on their own terms. They choose the time and place in which to hear or see the reproduction. They don’t feel the need to seek approval for what they feel about it; they have their own jurisdiction. Benjamin argued that:

Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert.

He was right. And that is why we keep going back to him. We also come back because his thesis includes some head-spinning stuff. Benjamin argued that reproduction shatters aura, but he also claimed that reproduction facilitates its return. Ramping up the complexity, he suggested that this return provides a different type of aura. Benjamin’s essay is focused primarily on film production. He noted that:

The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the ‘personality’ outside the studio. The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the ‘spell of the personality’, the phony spell of a commodity.

This is the only time in the Work of Art essay that Benjamin discusses commodification in pejorative terms. Mass manufacture is liberating; mass promotion is not. It bewitches us.

These processes happen in music too. Records make music ordinary: they render expensive productions cheap and these productions become part of our everyday lives. The music industries want records to be un-ordinary. They want us to fetishise recordings so that we feel the need to own them (or at least this was the record business model in pre-digital times). They do so through their star-making machinery. They promote their performers because they want us to become invested in them.

Benjamin saw this much, but he was less alert to the fact that fans re-create aura too. His essay is centred on the idea that mass manufacture ‘reproduces’ original works of art. With recorded music, however, this soon ceased to be the case. As Sarah Thornton noted:

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.

As a result, records ‘accrued their own authenticities’. Thornton claimed that:

Recording technologies did not, therefore, corrode or demystify ‘aura’ as much as disperse and re-locate it. Degrees of aura came to be attributed to new, exclusive and rare records. In becoming the source of sounds, records underwent the mystification usually reserved for unique art objects.

Although record companies eventually cottoned on to this practice, it was audiences who undertook this attribution first. They developed the art of record collecting.

A record embodies two creations: there is the creation of the sound recording and there is the creation of the product that houses the sound recording. Sound recording became ‘primary’ rather than ‘derivative’ and this is what prompted fans to restore aura. It was, however, the product that enabled this restoration to take place. The restoration of aura is therefore diffuse. It comes back via the worship of stars and via the worship of objects.

The restoration is also incomplete. A fan might be in awe of a star, but that aura is accumulated in the fan’s ‘particular situation’ – it is developed through the purchase of reproductions that are played in the fan’s own home. When a fan plays the record of a star they can indulge in a private fantasy of engagement; they do not have to suffer a public display of power. And when a fan attributes aura to a record they are not under a phony spell: they are restoring aura on their own terms. It takes the ‘orientation of the expert’ to develop a knowledge about record collecting. There is creativity rather than passivity in what is going on here. The shattered aura is re-assembled, but this building process results in something that is new.

How do you like your Hits: Overdetermined or Underdetermined?

It’s amazing that any wannabe artist thinks that they could be signed on the strength of their demo recordings. And maybe nobody ever is. Perhaps the procedure exists in order to give musicians (and audiences) the impression that success is the result of music alone.

            There are at least two reasons why it’s impossible to judge an act’s potential from its demos. One is that the success of a recording is overdetermined. Record companies line up a number of causes in order to effect a hit. The music if obviously important, but so are the various promotional activities that are put in place. Chief amongst these is the creation of a ‘star text’. As Andrew Goodwin has pointed out, there are various narratives at play in every recording. One of these is the narrative of the song; another is the narrative of the star. They reflect upon each other. The star’s life forms part of the story of the song, and the song forms part of the star’s story. Unsigned artists face a problem: they have no narrative depth. Hence the record companies’ conservatism when it comes to signing acts. Hits maybe the surest way of creating stars, but stars are the surest way of creating hits.

            The other difficulty in judgement comes from the fact that hits are underdetermined. They are launched into the world with no guarantee that they will be a success. This isn’t just because artists and record companies don’t know what they are doing and can’t judge the mood of the public. On the contrary, the most knowing popular music is made with full consciousness that it can’t assume the activities of the public. It is deliberately unfinished. The skill lies in allowing some room in the music for ‘articulation’, ‘participatory culture’, and all those other re-appropriative tactics that cultural theorists delight in, while at the same time ensuring that this audience activity doesn’t lose cite of the original recording. Here we come full circle. A star text both helps to make these reworkings possible, as well as to keep them grounded; just think of all the audience activity that takes place around a Madonna or a Morrissey, as well as the sales of recordings that these artists generate. Once again, this causes problems for anyone judging a demo recording. How on earth can they foretell the audience’s interest, not just in taking the music up, but also in taking it over?

One Direction for Media Studies

Marco Roth, editor of N+1, has recently complained about sociology. His beef is that sociology has lost its power as a critical tool and has instead become the lens through which most art is judged:

Sociology has ceased to be demystifying because it has become the way everyone thinks. Discussions about the arts have an awkward, paralyzed quality: few judgments about the independent excellences of works are offered, but everyone wants to know who sat on the jury that gave out the award. It’s become natural to imagine that networks of power are responsible for the success or failure of works of art, rather than any creative power of the artist herself.

Roth is reflecting upon the ideas of the great French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In his book Distinction, Bourdieu claims there is no such thing as pure aesthetic judgement. He argues that differences in taste are instead the result of, and help to reinforce, stratifications of social class.

            What is true of sociology is also true of media studies. Its viewpoints are no longer restricted to academia; they now have a wider reach. One example is the study of audiences. There is a long tradition within media studies (plus sociology and cultural studies) of ignoring that artist’s role in creating works of art and instead concentrating on how audiences re-appropriate those artworks. Although these disciplines are concerned about class clichés, they have been happy to undertake their own research on a class basis. In an attempt to elevate working class audiences, and suggest that they are not prey to the ‘shit of capitalist production’, theorists have argued that these audiences creatively rework the products of mass society. The idea of the creative consumer is there in Stuart Hall’s theories of ‘articulation’, Michel de Certeau’s idea of ‘textual poaching’, John Fiske advocation of ‘resistance’, and Henry Jenkins’s work on ‘participatory culture’.

            This idea has also taken root amongst boy bands. At some point in the current century, these pop performers stopped talking about artistic creation and instead began to talk about what they owe to their fans. In boy band interviews, you will hear these acts say that they are ‘humble’, rather than glory in being stars. Gone, it seems, are the days when pop acts claimed that they were born to boogie or were kings of the wild frontier. The new bands don’t claim to make art, but suggest instead that their fans make them. The debt, it seems, is wholly one way. Take, for example, a recent interview with One Direction that Tom Lamont conducted for the Guardian. The band members stress the role that chance has played in their success. ‘We’re normal lads’, says Louis; ‘we’re normal guys’, says Zayn. And this is what they say about their relationship with their audience: ‘it’s great to give back to the fans’, says Zayn; it’s all about ‘giving back to the fans’, they point out collectively.

            The band’s relationship with their fans is, of course, also the focus of publications such as the Guardian, whose readers aren’t necessarily interested in One Direction’s records, but are curious about sociology and media studies. All the same, this doesn’t stop the band from toeing their ‘giving it back’ line in every media forum that they appear in. One reason for this outlook, perhaps, is that they don’t have any outlet in which to talk at length about their artistic endeavours. As Lamont points out, they have a different relationship with media than stars of old:

One Direction is the first mega-band of the social media age, and this has a direct knock-on effect for me: the boys have very little incentive to promote their wares through old institutional channels such as the press. They don’t give long interviews; they don’t need to.

All of this probably makes the media theorists happy: the rest of the world has cottoned on to the fact that it is not artists who matter; what’s more important is the creative practices of their fans. And this includes the fans and artists themselves: they both know who is doing the real work.

            I can’t be so sanguine about this. On the one hand, I have an outdated faith in artistic creation. I even want to see it in boy bands. These groups have millions of fans and so their work ought to be good. If you are hugely successful, you should have some sort of statement to make. Fans certainly have a part to play. Their input can help move artworks to a higher and more interesting level. However, I believe that it stands a better chance of doing so if: a) the fans are given interesting material to work with in the first place; and b) the worth of this material is acknowledged. The quality of dialogue that surrounds works of art can be of as much benefit to audiences as the works of art themselves. One Direction certainly talk to their fans: there is an endless stream of tweets and instagrams. This dialogue isn’t always inspiring, however. They are usually telling their fans that they have a new product out. No wonder they feel indebted to them.

            The textual poaching of the fans isn’t always inspiring either. It can range from the mundane (Lamont watches Liam tweet ‘very interesting day today’; this message is soon re-tweeted 55,000 times) to the threatening (when the magazine GQ ran an unflattering portrait of One Direction, a fan articulated her anger by saying ‘GQ needs to shut up before I break my glass nail file in two and stab them in the eyes’). Here she is clearly doing something with the artwork beyond the original intention of the artists, but is it really what we need?

            Ultimately, we need more art, and more talk about art, from the boy bands and from their fans. The media theorists like to think that they’re looking favourably upon audiences when they describe their work as being ‘creative’. However, it is usually only a certain type of fan whose behaviour is described in this way. Marco Roth is wrong about the complete takeover of a sociological perspective. For example, when the Guardian explores the work of opera singers or jazz musicians, its analyses are different to its analyses of One Direction. There’s more talk about the artists’ intentions, and less about the activities of fans. As a consequence, opera and jazz are still musics of ‘distinction’. Conversely, despite Bourdieu’s exposure of the stratification of taste groups, there’s still little cultural capital to be gained from being in a boy band or being a fan of a boy band. Audience studies have, in fact, helped to reinforce social stratifications. It is usually only the ‘lowest’ forms of art that are approached by looking at the fans’ perspective first. Sociology and media studies are not the way that ‘everybody’ thinks; they are instead the preserve of an elevated sector of society. This sector likes to analyse other audiences, but rarely stops to consider that it is an audience itself. 

Record Collecting 5: Mystery

In recent interview Jack White has stated, ‘For me, vinyl is a MacGuffin. It’s something to lure you in, and at Third Man vinyl is a MacGuffin for a mechanical, romantic relationship with music’. MacGuffin is a term that Alfred Hitchcock popularised. It is a plot device that lures you in to a story, one that gets the mystery going, but it is of no overall importance.

            It’s interesting to hear Jack White talk in this way. One of the world’s leading advocates of vinyl is suggesting that, ultimately, it’s not vinyl that matters. It’s what vinyl signifies that counts. And what is that? The idea of a ‘mechanical, romantic relationship with music’ is an odd one: the romantic and the mechanic were traditionally supposed to be at odds. But I think I know what he means. Mechanisation no longer stands for the robotic and the modern, but instead for a time when things were tangible and you could engage with them. It is traditional values that are being held up here.

In the preceding blog entries about record collecting I have been focused on the idea that vinyl is collected because of what it is not. People are operating in a dialectical manner. They are collecting vinyl because it is old, not new; because it is analogue, not digital; because it is physical, not intangible; because it is independent, not corporate.

            And yet, there’s always been more to it than this. There has been a fascination with analogue records that is in excess of that for other formats. What’s more, this fascination was in place before some its rival formats existed. People didn’t need the CD to feel that the analogue was special (although the CD certainly helped). They didn’t need retromania, nostalgia, the desire for the tangible, a need for authenticity, or a search for truth to fall in love with analogue records (although these aspects have helped as well).

            Writing as early as 1934, Theordor Adorno was transfixed by a shellac record’s ‘thingness’. He was drawn towards the record’s grooves and the links that they provided ‘between music and writing’. In his 1959 novel. Absolute Beginners, Colin Maccinnes outlines his hero’s love of LP sleeves, calling them ‘the most original thing to come out in our lifetime’. Growing up in the 1960s, Stuart Maconie was fascinated by label designs:

Daft Ken Dodd bore the deep royal blue of Decca, Elvis wore the coal-black livery of pre-Seventies Orange RCA, the John Collier Theme still had its laminated sleeve featuring a giant Trilby. My favourite, though, the sight of which always quickened the pulse a little, was the very emerald green of a goalie’s jumper, the word Columbia grandly embossed in silver about the little hole.

For Roger Manning, keyboard player with Jellyfish, it was the scent of records that was intoxicating:

What really got me was the smell of the records I grew up with – maybe it was the pressing plant they used, for some reason records on the Casablanca label had a smell that blew our minds – when you smell that, it brings you right back to childhood.

Each of these writers returns us to a theme that these entries have been circling. What is it that we love most about analogue records: is it their ‘thingness’, or is it the music that they contain, or in what way is it a combination between these two elements? This dilemma is as old as sound recording itself. Writing in 1919, Rainer Maria Rilke recalled his first impressions of the phonograph:

It must have been when I was a boy at school that the phonograph was invented … At the time and all through the intervening years I believed that that independent sound, taken from us and preserved outside of us, would be unforgettable. That it turned out otherwise is the cause of my writing the present account. As will be seen, what impressed itself on my memory most deeply was not the sound from the funnel but the markings traced on the cylinder; these made a most definite impression.

Ultimately, it’s too easy to say that people are attached to vinyl records because of what they signify or how they can be articulated. There is something inherent in vinyl records themselves. What exactly this is, though, is the biggest mystery of all. 

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.