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. 

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 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.