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The Enduring Appeal Of Vinyl

The sales of vinyl records are at a 6-year high, but is there more to the figures than is first apparent?

Posted 29th January 2012, 11:22am in Blogs by Martyn Young
Martyn Young

Martyn Young

Writer

The Enduring Appeal Of Vinyl Over the past few years there seems to have been news stories appearing regularly in the press describing HMV, the UK’s last major music retailer standing, as being in perpetual crisis, struggling forlornly against the rising tide of falling CD sales and the more general economic downturn. Indeed, it appears that the downturn in CD sales is becoming more and more pronounced every year: in 2011 CD sales fell by 12.6% to 86.2 million in contrast to digital album sales that increased by 26.6% from 21 million to 26.6 million (via Billboard).

The slump in sales of CDs has prompted a fear that HMV could possibly abandon selling physical music in favour of more lucrative pieces of technology like headphones and mp3 players. Despite the falling sales there is certainly still a huge market for people who prefer to buy their music in a physical format, and HMV has gone some way to assuage those people with their announcement last week that the company were going to actually increase stock of that rather more old fashioned musical format, the good old vinyl record. A spokesperson for HMV told NME: "A lot of customers have been asking us to increase the amount of racking we dedicate to music in store and we’re pleased to say we’ll be doing a lot more of that soon - in fact we’re also planning to significantly increase our range of vinyl in quite a few locations as well."

The sales figures for vinyl in 2011 certainly suggest that there is a clear and increasing market for vinyl. According to figures released by the Official Charts Company, sales of vinyl albums were at their highest since 2005 with 341,000 albums sold, an increase of 44% compared to 237,000 sold in 2010. This is obviously a big increase but is there more to these figures than is first apparent?

A look at the top ten selling vinyl records of 2011 shows that they are all either established acts with big audiences - Radiohead, Noel Gallagher, and Adele top the list, or they are artists who have had massive critical acclaim across the board - PJ Harvey and Bon Iver. The final group of acts rounding out the top 10 are the heritage rock of Pink Floyd, Beady Eye and Arctic Monkeys. A closer look at the actual figures each album sold shows that Radiohead’s ‘The King Of Limbs’ sold 21,263 copies compared to the next highest seller which was Noel Gallagher with 4,183 sales. Perhaps Radiohead’s approach of releasing a multi record luxury package filled with all sorts of extras like their “Newspaper Edition” of ‘The King Of Limbs’ is the way for bands and labels to go if they want to make the vinyl format even more desirable, however, not all labels can afford to do this.

For many smaller independent record labels the cost and logistics are prohibitive factors that stop them producing vinyl in great numbers. While vinyl sales are increasing they are not yet at anywhere near the level that would be regularly sustainable for independent labels. Matthew Young, who runs Edinburgh based label Song By Toad, says that producing vinyl is an expensive process: "Vinyl is currently about one and a half times more expensive than CDs (in digipacks, I wouldn’t even consider jewel cases, but they are cheaper) to manufacture at the kind of low volumes in which we tend to deal. Logistically it is an absolute nightmare to store though, and of course vinyl sells considerably slower than CDs because in the UK not all that many people have record players."

Vinyl’s enduring appeal seems to be based on sentimental and romantic attachments to music; people want something that actually means something rather than an intangible mp3 file. There is an increasing number of people who will only buy vinyl but do not own a turntable, they just prefer to get the sense of ownership that the format provides, not to mention the aesthetic qualities for which vinyl is unmatched. Young suggest that the rise of digital music and, indeed, illegal downloading, has provoked the enduring appeal of vinyl and left consumers with a clear choice: “Now that people don’t actually have to own music in a physical format anymore it seems increasingly to come down to whether or not they want to. And vinyl is more desirable than a CD, if we’re talking about satisfying people’s wants."

It appears increasingly likely that at some point in the future the CD will be rendered obsolete as a mass-market music format in much the same way as the cassette dropped off the radar. The way forward may be to combine both the aesthetic and tangible qualities of vinyl with the instant functionality and availability of downloading. This has already been happening for a while with the production of vinyl records containing download codes; expect this to greatly increase over next few years. Yet again however, price is an issue. Vinyl albums are inordinately expensive: £18 is usually the minimum price for a new record, and you can regularly find new release LPs being sold for upwards of £20. If the price came down then you could reasonably except vinyl sales figures to increase even more; this is certainly an area that HMV could look at.

Beyond all the sales figures and numbers there is one simple reason why vinyl has endured and its sales are steadily rising: no other musical format prompts such special memories. Most music fans have their own memories and feelings about days spent idly searching through racks of records in search of something special; in my case it was sparked by finding a tattered old copy of David Bowie’s ‘Hunky Dory’ in Avalanche Records in Edinburgh. These experiences are to be cherished and that is why it is very much a good thing that vinyl is once again on the rise.
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