Matt gives us another missive in his irregular series of musings on all things music:
Around the early 2000s, I genuinely thought the game was up for vinyl, a format that I'd stayed true to since I first got fascinated with watching my Mum place a 7" single on the strange spinning thing in the late '70s. I was attracted to the weirdness of the mechanics, seeing a tone-arm placed carefully down on a rotating dark disc which produced MUSIC... Woah, it was more akin to magic than science and pretty far out for a young kid barely out of nursery. Fast forward a few years and I remember seeing a demonstration of one of the first CD players on a BBC science programme called "Tomorrow's World" which memorably prophesied that CDs were the future, which seemed accurate in a time when space wars, real and fantastical, permeated the television and playground in the scary nuclear '80s.
Even back then it was obvious to my young mind that the electronic obsession for making everything miniature had been behind this conversion of large black platters powered by needles to small reflective discs powered by LASERS and in the decade to come I'd see the vast majority of my friends and family ditch their record collections only to re-buy them on CD while the luddite, me, still attached to ye olde vinyl, often was given for free the then worthless discs. As the years went on, and I naturally gravitated towards a now 30+ year 'career' in record shops, I saw CDs become the absolute dominant format. Around the millennium, as I crossed the country buying vinyl, I saw what I thought then was the end for my beloved vinyl, from the smallest independent record shop to the largest chains (back then there were lots of different chain stores selling music and supermarkets also had large sections devoted to music) I saw the ever shrinking floor space given towards vinyl compared to the ever expanding one to CDs. Sure, it made economic sense to the big chains who'd latched onto some money-oriented theory that the more product you could fit per square foot meant the more potential of sales or whatever SELL SELL SELL schtick they were buying into. But I couldn't get my head round all the smaller independents doing this, after all, at Jumbo, we actually were seeing our vinyl sales going steadily up, as the other shops stopped catering for vinyl enthusiasts. By 2004, I thought it was pretty much the end for new vinyl as almost 8 out of 10 new releases were CD-only and record players were hardly being produced anymore. Most audiophile magazines and blogs were espousing the idea that CDs sounded much better than vinyl.
Fast forward another decade and the exact opposite was happening, CD sales, thanks to everyone ditching their CD players and replacing them with I-players, CD drives in computers disappearing and a whole audiophile reverse ferret around analogue sound being better than digital after all, meant that vinyl was once again becoming the format of choice. At Jumbo, though, we again saw (and still see) CD sales going up and up and customers travelling from further and further afield since we still had half our shop devoted to those magical mirrored discs. Like vinyl, the physical format seems unwilling to give up the ghost just yet and while others can argue about loss of sound files, richness of sound or streaming's unethicalness, what I've personally seen being the main driver of physical versus digital is simply that in the real world, having a bedroom or front room, a shelf or basement full of albums, no matter whether CD, vinyl or tape, means I can really fathom someone's taste and passion. I can see so much more clearly what that person is into compared to a 'library' on a branded screen. Yep this has possibly created a cultural shift in the ways that parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, once considered terminally un-hip now find themselves in the strange position of being very VERY cool as teens and tweens pour through their collection of music and, like books, which again in the early-2000s almost found themselves supplanted by e-readers, considered fusty, dusty relics of a bygone age are currently taking up mountains of column inches devoted to their coolness, the physical format seems, thankfully, here to stay.
Around the early 2000s, I genuinely thought the game was up for vinyl, a format that I'd stayed true to since I first got fascinated with watching my Mum place a 7" single on the strange spinning thing in the late '70s. I was attracted to the weirdness of the mechanics, seeing a tone-arm placed carefully down on a rotating dark disc which produced MUSIC... Woah, it was more akin to magic than science and pretty far out for a young kid barely out of nursery. Fast forward a few years and I remember seeing a demonstration of one of the first CD players on a BBC science programme called "Tomorrow's World" which memorably prophesied that CDs were the future, which seemed accurate in a time when space wars, real and fantastical, permeated the television and playground in the scary nuclear '80s.
Even back then it was obvious to my young mind that the electronic obsession for making everything miniature had been behind this conversion of large black platters powered by needles to small reflective discs powered by LASERS and in the decade to come I'd see the vast majority of my friends and family ditch their record collections only to re-buy them on CD while the luddite, me, still attached to ye olde vinyl, often was given for free the then worthless discs. As the years went on, and I naturally gravitated towards a now 30+ year 'career' in record shops, I saw CDs become the absolute dominant format. Around the millennium, as I crossed the country buying vinyl, I saw what I thought then was the end for my beloved vinyl, from the smallest independent record shop to the largest chains (back then there were lots of different chain stores selling music and supermarkets also had large sections devoted to music) I saw the ever shrinking floor space given towards vinyl compared to the ever expanding one to CDs. Sure, it made economic sense to the big chains who'd latched onto some money-oriented theory that the more product you could fit per square foot meant the more potential of sales or whatever SELL SELL SELL schtick they were buying into. But I couldn't get my head round all the smaller independents doing this, after all, at Jumbo, we actually were seeing our vinyl sales going steadily up, as the other shops stopped catering for vinyl enthusiasts. By 2004, I thought it was pretty much the end for new vinyl as almost 8 out of 10 new releases were CD-only and record players were hardly being produced anymore. Most audiophile magazines and blogs were espousing the idea that CDs sounded much better than vinyl.
Fast forward another decade and the exact opposite was happening, CD sales, thanks to everyone ditching their CD players and replacing them with I-players, CD drives in computers disappearing and a whole audiophile reverse ferret around analogue sound being better than digital after all, meant that vinyl was once again becoming the format of choice. At Jumbo, though, we again saw (and still see) CD sales going up and up and customers travelling from further and further afield since we still had half our shop devoted to those magical mirrored discs. Like vinyl, the physical format seems unwilling to give up the ghost just yet and while others can argue about loss of sound files, richness of sound or streaming's unethicalness, what I've personally seen being the main driver of physical versus digital is simply that in the real world, having a bedroom or front room, a shelf or basement full of albums, no matter whether CD, vinyl or tape, means I can really fathom someone's taste and passion. I can see so much more clearly what that person is into compared to a 'library' on a branded screen. Yep this has possibly created a cultural shift in the ways that parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles, once considered terminally un-hip now find themselves in the strange position of being very VERY cool as teens and tweens pour through their collection of music and, like books, which again in the early-2000s almost found themselves supplanted by e-readers, considered fusty, dusty relics of a bygone age are currently taking up mountains of column inches devoted to their coolness, the physical format seems, thankfully, here to stay.
