Speaking of Retro

This article also caught my eye this week. Due to a preponderance of pop-up ads on the CD Freaks site, I reproduce it here:

Vinyl records are heading back in fashion with sales up 87%
Posted by Seán Byrne on 12 July 2005 - 19:15

Just while most thought the Vinyl record has been obsolete, apparently Vinyl is actually making a come-back with sales rising a whopping 87.3% between April and June, compared with the same three month period last year. In fact, 7" Vinyl has now had the best 12 month sales period since 1998. In just the twelve months up to March 31st 2005, 7" vinyl sales have reached 1.38 million.

Apparently while DJ's are the main vinyl users due to the ability to perform scratching, music fans are actually making the most of vinyl, especially those into British indie and rock acts. Some teenagers prefer vinyl due to the warmer tone such as from guitars and percussive musical instruments.

While CD single sales have fallen by 23% this year, overall sales including music downloads and vinyl have risen by 52.4% from ~7.25 million (April to June 2004) to 11.04 million sales (April to June 2005).

Vinyl was once seen as a dying format in the music industry, but according to sales figures it is now very much in fashion.

Sales of the seven inch have shot up by a massive 87.3 per cent compared to the same three-month period last year.

The British Phonographic Industry says annual sales of vinyl singles are now approaching 1.4 million. In the twelve months up to March 31 this year, sales of the seven inch hit the 1,380,000 mark.

This already represented a year-on-year improvement of 64 per cent, and the best 12 months for vinyl since 1998.

The figures released show that in the three months from April to June 2005, vinyl flew off the shelves even more rapidly.

They rose by 87.3 per cent from 154,216 sales during April to June 2004 to 288,780 for the same period this year.

I would wonder if the Vinyl sales increase has anything to do with what the music industry is doing with CD singles such as forcing a high price for just a few tracks. Then again, it is nice to see Vinyl making a come back, especially with teenagers who generally prefer to stick with the latest in technology. It will be interesting to see how well turntables are selling, especially since most Hi-Fi systems have not been equipped with a turntable since the late 1990's.

Vinyl did have one major advantage over CDs in that there was no way for the music industry to start messing about with the structure of the recording or medium itself to prevent copying. For example, the only way for a vinyl record not to play on a given turntable is if there is a fault with the turntable, arm or needle or if the record has been damaged in some way. In fact, if the CD (or any other digital version for music) was never invented, chances are that the music industry would still be putting up a major fuss about consumers taping from vinyl and not being able to do much about it.