August 2024
As I’ve noted many times in this space, I started collecting records when I was about 12 years old, and I’ve never stopped. I’ve also written on several occasions about my initial dislike of CDs and my continued commitment to vinyl—even when the experts proclaimed that CDs would banish LPs from the earth.
Vinyl’s return is now such a given that it’s not even news anymore, although I still talk to people who are surprised that LPs are still around. Sales figures continue to rise, even with some growing pains. According to Statista, a data-gathering platform based in Germany, US vinyl sales in 2022 increased by just 1.7 million units over the previous year. That was a significant dip from the two preceding years, which saw tremendous sales boosts. The year 2022 likely saw a smaller increase because pressing plants had reached capacity and were having trouble meeting demand.
Sales rebounded the following year. New plants came online in 2023, and existing plants expanded. As a result, vinyl sales in the US increased by nearly 8 million units, to a total of just under 50 million. I can’t find any reliable number for worldwide vinyl sales in 2023, but the US accounted for about half the worldwide total in other years. One hundred million is a good bet, and I think 2024 will be an even better year.
One clear sign of vinyl’s health is the growing popularity of the annual Record Store Day event. A group of independent record-store owners established the RSD organization in 2007 to celebrate both the format and the old-style, brick-and-mortar record shop. The first RSD was on April 19, 2008, and in 2010, Black Friday, the day after US Thanksgiving, was added as a second annual event. During the pandemic in 2020, RSD drops occurred in August, September, and October, with fewer releases on each of those dates and an encouragement to follow safe-distancing guidelines.
Record Store Day has become massively popular, with lines forming outside of shops long before they open. Some of the folks in line the last few years have been teenaged girls eager to buy the newest Taylor Swift album (props to Swift, by the way, for helping to push up LP sales). Others wait in line to buy RSD-only releases.
Walk into a record shop on RSD and you’ll be greeted with an array of choices in nearly every genre, including jazz, rock, hip-hop, and country. Some are limited editions pressed on colored vinyl. Others are previously unreleased live recordings by rock bands or jazz musicians, pressed in limited numbers by labels that are also releasing them on CD.
This year, there were a few jazz pressings for RSD that I really hoped to get. Reel to Real Records released Jazz from the Pacific Northwest, featuring a 1958 live recording by Shelly Manne & His Men, on a two-record set limited to 1500 copies. I was also eying up two live Cannonball Adderley LPs from Elemental Music, Burnin’ in Bordeaux: Live in France 1969 and Poppin’ in Paris: Live at L’Olympia 1972. Elemental Music is based in Spain and Reel to Real is a Canadian label. Jazz archive ace Zev Feldman produced all three releases.
My wife and I were out of town for RSD this past April, and I stopped in at Soundcheck Records in Jim Thorpe, PA, the day before. (Nice shop with a friendly staff.) I asked about the titles I was interested in, and I was told they were not going to be receiving any copies. I wandered through the shop for a while and found a copy of First Winter, a collection of Johnny Winter recordings released by Buddah Records in 1969. I can always find something I want in any record shop.
The next day we were in Stroudsburg, PA, and I went to Main Street Jukebox, a big record store with a generous selection of new and used LPs, and a Record Store Day participant. I got there about 9:30 a.m., a half-hour before the usual Saturday opening time. The store had opened at 9 a.m. and a big guy was at the door, letting a few people in at a time. He told me the line had started forming about an hour before opening, and went back at least two blocks. If I had gotten there early, I might have gotten one of the two copies each of the Cannonball Adderley RSD albums that the store had received.
Main Street Jukebox had a healthy selection of RSD releases, including live albums by Talking Heads, Thin Lizzy, and the Doors, a generous helping of funk and hip-hop records, and quite a few jazz titles. Alas, not the Shelly Manne set. I did pick up an RSD copy of The Rolling Stones, the band’s 1964 UK debut, pressed in black-and-blue swirled vinyl.
I also grabbed an RSD pressing of Wha’ppen?, The English Beat’s second LP, remastered by Bernie Grundman and expanded to two LPs with singles and alternate takes. The first LP is pressed on green vinyl, the second on yellow. Both the Stones and Beat albums are not otherwise available on wax, and are quiet pressings that sound terrific.
Why talk about Record Store Day months after the event? First, because the Black Friday RSD event will take place in three months. There will be plenty of exclusive releases for Black Friday, and lots of people will turn out on a day when everyone in the US is in high shopping mode.
The other reason to bring up RSD is that it gives me an excuse to talk about vinyl culture. I would be lying if I said the atmosphere in independent record stores is just about the product. When I was a teen in the early 1970s, I bought my records at chain stores because I didn’t know where else to find them. On occasion I’d make a connection with an enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff member, but most of the time I was just another customer.
When I got my first apartment after college, I found a small record shop nearby that sold new and used vinyl. There was a significant difference in the way I was treated. The owner got to know me, recommended new releases, and directed my attention to used records I might like. Years later, I had a similar experience with an independent shop near my office. Every Tuesday, the owner would call to tell me about new music or reissues on CD. He still carried vinyl, which he preferred, and let me know what LPs he could order for me.
Small stores are almost always run by music lovers who like to reach out to people like them. Record-store owners also know about maintaining a customer base, catering to people who remained loyal to what was considered, for a long time, a dying format. I can count on getting into a conversation with a store owner or customer in almost any independent record shop.
When I was at Soundcheck Records in Jim Thorpe, a customer and I had a discussion with the owner about recent jazz reissues on vinyl, the MoFi incident, and online sites and forums that talk about vinyl. At Main Street Jukebox, I talked to other customers about the RSD titles they were picking up, and to the owner, who was working one of the checkout lines, about the popularity of RSD and the vibrant return of the LP as a format.
I buy a lot of vinyl online, but as more record stores open nearby, I find myself drawn to traditional retail shopping again. I can’t say I have a conversation in every record store I enter, but these shops are often salons for vinyl lovers. The older stores that have survived have endured lean years and remained true to the format as it doggedly hung on. Now that business is healthy, they appreciate long-timers like me, and they share my passion.
When I got home in April, the weekend after RSD, I got in touch with local shops about the LPs I couldn’t pick up at the stores I visited while I was away. They didn’t have the Manne or Adderley LPs, but I was able to track them down from small dealers who sell on Discogs.com. A local store, KT Media in Middletown, PA, texted me later when they restocked a copy of one of the Adderley LPs, Poppin’ in Paris: Live at L’Olympia 1972, so I grabbed it for a friend.
Dennis Burger, senior editor at SoundStage! Access, bought a turntable so he can, as Dennis wrote in a recent column on that site, “test the phono stages of integrated amps” he reviews. The subject of the piece was his first dip into Record Store Day at a local shop. Dennis is easing into vinyl, and, as you can read in his article, he was surprised at how much he enjoyed Record Store Day. Dennis also describes some of the business aspects of the event.
I wanted to hear for myself what Dennis liked about being in a record shop on its biggest day, so I gave him a call. “I absolutely loved it,” he told me. “This sounds silly to say, I know, but that day changed my whole attitude towards getting a record player.” The enthusiasm of a gathering of vinyl lovers had pulled Dennis in.
For Dennis, Record Store Day contained echoes of positive experiences he’d had in a local CD shop. “I’ve never particularly been a tribal person,” he said. “I joke that I have four friends because I don’t need five. But I realized I used to have a tribe at a CD shop here in Montgomery called Backtracks. The owner, a guy named Phil, turned me on to music I would never have heard otherwise. The people that haunted that shop became like a weird extended family.”
Hanging out with LP lovers on Record Store Day gave Dennis a realization: “Oh, crap, these are my people.” Any group of folks who share your zeal for something can create a kind of communal feel. I’ve been to guitar shows, record conventions, audio shows, and antique-auto gatherings, and you can feel a buzz of electricity when people are immersed in what they love. I get the same feeling in a record store, if on a smaller scale.
I think at some point CDs will generate some of the same interest that LPs do now. CD sales peaked in 2000 and have dropped steadily ever since, but there are billions in circulation and enough variations in releases over the years to make people want to search them out. Box sets have some of the visual impact of LPs and are hard to beat for completeness and easy storage. SACDs are rare and often mastered to a high standard, so they will also have devotees.
I’m convinced that the continued vitality of recorded music depends on physical media. Record companies are doing well enough with streaming music because their back catalogs are so extensive and so popular. But they’ve been living off that back catalog for more than 50 years with endless reissues, and more recently through streaming revenues. I’m convinced that in the long term they’ll need to sell new music in album form if they are to enjoy long-term prosperity.
Even after more than 50 years, I walk into a record shop and feel excited that I’ll find something I’ve been looking for, or that I’ll discover something new. I still get a thrill at seeing rows of records, arranged alphabetically by genre. I like the convenience of streaming, but searching for a recording on a streaming service, or even looking through the albums I have stored on an external drive, is just not as satisfying as looking through my LP and CD shelves.
And you’ll never see a Streaming Store Day.
. . . Joseph Taylor
josepht@soundstagenetwork.com
