Record Store Day

Cubist Hendrix

The Rebirth of Vinyl

To the record stores, artists, labels, dj's, and journalists; we're all in this together. Show respect for the tangible music that you've dedicated your careers and lives to, and help it from becoming nothing more than disposable digital data.”

-Jack White

Record Store Day is more than just a marketing gimmick. It's more than just a ploy created by a fledgling music industry trying to claw it's way back into the digital age after Steve Jobs introduced the proverbial iceberg known as iTunes which capsized record labels' steady income producing cruise ships analogous to the titanic.

In this instance, it was convenience – not curiosity – that killed, or at least, maimed the cat.

However, with that added convenience for the consumer – which, among other trends, popularized downloading songs a la carte as opposed to purchasing full albums – came an acute atrophy of audio quality and the less noticeable, but all too important devolution of authenticity; authenticity which consumers of musical art began to crave in the form of the quality of acoustic sound and album artwork which artists take great pains to customize to their creative specifications and likenesses.

In the hit HBO series Silicon Valley the protagonist Richard Hendricks (played by Thomas Middleditch) creates a data compression algorithm which is supposed to transform media mobility and data delivery allowing consumers to send and receive files with a tremendous amount of ease and flexibility creating a bidding war among would-be investors in Palo Alto seeking a stake in the tech start-up.

The theme of rags – or perhaps, smarts dressed in rags – to riches is not uncommon in television today. Yet, one of the lessons that should garner greater attention is that the genius embodied in attributes such as greater compression and the increased mobility of a file's size does not always yield positive qualitative results when it comes to demand.

“I started my store a little over a year ago, and my dream has always been to own a record store...and I thought that time had passed,” said Rob Norton, owner of Hill & Dale records in Washington, DC, “but the last seven or eight years, the resurgence of vinyl has made my dream come true...It [is] the reason I was able to have a store in the first place.”

Over the last 20 years, vinyl records have increased sales in the range of approximately 2000%. It's completely unheard of that an antiquated technology would draw such appeal, and it's a direct result of consumers seeking not just authenticity, but a hybrid of authenticity and convenience which indicates the record labels have caught on to the paradigm shift in how music enthusiasts want to consume art.

“Last year, eight million vinyl records were sold in America,” said Eric Alper, Director of Media Relations, Licensing and Distribution for eOne Music, “and that was up 49% over [the previous] year, and it's a lot of younger people, especially indie rock fans. If you go through the top five records that were sold last year – Jack White's album (which sold close to 90,000 copies in North America) followed by The Arctic Monkeys, the Black Keys and Lana Del Rey and then Beck – it's probably the first time in a long time that Abbey Road by The Beatles hasn't been in the top five...and I think part of it is the fact that when you buy a new release on vinyl now - the record labels got smart – they started putting in the digital download code for you to be able to download the album to your mp3 player right away.”

It allowed consumers to take the tracks on the road – which consumers had become accustomed to – and play the increasingly important higher quality vinyl album on a record player at home without having to pay twice. That adjustment was the clever pivot of the music industry which saved its hide more or less.

In the case of music enthusiasts, something was missing.

“I still listen to music on really crappy speakers at work...I'm not really used to having greater quality sound,” Alper notes. “I think a lot of people are getting older so their ears aren't working so well, but when the number one source for a lot of people - and I mean 25-years old or younger – for finding new music is YouTube, listening on Logitech speakers that came with their computers or on their iPhones, that has an effect on people.”

“To the point about mp3's and compression, I know that my customers don't want to miss out on anything,” said Norton. “However, they also want the vinyl on their turntables at home to hear the music as it was intended to sound by the artists themselves...XX, a local up-and-coming indie band, is one of our top sellers. Daft Punk is one of our top sellers as well. [Random Access Memories] sounds beautiful on vinyl!”

While consumers are breathing life into vinyl as a format and legitimizing Record Store Day as an event, the artists have actually responded to this fervent demand from their fans.

“The new generation of bands – maybe in the last five or six years – who have grown up with vinyl which is very much an active format, they actually are starting to produce music that is made for vinyl again, and that's a really fun thought.”

Record Store Day is April 18^th. While music enthusiasts may face lines around the block for rare vinyl finds, at least aficionados are sure to also find jovial conversation and smiling faces that only a groundswell in community can produce.