Vinyl sales hit 25-year high

[John F]

The demand for old-style LP pressings is such that it outstrips the supply. Who'd have thunk it? (It's not about classical recordings.)

Indies feel pushed out of vinyl boom as 'dad rock' sells in record numbers
Small labels report lengthy production delays as big stars monopolise Europe’s two main pressing plants
Zoe Wood
Saturday 9 December 2017 19.05 EST

A surge in demand for records by “dad rock” bands and blockbuster acts such as Ed Sheeran is delaying new releases by independent labels, as vinyl sales hit a 25-year high. Indie labels say it is now taking several months, rather than weeks, to bring out a new record as the small number of surviving vinyl factories struggle to cope with orders.

“We’ve been making records continuously for 20 years and the lead time has gone up from three weeks to three months,” says Gerald Short, founder of Jazzman Records. “The major labels have the leverage with the pressing plants due to the volume of business they can offer, which I can understand. Most record companies in the UK use plants in Europe these days, and at the moment the pressing plants just cannot cope with the demand. They’re working 24/7.”

Jonny Trunk, founder of Trunk Records, agrees: “I’ve never seen anything like it: it’s a gold rush, and that is leading to delays. If a busy pressing plant gets an order from a major label saying, for example, ‘We have 20,000 Dire Straits LPs to press’, then the plant tends to drop production for smaller labels and press the big order.”

As music fans fall back in love with owning a record player, vinyl is enjoying a renaissance with sales jumping 37.6% in the first half of 2017 to £37.3m. The BPI, the music industry’s trade body, predicts more than 4 million records will be sold this year, the highest since it began collecting data in the early 1990s. More than a million will be sold this month alone as records and record players once again feature heavily on Christmas lists.

Based on an analysis of its historical sales data, high street music retailer HMV believes 2017 will see its biggest sales figures for vinyl music since the late 1980s, when chart-topping acts included Kylie Minogue, Michael Jackson and Simply Red.

HMV rings up a third of all vinyl LP sales in the UK but supermarkets have been keen to take a slice of the action, with Sainsbury’s recently releasing compilation albums under its new Own Label imprint, featuring 1970s hits including an excerpt from Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and 10cc’s I’m Not In Love. Sainsbury’s says it has shifted 300,000 vinyl albums since re-entering the market in March 2016 with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours – the grocer’s best-selling album to date, with more than 12,000 copies sold.
ADVERTISEMENT

“A lot of old fellas are buying reissues of the records they had in their youth before replacing them with CDs, which they’re now getting rid of so they can buy the vinyl again,” says Short. “We’re talking Led Zep, Pink Floyd, etc – the usual suspects. But the main problem is an inability to plan releases properly. To promote a record you need to have a release date and a certain amount of time before that date to promote it. If you don’t know when your stock will arrive, it’s hard to set a release date ... and if the record sells out fast, you need a re-press now, not several months later.”

There is a shortage of pressing plants because many closed during the 1990s and 2000s when vinyl looked doomed – sales reached a nadir in 2007 when only 200,000 records were sold. In Europe, most records for major and independent labels are pressed by just two plants, in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. However, even with a combined capacity of more than 100,000 units per day, their output is not enough to satisfy a newly hungry global market.

Amid the growing confidence that vinyl is here to stay as CD sales fall away, businesses are now pouring money into new plants. The Japanese arm of Sony Music will restart the manufacture of its own records next year to cope with huge domestic demand. Closer to home, Dublin Vinyl will produce 100,000 records per month when a new Irish factory is at full speed.

BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor suggests there is evidence that the vinyl demographic is starting to shift away from “baby boomer” males reliving their youth through reissued albums. The bestselling LP of the year now tends to be the overall bestseller – an accolade expected to go to Ed Sheeran’s Divide this year – while recent research found a quarter of vinyl buyers are aged under 35 and one in four are female.

“Typically, vinyl sales are dominated by heritage rock acts, but in 2015, Adele’s 25 was not only the bestselling album title overall – it also topped the year’s official vinyl chart,” says Taylor. “Last year, Amy Winehouse’s classic Back to Black was the biggest selling vinyl title in December and the second-highest seller for the year overall.”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/ ... supply-lps

[Belle]

My hi-fi retailer told me all about this in September 2016 when I bought my latest equipment, so it's not 'news' (typical of "The Guardian" to be late to the party). He showed me turntables worth $A75,000 and said he was selling them reasonably regularly!! Also, he said there was a boom in CD sales in Europe and that, as a result, CD players were delayed getting to Australia from Europe. I think this is "boomer"-driven demand since our generation is fed up with downloads and not having anything to sit on our shelves which we can actually touch and admire. Vinyl never lost its appeal with some people, but I lost interest in this format when CDs arrived in 1983.

I saw somebody complaining on TV the other day about the "recording industry model" which "people are no longer prepared to tolerate". He was referring to pop songs where you could not just buy one song (that you liked or was a 'hit') but that these were planted in albums which you had to pay $17 for. Instead, he gloated, you could download the individual songs these days for a fraction of the price. First World problem!!! This way of buying music destroys the opportunity to learn more about an individual or group's work and what other things they might have done beyond 'the charts'. There can often be gems 'hidden' on those albums.

And that, of course, has not really been a feature of classical music marketing.

[Lance]

I believe the classical LP market has also improved somewhat but certainly not as much as the pop market. I'm hopeful at some point to sell my complete Classical LP collection (hopefully with no "cherry-picking." Am I dreaming?

[Modernistfan]

No thanks, not for me. I do not miss the cruddy mid-1970's pressings that sounded as though they were pressed on used kitty litter. I also do not miss the scratches, ticks, and pops that would occur no matter how carefully you handled the LP's. This is some sort of a trendoid fad that I do not need. Yes, I may accept that an LP that is a pristine pressing in perfect shape and played on a top-quality system with a turntable with a properly adjusted moving coil cartridge may sound better than any random CD, but, particularly for the contemporary music that I often listen to, the chances of finding such LP's are about the same as opening the sports pages and seeing a full field of unicorns running at Santa Anita Park (or, if you are in Sydney, at Rosehill or Randwick). (Of course, for most pop music, the sound quality hardly matters anyway.)

[maestrob]

I believe the classical LP market has also improved somewhat but certainly not as much as the pop market. I'm hopeful at some point to sell my complete Classical LP collection (hopefully with no "cherry-picking." Am I dreaming?

In the summer, I invited the owner of Academy Records over to assess my collection, Lance, and instead of making me an offer for the entire collection of pristine quality pressings (and I mean no scratches, fingerprints or even heavy wear), he proceeded to ask me where the European pressings were: he wasn't even interested in American discs at all! When I pressed him on this, he said he had a warehouse full of classical discs that he was selling off slowly in the store, and that the only records that he had steady demand for were European. "C'est la vie," said I and escorted him politely out the door. He seemed more interested in some CDs I had than my record collection!

[jbuck919]

A fad.What was always wrong with vinyl will remain wrong, namely, that it wears out and is easily scratched. At least the current situation guarantees that there will be turntables, cartridges, and stylusus (is Shure still the preferred brand) for those who want to play their collected vinyl.

[John F]

The only reason I can think of for this is that DJs - not on the radio but in bars and for dancing - use LPs, and younger people who go dancing think this is cool and imitate it at home. I've seen cheap record players in home furnishings stores that plug directly into computer USB ports.

4 million records annual sales is a drop in the bucket; a single hit rock record will sell over 1 million. Still, it's remarkable that a format with so many disadvantages compared with the CD should be in popular demand again. An upward sales trend of a decade with accelerating growth may be a fad but it's big business too.

(Note that this story, from a British newspaper, is about the European market. It says nothing about LP sales elsewhere. But in other stories I've read, LP sales are growing in the US too. And sales of CDs are declining.)