Criminal records

A casual stroll through Covent Garden recently left me in a state of shock. Visiting central London’s only chain record shop, my eyes were assaulted by the price of vinyl. Somehow, and since Christmas, there were ‘regular’, single-disc albums priced as much as £34.99. Thirty-five quid for a record - when did that happen?

To be fair, there was no real rhyme or reason for any of the pricing. Looking across current best sellers on the HMV website, Aurora by Daisy Jones & The Six is one of those with the £34.99 price tag, while the pink vinyl version of Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (which also comes with a poster) is £36.99. The new remaster of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon: Live at Wembley 1974 is £22.99, but that old staple, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is £24.99. For reasons best known to someone, Radiohead’s venerable OK Computer is £29.99.

Even allowing for some releases being on coloured vinyl, there is nothing musically obvious to warrant a difference of almost £20 with CD versions, and yet vinyl continues to outsell CDs, to such extent that the format has largely been marginalised in record shops in much the same way that, ironically, vinyl virtually disappeared as the new digital system got going back in the late 1980s. 

What makes vinyl’s pricing more remarkable is that younger consumers - somehow - appear to be buying records at prices that even I, with the salary to match, baulk at. So what is fuelling it? For a start, the CD is in terminal decline, 41 years after it was introduced by Philips and Sony. 

Last year some 33 million CDs were sold but, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, that was an 18% decline on 2021 when - probably driven by lockdowns and people discovering that they still had a CD player - the CD had enjoyed its first annual increase in 17 years. Vinyl, on the other hand, has continued to grow, with just under a billion pounds’ worth sold in 2022, amounting to just over 41 million records. Today, it represents 71% of all the revenue made from physical music formats. 

Why, is still an intangible. Music executives talk about the better sound quality of vinyl and almost everyone who had converted - or reconverted - to playing records again will talk up the tactile experience of putting a needle on the intro groove. 

That, certainly, drove the return of Baby Boomers to vinyl, having been previously converted to digital formats. Tentatively, they ventured into hi-fi shops and electrical departments and bought cheap turntables and discovered they could recreate their teenage years by digging out albums long consigned to the loft. However, their children also cottoned on, finding greater affinity with those 12-inches of plastic and the ever-increasing marketing ingenuity with which labels peddle exclusives, reissues and cute gimmicks like coloured vinyl.

Here in the UK, vinyl hit a 30-year high last year, according to the BPI, led by the cross-generational appeal of Taylor Swift, whose records seem to be bought by dads and daughters alike. It even led to the beleaguered HMV chain being revived, having almost disappeared completely before being bought by private investor Doug Putman, who also owns Fopp! record shops. “Walk in today, and it’s unbelievable how many ten, 15, 18-year-olds are in the store,” he told the BBC recently. “I’m telling you, that’s good for us long-term.” 

But even so, given the cost-of-living crisis affecting every age group, one way or another, the suddenly exorbitant price of vinyl must surely be impacting demand. But why is it so expensive? Firstly, there are some boring reasons for how a vinyl record is priced: the economics of pressing up records plays a huge part, wherein record labels and artists need to meticulously plan demand to ensure the pressing process is as efficient as possible. There are increasing costs with the raw materials, too, with the cost of shipping the lacquers used to master discs nearly trebling in the last year or so - another expense passed on to the consumer.

During the pandemic, where records were being ordered online, often on a whim, manufacturers struggled to keep up as they, too, were impacted by staff shortages, but some of these haven’t yet recovered, leading to records taking three to six months to get pressed, often leading to limited supplies, and higher demand, especially for premium editions. Metallica - the sixth-highest vinyl-selling act in the US - have even bought their own pressing plant to help with manufacturing their own records. 

We are, of course, mainly talking here about the new production of records, but the second-hand market has also experienced inflationary pricing (much the same as for cars, interestingly enough) as people have resorted to Discogs, eBay and market stall box digging to buy ‘authentic’ originals, with their scratches, blemishes and all. However, another factor affecting the supply of new vinyl is the actual length of records: in the 1960s and 1970s it wasn’t uncommon for an album to last no more than 35 minutes or, at the very most, 20 minutes a side. When the CD came along, artists could fill an album with up to 70 or even 80 minutes of music on a single disc. Vinyl’s resurgence has brought back the physical challenges, that a 12-inch album can only contain so much music within its grooves - even less with so-called ‘180 gram’ audophile releases which present a tradeoff of higher quality, usually to appeal to older consumers buying a classic album for the second or even third time in their lives. 

Marketing will have another affect on the cost of an album: record companies have become ever more inventive with the use of coloured vinyl, but each vivid, thematically-relevant colour requires additional materials and dyes to work, unlike the simplicity of dull old black. Vinyl’s resilience is, then, ultimately the result of clever salesmanship mixed with fashionable appeal. While manipulating a piece of software code to play an album on a phone or a home hub device is as simple as turning on a light, vinyl has managed to keep its cool. Which record companies are perfectly aware of. Desire is more impactful than mere demand, and the economics at play here shouldn’t be rocket science. 

Inflation is also impacting the price of an album, but the question is whether deflation will bring prices down as well. There is certainly little evidence that the vinyl revival is just a fashion craze - in fact, the format’s resurgence has been going for the last 15 years at least. But given how financially squeezed everyone in the record-buying demographic will be right now, inevitably, it remains to be seen whether a £35 impulse purchase is being deferred, especially when a new album can be conveniently ‘tasted’ on Spotify for £10 a month.

It’s going to be interesting to see whether pricing has any affect on this year’s Record Store Day, taking tomorrow. As was its intention, the initiative, founded in 2008 to drive traffic away from online vendors and into independent shops, had the effect of vinyl fans young and old (me included) splurging on the day’s limited edition releases. However, the trend for providing a sales bonanza for ‘legacy’ acts reissuing venerated albums and rarities, has come in for some criticism, with smaller labels and their lesser known acts often struggling for attention (and, also, feeling relegated by record manufacturers prioritising money-spinners like Taylor Swift).

Not that the major record companies will be complaining. At the end of the day, they know that consumers remain willing to pay a premium for vinyl - and not necessarily to experience the supposed “warmth” of a record. In 2022 the American industry body Luminate, found that half of vinyl buyers even own a record player. A similar story has been spun with the revival of cassettes, with acts like the Arctic Monkeys and Harry Styles selling thousands of tapes despite there being no clear idea on what they’re being played on. 

But sell they are, fuelled by teenagers wishing to own something kitsch, turning the cassette into a youth fashion, along with the revival of 1980s-style baggy clothing. “Growing up, cassettes were a rite of passage as we listened to our favourite artists,” Sophie Jones, interim chief executive of the BPI told The Times this week, though she pointed out that tapes represented a minuscule segment of music consumption. “Like vinyl, a number of contemporary artists are warmly embracing the cassette as another way to reach audiences and on occasions it has even helped them to achieve a No 1 album.”

For those of us who remember cassette as the original cheaper alternative to vinyl, we will have some fondness, but not much. Taking music on holiday was never much fun when, along with the Walkman, you had to lug a large box full of tapes to listen to. 

And, yes, there were the occasional disasters as tapes became wound around the deck’s playback heads (leading to the now lost phenomenon of roadside hedges ‘decorated’ with discarded magnetic tape, along with…er…mysteriously, porn magazines…).  

Make no mistake, physical formats are in the relative minority, whatever hipsters venturing out tomorrow for Record Store Day might think. Streaming remains by far the leading means of hearing new music and old alike, even if a ‘free’ listen on Spotify does lead to a physical purchase. 

But for all the convenience of streaming and, like so many one-click aspects of our now-digital lives - from ordering food to buying books and paying bills - there is something reassuringly old school about taking a record out of its sleeve, putting down a needle on its first groove, and listening to the artist’s intended track order before having to get out of the chair and flip it over. In a small way, it’s a reminder of a slower, less instant time, before the mouse or the remote control. I just wish it wasn’t so bloody expensive.