Vinyl In The UK

Found a couple of great articles about the 45 rpm record and record collecting from the UK and thought I would share them.

Seven inch single’s struggle to stay alive as it celebrates its 60th anniversary

Mar 29 2009 by Tim Lewis, Wales On Sunday


As the seven inch single celebrates its 60th anniversary this week, Tim Lewis looks at how it changed the music industry and its continuing struggle to stay alive.

Texarkana Baby by Eddy Arnold may not be a song many people remember or have ever heard of, but to a loyal band of followers, it is very special.

On March 31, 1948, it was the first commercial seven-inch single to be released, on bright green vinyl and also featuring a track called Bouquet of Roses.

In those days, all vinyl was colour coded, red for classical, yellow for children’s, cerise for rhythm ‘n’ blues and green for country.

As demand increased and vinyl singles began to take off, the colour coding scheme was scrapped in favour of a uniform black, which had previously been used only for pop singles.

The 45rpm disks caught the public’s imagination and at their peak in 1979, more than 89m were sold in the UK.

For years they were the number one choice for the music industry and fans, but their dominance was soon tested.

When compact discs (CDs) were introduced in the 1980s, it represented the start of a decline in the seven inch.

By the turn of the millennium, sales figures for the seven inch were only a fraction of the staggering numbers of the previous two decades.

Large record labels such as EMI got out of the vinyl game altogether in 2000, and some felt that was a signal of its days being numbered.

In 2001, sales had dropped below 180,000 and many people prophesied the death of the “45” within a couple of years.

But seven inch as a format has been as tough as the vinyl it’s made from and latest figures show a rise in its popularity once more.

Last year, more than one million seven-inch disks were sold and bands such as the Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand and the White Stripes have helped to make them popular again.

Bands continue to produce limited collector’s editions of their new albums costing anything up to £20, and they have proved to be extremely popular.

“Your first seven-inch single is one that you will always remember"

Allan Parkings, 59, owner of Kelly’s Records in Cardiff, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, said: “Vinyl will never die. There are plenty of vinyl junkies out there who live and breathe the whole scene.

“They enjoy the whole experience of buying the disks, the sleeve design, the feel of the disks, the inserts and putting it on a record player.

“Your first seven-inch single is one that you will always remember. Mine was a song called the Poetry in Motion by Johnny Tillotson in the early 1960s.

“To some people, they are like antiques. I have a friend who would buy a single, take it home and play it once before sealing it and putting it into storage.”

Over the years vinyl has faced competition from a number of different formats such as cassette tapes and later CDs but they are now also facing extinction thanks to digital downloads.

“Tapes came and went and now CDs look as if they could go the same way,” added Allan Parkings.

“Youngsters now think vinyl is cool again and there’s something trendy about having the latest band’s music on a seven-inch disk.

“I honestly believe vinyl will still be around in another 60 years.”

Legal, and illegal, downloads have become the option of choice for many younger listeners over the last decade.

Apple’s iTunes music store has been a huge success since its launch and reached the one billion download mark 114 weeks after it started.

Sites such as www.isohunt.com and www.thepiratebay.com have turned into the Mecca for illegal music sharers, although The Pirate Bay’s recent high-profile court case against the music and entertainment industry could soon spell the end for such portals.

Websites such as www.pandora.com and www.spotify.com also allow music lovers to listen to the artists and bands of their choice free of charge.

Pandora gives users the chance to create their own radio station based on their old and current favourite artists.

With Spotify – which has the backing of four major music labels – fans can listen to music for free as long as they don’t mind putting up with the occasional advert.

To remove all adverts from the stream costs 99p a day or £9.99p a month. It has more than 10,000 new songs added every day and now boasts a database of more than eight million songs.

It is difficult to tell whether there is enough room for all of the different formats of music for them all to survive, but after seeing off a number of rivals in its 60-year history, you wouldn’t bet against vinyl being around in another 60 years.

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I’ll never sell my vinyl records, says John Mccarthy
Mar 29 2009 by James McCarthy, Wales On Sunday

I LOVE vinyl. I’ve a whole roomfull of the stuff.

A small room, but a room nonetheless.

“When are you going to stick that on eBay?” my old man says every time he visits. I don’t think that’s often, but it might just be I can’t hear the doorbell, what with the stereo being turned up to 11.

Well, dad, I’m not. Ever. No way. Not even if they stop making turntables.

I can’t get my head around the idea other formats are better. They’re clearly a music industry con designed to bleed cash from punters.

No-one needs to replace their record collection every few years.

Take CDs. “They can’t be scratched,” they said. Yes they can. I tried. I caused irreparable damage to Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway with a screwdriver.

I would have done that whatever the format, but the point still stands.

And where is the romance in an MP3? Sifting through webpage after webpage can’t compare to laughing at other people’s taste in some trendy record shop.

Will people really be recalling misty-eyed what their first download was?

Of course they won’t.

Their computers will all be broken for starters.

But I’ll still have my record collection.

If it hasn’t fallen through the floor and killed the people downstairs.


SOURCE: http://www.walesonline.co.uk