More New Artists Are Kicking It Old School

By Ani Vrabel


Even as recently as five years ago, there were only two places where turntables were commonly found: in attics, buried under dusty boxes of other family relics or else in clubs under the fingers of DJs. Long-playing albums, most commonly known as LPs, were often little more than pieces of nostalgia for the baby boomer generation.

But today, vinyl is making a comeback — and it’s a big one.

It’s not a secret or a surprise that CD sales have dropped steadily in the era of iTunes, file-sharing and music piracy. A little more surprising, however, is that sales of the old-fashioned standby, the LP, are increasing simultaneously.

Last year, CD sales dropped 19 percent from 2006 and the first quarter of 2008 showed similar results. But in the meantime, LP sales have gone up 10 percent.

This national trend has hit hard in Atlanta. Mel Pinson, manager of Criminal Records, a nationally recognized independent music store in Little Five Points, says that vinyl sales have increased 20 percent at his store in the past year, and that there are no signs of vinyl’s popularity peaking anytime soon.

“There have been significant increases over the past two to four months,” he said in an interview with the Wheel. He said that CD sales at the store have been decreasing slightly, but not as rapidly as LP sales have been increasing.

Eliot Johnson, who is in charge of the vinyl department at the Decatur CD Store, says that LP sales have increased since the store started carrying vinyl a year and a half ago.

Pinson and Johnson both said that with the exception of an occasional re-issue release like a recent Radiohead compilation, the majority of the vinyl they sell is newly released by modern artists, such as this summer’s Modern Guilt by Beck, rather than classic rock staples.

As for the reason behind the increase in sales, Johnson and Pinson both just offer speculation.

In large part, vinyl’s popularity boils down to what should be most important in music: the sound. No matter what, digital music is going to have a compressed sound that music on LPs doesn’t. LPs, Pinson says, have a sound that is “bigger, warmer, fuller” than anything digital could ever provide.

“Sure, there’s the little pops and crackles, but for some that adds to the audio experience,” Rich Friedman from the marketing department of EMI Music wrote in an e-mail to the Wheel.

Pinson also sees the production and consumption of LPs as an act of rebellion. Usually, anything from our parents’ era isn’t considered essential to teens who want to act out. But real audiophiles — especially those in what Johnson calls the younger, “kind of indie, kind of hipster” crowd — can view buying LPs as a way of striking out against the era of mass-produced digital music that people rip from illegal Web sites.

This rebellion doesn’t simply last as long as it takes to purchase an LP rather than navigating over to iTunes. Friedman also mentioned that listening to an LP is an experience that puts emphasis on the entire album, including album art, song order and composition, rather than on a popular single.

“Vinyl consumers usually don’t put a record on for a single song; the record gets played through,” he wrote. “You just put the LP on the table and let it play through until it’s time to flip sides.”

Some artists have taken to including CDs or codes for digital downloads with their LPs.

“You get the best of both worlds,” Pinson reasoned. “You get the sound quality of vinyl, but if you want to throw something in the car” you can.

And ironically enough, the CD is being viewed as a dead art form by many, headed in the direction of the cassette and VHS tapes. LPs, on the other hand, have the reputation of being more timeless.

Pinson credits DJs with keeping the vinyl alive and for re-introducing — and in many cases introducing — a new generation to LPs.

The argument of whether vinyl is any better than digital sound is not going to wrap up anytime soon, and there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. But in the meantime, there’s no way to ignore the cold, hard facts: vinyl records, once considered the dinosaurs of the music world, are still relevant in today’s pop culture world.

SOURCE: http://www.emorywheel.com