Vinyl Is Back!

I'm a little late to this, but Wired magazine wrote on October 29, 2007 that vinyl is on the rise. They even reported that Amazon.com has created a vinyl section on its website! Good news indeed -- although I doubt that Amazon will have the kind of records I enjoy, at least I can now put music back on my wishlist.

What did the record industry have to say about this? The typical bullshit:

"Our numbers, at least, don't really point to a resurgence," said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America's director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.

I'll bet that the record industry wants to play down this growing trend of vinyl enthusiasts because the major record labels have invested a lot of money in the production and promotion of CDs, and that's not something they want to just throw away. This highlights the major record labels inability to keep up with new music and trends. Their business model just isn't suited to be that nimble.

And Wired does explain why the RIAA numbers are way off:

But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don't really know what they're talking about. The RIAA's numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don't include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay -- arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.

eBay.com is possibly the greatest site ever. Through eBay I've found most of my best and favorite records at, usually, reasonably prices (I still think $76 dollars for No Trend's 1984 Too Many Humans was a good deal! Really!) Just yesterday, I found Sightings' debut 7" and the Violent Ramp 7" -- pre-Wolf Eyes noise rock -- on eBay for "buy it now"! Of course, I scooped those right up.

Wired also writes that "the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD." As I've written before, Polyvinyl Records has already started offering a free mp3 download of any release purchased on vinyl. Here's to hoping that this practice becomes the norm -- ripping my entire vinyl collection to mp3 will be quite the daunting task!