The price of records has increased significantly – in 2009 most albums cost less than €20 – now prices are hovering in the high 20s and early 30s. Here are a few observations about the last decade in vinyl:ġ. So, it seems, that vinyl will be around for a while and I may be commenting on it again a decade hence. There are more pressing plants producing more records today than in a generation. But the record shop may be back in a good way – HMV recently opened a 25,000 square foot vinyl store (the Vault) in Brimingham, UK. Highly surprisingly, in the USA, 1 in 12 records is sold by Urban Outfitters. Not surprisingly, one in eight records is sold by Amazon. And now, vinyl records are about to eclipse CDs in sales – for the first time in 33 years! This may be due to the fact that the record sells for 2 to 2.5 times the price of the CD – but the number of units sold has increased geometrically since 2003 (see graphic above). I presume that increasing vinyl sales spurred increasing sales, leading to more media coverage, increasing supply, leading to record store day, leading to increasing supply, media coverage and sales. Ultimately, iTunes killed the CD, Spotify killed iTunes and music enthusiasts embraced vinyl rather than SACD or DVD-Audio for their physical product of choice. There is, was, and always has been something more satisfying about the look and feel or a record versus a CD. I came home from summer vacation in 2009 with a stack of new records. Something obviously sparked the vinyl revival – I don’t know what – but certainly in my case it was the sight of favorite records that I had only ever owned on CD/SACD sitting on the shelves looking at me that stirred my juices. Only a small proportion of new music releases came out on vinyl, and those were often in very limited quantities. Where I live, despite there being several record shops in 2009 (now there is one – if you count the corner of the souvenir shop as such), you could not be new vinyl locally. I know very few individuals who remained loyal to vinyl (mostly DJs) during the CD era. That particular record wasn’t a great advertisement for the vinyl renaissance, but it did not matter.
I was intrigued as I had never heard the album on vinyl – this was still peak CD era – so I dug my Bang & Olufsen 4600 turntable out of storage and started playing my records again. This included a copy of the record pressed on blue vinyl.
In 2009, Columbia records released a 50th anniversary edition of “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis.
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