Vinyl Records Make a Comeback

A few months ago, an employee of the Fred Meyer retail chain made an inadvertent typo when ordering a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.’s “Accelerate”.  Instead of entering the code to order a CD-DVD, the employee selected the “LP” code. Soon afterward, boxes of large, vinyl discs began showing up at several Fred Meyer stores. It was a fortuitous mistake for the Portland-based retailer, who initially returned some of the LP’s before selling 20 in the first day at the few stores who put them on the shelves.

Shortly thereafter, Fred Meyer, owned by The Kroger Co., realized the error might actually be a blessing in disguise, and has started testing vinyl sales at 60 stores in Washington, Oregon and Alaska. Based on the initial response, the company said it plans to begin selling vinyl in all its stores that sell music this July.

Other mainstream retailers are following suit. Best Buy is testing sales at some stores, and leading online music retailer Amazon.com, which has sold vinyl for most of its 13 year existence, created a special vinyl-only section of its online store last year. Many major artists, such as Elvis Costello, the Raconteurs and others, are joining in as well, issuing LP versions of their music. Madonna’s latest album, "Hard Candy", is one of the best-selling LPs on Amazon.com. Some artists are even packaging vinyl and digital versions of their music together, and adding offers for free digital downloads along with the LP.

So far, Fred Meyer’s top-selling LP is The Beatles album "Abbey Road." But musicians from the Foo Fighters and White Stripes to Pink Floyd and Metallica are also selling well, according to the company.

"It’s not just a nostalgia thing," Melinda Merrill, Fred Meyer spokeswoman, told the Associated Press.

"The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound."

The Recording Industry Association of America reported that shipments by manufacturers of LPs increased more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007, exceeding 1.3 million copies. At the same time, CD shipments were down to 511 million, more than 17 percent, amid competition from other digital formats.

Vinyl’s retail resurgence hinges on a long-standing debate over analog versus digital sound. With digital recordings, samples of sound are captured and placed close together so the resulting sound is nearly identical to continuous sound. Analog recordings, used with most LPs,  use continuous sounds, producing what many believe is a truer sound. Some analog purists claim that the compression required to allow loudness in some digital formats also lessens the quality.   

Ironically, some new LP releases are now being recorded and mixed digitally, but delivered in analog. But it’s the overall experience, not just the sound, that audiophiles say is important with LPs. This includes everything from the experience of putting the needle on the record to changing from side A to side B to the joy of perusing through the LP’s liner notes.

"I think music products should be more than just music," 28-year-old Isaac Hudson told the AP as he stood outside a large Portland independent music store.

The trend seems to be growing, with sales of turntables ticking up and business booming for the few remaining record pressers. But don’t expect the vinyl LP to surpass CDs or the iPod anytime soon.

Last year 450 million CDs were sold, compared with fewer than 1 million LPs, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Album sales could reach 1.6 million this year based on the first quarter, Nielsen says.

"I don’t think vinyl is for everyone; it’s for the die-hard music consumer," Jay Millar, director of marketing at United Record Pressing, the nation’s largest record pressing plant, told the AP. The company focuses mainly on independent recordings.

"We’ve definitely had some talks with the major retailers about exclusives on the manufacturing end," he said.

Millar, himself a big music fan,  has moved to vinyl in recent years.

"Once I got my first iPod … I’m looking at my wall of CDs and trying to justify it," he said.

"The things I like – the artwork, the liner notes, the sound quality – it dawns on me, those are things I like better on vinyl."

The pops, clicks and scratches are a welcome distraction to Millar.

"I like that fact that it’s imperfect in a lot of ways, live music is imperfect too," he said.

According to independent music stores, many fans never left the LP medium.

"People have been buying vinyl all along," Cathy Hagen, manager at Portland’s 2nd Avenue Records, told the AP.

"There was a fairly good supply from independent labels on vinyl all these years. As far as a resurgence, the major labels are just pressing more now."

But there’s plenty of room for both the big retailers and the independent sellers, whose clientele includes independent label fans, turntable DJs and nostalgic baby boomers.

"I cannot see that Best Buy or Fred Meyer would order the same things we would," said Hagan.

"They aren’t going to be ordering the reggae, funk, punk or industrial music."