[78-L] Universal releases series of vinyl LPs

[Chris Zwarg]

At 18:52 15.11.2008, you wrote:
>From: Alexandre Benoit <pathe90rpm at yahoo.fr>
>> http://www.backtoblackvinyl.com/ 
>> Surprising that a major label sees this as a market. Alex
>
>Not really.  We've mentioned here a few months ago about a bunch of TV
>news stories, newspaper and magazine articles that discuss how new vinyl
>is the only growth market in music sales in the U.S.  As small as the
>market for new vinyl is, their sales have been steadily increasing in
>the past three years while CD and DVD sales have been decreasing.  Even
>the sales of turntables has doubled and tripled in the past three years.
> And more and more of those TTs have included 78.  I would think that
>those sales have also gone up in trendy France, although when I was last
>there in 1998 I bought the ONLY vinyl disc in the Paris Galarie
>Lafayette.  It was a special LP/CD combo in a bargain bin.  
>
>Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com

The currently largest record store in Berlin (the branch of the "Media Markt" chain at Alexanderplatz, opened last year) has a fifteen-foot-long shelf of new vinyl LPs - I hadn't seen such a thing since the early 1990's. Every time I've been there during the past year, I saw numerous young customers browsing the LPs, so there *is* interest not only among the "old fogeys". Seems that many people have noticed that, quite apart from the eternal analog/digital controversy among audiophiles, vinyl discs are simply more collectible than CDs - unlike the latter, not many people can "roll their own", and an LP album by its sheer size looks and feels much more impressive than a CD. A remarkable number of the current vinyl issues stress this visual/tactile aspect with foldout covers, 78-style multidisc albums (e.g. I have seen one Cristina Aguilera album spread over three 45rpm 12-inchers held in an album that for all the world looks like a 1930's RCA-Victor product, complete with "scroll" Victor labels), and the same people that always complain that CDs are too expensive, and prefer to download and share MP3s, are willing to pay rather steep prices for such gorgeous-looking products.

I think the idea of combining a vinyl LP (for collecting) with an MP3 download (for everyday listening) as now practised by Universal is a small stroke of genius, as it will probably induce further fans, including at least some who presently don't even have an analogue record player, to buy the LP rather than the CD because it looks so much better as a collector's item.

Chris Zwarg