It's coming round again... record on a turntable.
Photograph: David Adame/AP
Every now and then, sales of vinyl records show an upward blip, which generates wistful reports about the resurgence of a format that the music industry pronounced dead 15 years ago. 2005 was the best year for seven-inch vinyl singles since 1996, with sales hitting 1m. A bit sad, admittedly, compared with the year's 47m sales on CD and download, but enough to count as a modest return.
Curiously, the vinyl buyer is now as likely to be a teenager as a nostalgic 35-year-old. Bearing in mind that some teens have never even encountered a piece of black plastic with a hole in it - "My friend's son saw my vinyl albums and asked what the 'big CDs' were," says Paul Williams, deputy editor of Music Week - that's surprising.
And even more so given that vinyl is old technology and, thus, labour-intensive: you have to put the needle on the record, and three minutes later get up and change the record. Do that for an hour and you'll burn a calorie or two - and that doesn't take into account the energy expended in going to a shop and buying it.
So what gives? The average 14-year-old surely is not moved by claims that vinyl, with its crackles and capacity for warping if left on windowsills, has a "warmer" sound - the argument used in the 80s against the new-fangled compact disc. He/she probably doesn't even own a turntable.
This has more to do with bands rediscovering vinyl themselves, and releasing records on it. Indie-ish guitar bands are the main adopters - last week's top five vinyl acts were Larrikin Love, the Guillemots, Billy Talent, Embrace and Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly - because three-minute bursts of guitar pop suit the seven-inch format, and as such, make a nice little rebellion against the commodification of music. Conveniently, their fans tend to be passionate followers who appreciate the idea of a collectible artefact that only a select few can own. Nobody's going to buy a Beyonce single on vinyl, are they?
"Select few" means just that, by the way. Larrikin Love's Happy as Annie, last week's top-selling vinyl single, only sold 2,340 copies, while Guillemots' Trains to Brazil went home with only 1,500 people. If this is a rebellion, it's not quite spreading like wildfire. But it's a gesture none the less. Do Culture Vultures think that the seven-inch single represents a fightback against the iTunesification of the world? Or is it a nano-fad that will be gone tomorrow?
