VINYL RECORDS – PART 1: RISE AND FALL

It may be surprising to talk about vinyl records on LinkedIn although a “Vinyl Record Collecting Network” user group started in 2009.

The first reason I wrote this series of posts is because the vinyl record was a very innovative technology that made possible a broad access to recorded music. It had a prominent impact on the world-wide culture of the second half of the last century.

Secondly, the rebirth of the vinyl record in the midst of the crisis of the music industry is fascinating. After a relentless decline that should have ended with its complete death, the vinyl record revival surprised the industry and elevated the vinyl record to a trendy iconic status thanks to modern marketing campaigns. It’s not a mass-market product anymore but a luxury and quite elitist item.

At last, as you may have already understood, I have been collecting vinyl records for a long time. I specialize in late 60’s and early 70’s US rock. The Internet has totally changed this hobby connecting all record collectors over the world, giving access to the tiniest detailed information about the most obscure band but also killing record shops and fairs where collectors previously met before.

In this series of posts, I will first make a short summary of the history of vinyl records. Then, I will give you my thoughts about the vinyl revival that is to me very representative of the period we are living. At last, if some of you are still interested, I will let you know a bit more about my own record collecting hobby, giving you advice / tips about starting and managing a vinyl collection.

The renewed interest for vinyl records has been one of the most surprising and bizarre comebacks in the entertainment industry. The last decades burnt, without remorse so many technologies we had been using and loving for years to consume image, sound or art. Why this vinyl revival happened ? Why this inconvenient black “polyvinyl chloride” wafer came back in the race around 2007 to take its revenge on its still young prodigal son, the infamous CD that has also been almost totally replaced by downloads and streaming services ?

The vinyl record business today only does a very small percentage of the music sales and cannot compare with the streaming business except maybe for the % of profitability if I check Spotify latest quarterly financial results.

Obviously, the recent interest for vinyl records goes far beyond music.

THE EARLY AGES

The vinyl record has been a groundbreaking invention to provide easy and cheap access to music and it can be compared to the invention of movable type printing by Gutenberg in the fifteenth century.

Although Thomas Edison’s initial patent on the phonograph dated on 1887 described flat disks named “lateral cuts” records, the cylinder has been the very first industrial medium used for reproducing and playing recorded music. The cylinder kept its leadership until the very beginning of the 20th century.

Emil Berliner, a German-American inventor, developed the gramophone concept using lateral cut records and marketed its first systems in 1889 in Europe. In 1901, 10-inch disc records were introduced, followed in 1903 by 12-inch records. These records could play for between three and four minutes, twice the duration of a cylinder. The speed was not standardized ranging from 60 to 120 rpm. In 1919, the first patents for lateral-cut disks fell in the public domain opening competition in this promising market.

78 RPM

The “78 rpm” was the first standardized format for records. The introduction of new materials to manufacture records was a first major technical improvement. The main components of a 78 rpm record were typically about one-third shellac, a resin secreted by a bug on trees in the forests of India and Thailand and two-thirds mineral filler (slate or limestone) plus a few other secret sauce ingredients. One of the major manufacturers at that time was Columbia Records.

In parallel, the recording techniques improved. The very first acoustic recording had a lot of drawbacks. The sound was collected by a horn that was connected through a pipe to a diaphragm, which vibrated the cutting stylus. There was a major spatial issue to record a group of musicians because the music had to be played as close as possible to the horn. Not ideal for a large jazz band or a symphonic orchestra…

The electrical recording techniques developed in the 20’s using microphones to capture the sound, amplifying it with tubes and using an electromechanical recording head solved the issue to record soft and distant sounds with a much higher quality. Then, the manufacturing techniques made it possible to extend the total record length by reducing the space between the grooves. This said, the duration always remained a problem with 78 rpm records. The first Verdi’s Opera ever recorded in 1903 required 40 single-sided disks.

So, the 78 rpm became this well-known object we can still find in our grand-parents attic or in flea markets: thick but rather fragile black records in brown paper sleeves labeled with the record company name. Unfortunately, a specific stylus is required to play these records and it limits the nostalgia experience. Phonographs also became very nice antiques to collect.

The 78 rpm contributed to keep track of a lot of artists who were re-discovered years later. Robert Leroy Johnson is recognized as a master of the blues (Delta blues style) thanks to the eleven 78 rpm he recorded during his lifetime in 1937-38, the twelfth that was issued posthumously and a few alternate takes.

Johnson’s life is poorly documented, only three pictures of him survived but the compilation released by Columbia in 1961 “King of the Delta Blues Singers ? gave Johnson a wide audience to influence all the main 60’s rock artists including Clapton, Dylan, Richards and many others. Johnson’s songs became blues standards that have been recorded by hundreds of blues figures and rock artists.

To end with this section about 78 rpm, do you know a lot of Beatles singles were released on 78 rpm in India, Philippines and South America? Playing the 1964 “Hard Day’s Night” 78 rpm issued on Parlophone India is a for sure a rare privilege.

THE GOLDEN AGE

The first “modern” record, 30 cm / 12 inch diameter and 33 1/3 rpm, was released in 1931 by RCA Victor. However, it was a total commercial failure because of the lack of affordable, reliable consumer playback equipment and the Great Depression.

The two well-known record formats, the 33 rpm and the 45 rpm, gradually replaced the 78 rpm after World War II. The 33 rpm was developed by Columbia Records and launched in 1948 followed in 1949 by the 45 rpm marketed by RCA. Both companies started the “War of Speeds” that ended with a perfect complementarity between the 12 inch – 33rpm for longer records and the cheaper 7 inch – 45 rpm mainly targeting radios and jukeboxes with 2 songs although the 45 rpm EP (Extended Play) with 4 songs and gorgeous picture sleeves were very popular in Europe in the 60’s..

Once the formats defined, the next improvements were mainly related to recording techniques: high fidelity, stereophonic sound, quadrophonic sound, direct-to-disc… and manufacturing processes. During the early 1970s, as a cost-cutting move, the thickness of records was reduced like with the famous Dynaflex from RCA Victor most record collectors don’t like. Mass-market manufacturing was also developed with high efficiency master records.

The first stereophonic records were released in 1957. However, it was not until the mid-to-late 1960s that the sales of stereophonic LPs overtook those of their monophonic equivalents, and became the dominant record type. The availability of mono and stereo versions of the same record is one of the preferred discussions among 60’s rock collectors and you can see wild price differences between a mono and a stereo version of the same album.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE SLEEVE?

Beyond the music, the record sleeve became a valuable add-on to the vinyl object during the 60’s. Gorgeous laminated, gatefold and die cut sleeves, printed lyrics, inserts, artist message… provide the full “customer experience” that uniquely differentiates the vinyl record from its competitors. Some sleeves are pieces of art.

The well-known peelable banana sleeve designed by Andy Warhol for the first Velvet Underground album released in 1967 is a great example of pop-art. Interestingly it was also one of the very first image right issues in rock music. The back sleeve of the first pressing included an unauthorized picture of Eric Emerson, an actor who played in a Warhol movie. Instead of paying Emerson for the $500,000 he was asking for, the distribution of the album was stopped by MGM Records and restarted 2 months later with a new back sleeve… No need to say that an unpeeled banana cover in pristine condition with Emerson’s picture is the version to own for a true Velvet Underground fan…

Sleeves are also testimonies from forgotten times. How could we today imagine wrapping panties (pink, white, yellow or blue) around a vinyl record as Alice Cooper did for its School’s Out album released on Warner Bros, a major label, in 1972? This brilliant idea came from Craig Braun who also designed the iconic Rolling Stones tongue logo and worked with Andy Warhol on the zipper package for the Stones' Sticky Fingers album.

Do you remember the early releases of the Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album included two posters, a picture of the pyramids of Egypt colored in blue and a poster of the band members playing on stage, plus two stickers with graphics of the pyramids?

I can tell you I still remember the first time my older brother showed me the pyramid poster after he bought the LP in 1973.

Some sleeves generated their own stories. In 1969, the sleeve of Abbey Road of the Beatles was at the starting point of the following theory: Paul McCartney died in a car accident in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a double.

Let’s check the sleeve carefully… The Beatles cross the street like in a funeral procession, symbolizing the death journey. John is dressed in white, he’s the priest. Ringo is in black, he’s the undertaker. George wears a denim, he’s the gravedigger. Paul walks barefoot, that’s how people are buried in England and he holds his cigarette in his right hand (come on, everybody knows Paul is left-handed). On the right, the black car belongs to the municipal morgue service and please check the plate of the Volkswagen beetle: LMW 28 IF (Obviously, Living McCartney Was If 28, Paul’s age when the Abbey Road album was released). LMW could also mean Linda (Paul’s widow) McCartney Weeping…

The ”Paul is Dead” story was likely the first urban legend and conspiracy theory of the rock history. From another time? Really?

INOXERABLE DECLINE

In 1978, the vinyl record business was at its peak. In the US, it reached $2.7B. The vinyl record started to decline and remained the dominant media for recorded music until 1988 when the CD first surpassed it. That year, the US vinyl record business was still at $712M. In 2007 it had almost disappeared at $57M.

At that time the vinyl record was sentenced to quickly join its friends like the floppy disks, tapes, cassettes, VHS… in the graveyard of technologies. This decline was inexorable. Come on… How the old black wafer invented during the previous century could compete with the CD: virtually indestructible, almost perfect quality sound, compact, providing very high margins to the industry ?

In 2019, vinyl record sales broke their century record at $500M in the US at 4.5% of the recorded music market compared to 5.5% to CDs. Last year, LP sales have surpassed CD’s. What made this happen?