May. 26, 2010 - Issue #762: Timeland

Enter Sandor

Vinyl ascendant

CDs are going the way of Betamax

I have shelves upon shelves filled with CDs. Their spines make up kaleidoscopes of colour on my living-room wall.

There are limited-edition, numbered discs; there are promo copies with slashes taken out of the plastic case. There are CDs in slipcases and in Digipaks that have been opened and closed so many times that the cardboard spines are giving way.

Next to the CDs is the stash of vinyl my wife and I have accumulated over the years.

On the CD side of the room, I haven't added anything new to the shelves in almost a year. The piles of unfiled discs sit on top of the shelving units in the same spots as they did last year. Meanwhile, near the turntable, there is plenty of new vinyl. Blue boxes and the solid-wood shelving units are filled. And we need more.

I am far too fond of the CDs at this point to sell them for something like a dollar apiece on eBay (if that), even if I've already downloaded their contents onto my iTunes library. Right now, the CDs sit there unused and unloved, only to be rediscovered when we eventually have to move and our friends wonder why the fuck we have all these heavy boxes filled with junk.

But, a new CD purchase hasn't happened in a while. I think the last CD I didn't get for free was a Black Mold disc, Snow Blindness is Crystal Antz—and that came out in the summer of 2009.

I guess our family's retrofit to vinyl is complete.

And we aren't alone. The Recording Industry Association of America recently released its statistical wrap up of 2010's Record Store Day, and found it really should have been called Buy Vinyl Day.

"Compared to the prior week, overall US album sales in the independent sector increased 12 percent, including a substantial 119 percent uptick in vinyl sales for the weekend and an even heftier 529 percent growth in vinyl single sales according to Nielsen SoundScan figures," reads the wrap on Record Store Day from RIAA.

So, let's dissect those numbers. A promotion designed to bring people into indie record shops, with dozens of exclusive CD and vinyl releases, created a 12 percent increase in total sales.

But, at the same time, vinyl sales went up 119 per cent. The vinyl singles market is still so small that a 529 percent jump can't really be talked about. It's coming back, but nowhere near the 12-inch market.

So, a massive surge in vinyl only helped bump total record sales by 12 percent. That's a sign that CD sales are flat—or worse, that vinyl sales are chomping huge chunks out of the CD market.

And, it's a sign that if indie record stores want to thrive, they need to be far more invested in vinyl than in CDs.

And, with every week that passes, all of those CDs on my shelves lose value. While the technology was far too popular to be simply erased from history like eight-track tapes or Beta videos were, it's definitely no longer a growth market.

I just wonder what people will think of the massive CD collection a decade from now?

Maybe I need to show them some VHS tapes, too. V

Steven Sandor is a former editor-in-chief of Vue Weekly, now an editor and author living in Toronto.

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