Is Vinyl the Best Format Ever? (And This Weekend’s Live Geeks&Beats Record Show Appearance)
This Sunday, Michael Hainsworth and I will take our Beats&Geeks podcast recording session to the Downtown Record Show, which is happening Sunday at the Estonian Banquet Hall on Broadview north of the Danforth in Toronto. If you’re any sort of music nerd–vinyl, CDs, DVDs, books, paper, etc–you need to join us. Besides, with the clocks going back one hour Sunday morning, you still get an extra hour’s sleep.
This has always been a bad, bad day for me. First, a bunch of us meet up for a greasy breakfast of juicy sausages and eggs at the greasy spoon down the street and then we proceed to empty a significant portion of our bank accounts at the show. Perhaps being occupied with a podcast will prevent me from bankrupting the family.
Which leads me to this article in The Telegraph:
Vinyl is dead!
At least that’s what every music fan, artist and producer was told in 1982 (and every year since), upon the release of a pioneering new technology known as the compact disc.
For a long time, they were right: sales of records declined steadily after ’82 as their smaller, shinier cousin moved in on the home music market. Vinyl, it seemed, was not long for this world. The same scrap-heap that held the gramophone, Betamax and the transistor radio beckoned.
But then, years later, something happened. Whether through efforts made by musical purists, initiatives such as Record Store Day or the cachet of vinyl in the nostalgia (or even hipster) stakes, the sales tide began to turn once more.
And with the news that vinyl album sales are due to hit the one million mark by the end of the year (the highest since 1996), it seems the record has been formally resurrected,
Why? Allow the individuals, whose faith in vinyl has never skipped a beat, to explain.
Finally, have a look at Collectors Frenzy, a site that tracks who has paid what for rare records by aggregating results from sale around the planet. Just enter the name of an artist, an album or a single and watch what comes up.
