By all reports, vinyl is back.
Sales are up and record pressing plants are not only busy, but expanding, with Jack White jumping into the game with his own state-of-the-art Stryper-themed pressing plant AND two retail stores (in Detroit and NashVegas, respectively).
Artists big and small are not only paying through the nose to press their music on glow-in-the-dark radioactive splatter vinyl, but they're still willingly waiting upwards of 4-6 months to receive their hot wax back from the plant.
In a day and age where you can upload a breakfast fart to the interweb and that fart can have a million followers and a record deal with Atlantic Records by lunch time, who the fuck has that kind of time?
Especially when the tide could turn at any time.
All it would take is one tiny little recession, or oil-based upheaval (war, pipeline disaster, you name it) and that perilously fragile resurgence could come to screeching halt at any given moment.
Especially when the going retail price for new vinyl is $23.99, but most titles being re-issued from the '90s (when labels wanted artists to fill up as much space as possible on that 70-minute CD to rationalize the $19.99 list price) require two albums, making for quite the wallet-buster.
That, my friends, is highway robbery and the only part of the whole "vinyl resurgence" that I don't like.
I feel the need to put said resurgence in air quotes because there's still one thing missing from this comeback story... one key component that many of us have totally forgotten about, but that once I say those words, foreheads will be slapped in unison.
Okay, here goes:
The one thing still missing from this whole Main Street America Vinyl Resurgence is (drum roll please) record store chains.
Where are all the record store chains?
The first chain I could think of is Amoeba and they have three whole stores.
Considering that I once lived within ten minutes of three Tower Records locations, the fact that three stores now counts as a chain is downright heartbreaking.
Those who suggest that sales lost from chain stores is picked up by the Amazons of the world are missing the fact that no online retailer can compete with the sense of discovery that comes from not just walking into a record store, but walking into that same record store in any of its many locations across this country and feeling that same sense of the unknown.
What album cover will grab me that I never would have otherwise purchased in a million years?
What music will be playing when I walk in?
Is that Elton fucking John in the next aisle buying records buy the stack?
These and other questions can only be answered once the record chains get back into the brick-and-mortar game.
It is fair to say that many reading this may not know that, back in the '70s and '80s, you couldn't go anywhere without passing a major record store location. If you went to the mall,there weren't just national chains like Musicland and Tower, but also many regional chains like The Wall, Wherehouse, Record World, Record Town, Licorice Pizza, Newbury Comics, to name but a few.
Of course, no list of regional chains would be complete without Rose Records, who had 35 ginormous locations spread throughout Chicagoland.
Can there be a vinyl resurgence without resurgence in record chains?
To answer that question, one must ask themselves "Do you really want to put the future of your next record in the hands of a bunch of uncoordinated ma-and-pa stores?"
That's no slam against such retailers - who will always be a much-needed part of the equation - but the resurgence needs to start putting up some respectable sales numbers soon or else the wave will peter out. Only chain retailers can shake things up, move some major units, and helping break tomorrow's biggest bands today.
So, who's it gonna be?
Tags:
vinyl resurgence