This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: This year’s Record Store Day will be April 20. This annual event began in 2008 as about 300 U.S. stores celebrated independent record stores here in the US and around the world and grew to a worldwide celebration that is held at thousands of retail locations.
The largest Record Store Day events in St. Louis will take place at Euclid Records in Webster Groves, Vintage Vinyl in University City’s Delmar Loop and at APOP Records on Cherokee Street.
All of the celebrations - here and around the country – also involve hundreds of special limited edition releases by artists such as David Bowie, the Avett Brothers, REM, Willie Nelson, Miles Davis, the Flaming Lips and others. And they are only available on vinyl – either as 12-inch or 10-inch albums or as 45s.
Yes … vinyl. Remember that ancient artifact that was supposed to be driven into obsolescence by the compact disc, with its claimed superiority in digital sound as well as its ability to be played in cars and on small portable players?
Well, vinyl follows Mark Twain’s quote: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
Near-death experience
That’s certainly the case for the 12-inch vinyl album. It came into vogue in the late 1940s and has been challenged by the 8-track tape in the 1960s, cassettes in the 1970s and the CD in the mid-1980s.
The growth of the CD did drive vinyl sales down to a percentage that was so low in the late 1980s into the 1990s that the death of the format seemed to be imminent.
It soon became next to impossible to find LPs at any big box retailer. Even large and regional record store chains move away from vinyl to concentrate on CDs.
But small independents such as Vintage Vinyl and Euclid Records here in the St. Louis area kept LPs in stock. And over the past decade, both stores – as well as other independent record stores around the country that kept selling vinyl – began to see an increase in sales.
“For us, the low point for album sales was 1999,” recalls Lew Prince, co-owner of Vintage Vinyl during a recent conversation in the Delmar Loop, where Vintage Vinyl has been for more than three decades. “We never got rid of our vinyl, but we didn’t carry nearly as much as we did before. Albums only accounted for 3 percent of our sales that year. But by 2000, we saw a slight increase – not much, but enough to notice. So I think we were ahead of the curve in terms of the revival of vinyl sales. But our customers tend to be ahead of the curve anyway.”
According to Prince, Vintage Vinyl expects that sales of LPs and other vinyl will account for 30 to 35 percent of sales this year. And that trend is happening nationwide.
According to Soundscan (a Nielsen service that tracks retail sales of recordings), Vinyl LP sales hit a low point in 2005 and 2006 with sales of around a million units nationwide. That number nearly doubled to 1.9 million units in 2008, and had almost doubled again by 2011 to 3.5 million units sold. Last year, vinyl sales hit 4.6 million – and that increase is definitely continuing.
In fact, because many independent record stores have been slow to adopt Soundscan tracking, and vinyl sales by bands at live performances are not counted either, that number is certainly much higher.
Internet and mail order sales of vinyl also add to that total – a side of the business that was a key element in making Euclid Records a success, according to owner and founder Joe Schwab.
“From the beginning, we decided to really focus on a mail-order niche, so vinyl never really went to a low point with us,” explains Schwab, after giving a short tour of the new location of Euclid Records that will open on May 1 on Gore Avenue in Webster Groves. “We started with the goal of developing a foundation of 50 good mail-order customers who would buy on a consistent basis. That worked, and later, with the internet, we figured we couldn’t compete online with Amazon in terms of CD prices – but there was no way they could beat us online in terms of vinyl.”
With the mail-order business as a foundation, and internet sales eventually becoming part of the equation, Euclid Records did not depend on retail sales in store to keep the doors open.
“The retail store was initially – and still is to a degree – a way for us to bring people in who want to sell their albums,” says Schwab. “And we got into used and new CDs as well, but vinyl is what we’re really known for.”
For Tiffany Minx, co-owner of Apop Records (2831 Cherokee), vinyl has always been part of the mix since the store opened in April 2007. Apop is a small space, and the store specializes in genres such as electronica, experimental, metal, punk and other esoterica, so formats depend on how the music is released according to Minx.
“We sell albums as part of our mix and also carry a lot of cassettes,” says Minx. “We get a lot of comments about those. When we first started, we really weren’t that big on carrying CDs at all, but there’s no way around it since certain music that we specialize in is only available that way. So vinyl is definitely a big part of our sales.”
The vinyl buyer
Vinyl is a strong offering in all three of these record stores. But who are the vinyl buyers – and why?
“For us, there really are two main demographics,” says Euclid’s Schwab. “There are the people from college age up to 30. Then there are the people who are older -- in there 50s and up -- who are audiophiles and collectors. We really don’t see a lot of people in their 30s and 40s who are into vinyl. And as far as the new releases, it’s primarily buyers in their 20s.”
Prince agrees in terms of the demographic for album buyers at Vintage Vinyl.
“We get a lot of college students from Washington University shopping for new LPs – and the older albums as well,” says Prince. “And there are the older people who bought albums from the beginning and are still around collecting or who are audiophiles.”
For those who grew up buying LPs and kept their collections or think analog LPs sound better than digital CDs, sticking to albums as a music medium is understandable. But what makes vinyl more attractive than CDs to a younger generation of music fans, who grew up downloading music rather than buying physical copies of CDs or LPs?
“For someone who grew up listening to the compressed sound of downloaded MP3 files of songs, hearing an album played in a store or on a home turntable system can really be eye-opening,” Prince says. “I compare it to when I used to buy 45s of hit songs, then later heard the LP versions. They were always fuller sounding and better. That’s the way it is with someone who grew up downloading music and then hears the real thing.
“Also, there’s an interesting thing about the length of music you can put on a CD versus the amount you can put on an LP,” he adds. “You can get up to 80 minutes of music on a CD, and about 40 max on an LP. So with CDs, you tend to get filler – songs that just aren’t as good or wouldn’t have made the cut if the release could only be 40 minutes long. Plus, you have to turn an LP over – it has two sides. That makes for interesting song choices – and the ability to tell a story with music.”
“There’s also something that’s just physically cool about a record album as far as the cover art, graphics, and the liner notes,” says Schwab. “It’s something real and tangible – not just a download. Even though a CD can have all that, it’s smaller and just not the same.”
Record Store Day
Whatever the reasons might be for individual music fans to prefer vinyl, it’s clear that Record Store Day is their high holy day. Vintage Vinyl, Apop Records and Euclid Records all have major events planned to celebrate the day.
“We’ve been celebrating Record Store Day since the beginning,” says Prince, and we’ll have DJs in the store all day Saturday and live music and DJs outside as well. We’ve got a great setup inside for DJs, and we bring in some interesting people. And outside the store, we’ll even have a portable dance floor.”
“The first two years we did Record Store Day,” says Minx, “we combined it with the anniversary of APOP. But now we do it separately because Record Store Day gets a little crazy – especially since we had all the bands playing inside the store. Now we’ve got the bands playing outside, and we’ve blocked off part of Oregon – the street at the side of our store – from Cherokee up to our property line. And we’ve got a lot of booths outdoors as well.”
For Schwab and Euclid Records, Record Store Day has turned into a full weekend event – one with a special meaning this year because it marks the transition from the location on Lockwood to the new store on Gore.
“When we started doing Record Store Day in 2008, it was a one-day deal,” he states. “But last year we expanded it to three days: Friday through Sunday. There are just too many bands that want to play, so we decided to have live music for all weekend.
“And this will be the last major event at our Lockwood location, because after Sunday, we’ll be closing down so we can finish packing up for the move to the new store on Gore. So it will be bittersweet – but it will still be a lot of fun.
“It’s just a cool event for the music community in general – and for us at our store. We’ve got people lining up outside for hours before we open to buy the limited edition releases, and it’s fun to hear all the bands and hang with everyone outside holding court and talking about music.”