Dirty tracks

You have all probably heard it recently. Vinyl is not dying at all: is coming alive from its ashes. The media have been writing frantically about this new "fad" for months now, particularly in the last few weeks. Figures are going up specially in the USA where the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) announced how the vinyl records sales went over the 1 million mark in 2007, although they still only mean a weak 1% of the business.

I guess one could truly dig a little deeper about all this excitement in the "industry", see it as another desperate reaction in a moment of general panic, with CD sales going down an estimate 20% every year (for 2006 and 2007). Reading comments like "we could really carve this out to be a nice profitable niche,” from Bill Gagnon the Senior Vice-president at EMI Catalog Marketing in the New York Times need no further explanation.

If you have been buying vinyl from before this trend, or actually while the mp3 panic was expanding rapidly, you might have noticed a few things. First of all, with everyone downloading music files from P2P servers, the real first victim of this party has been the CD. But secondly, vinyl. If the general public - and that is not the music collectors, but the ones who buy one or two records a year - feel that buying music makes no sense when you can get it for free, the natural consequence is an overwhelming amount of products for sale for a decreasing demand. In commerce that means lower prices. We didn't see this in most music stores but we saw it clearly in all second hand or specialised retailers. More and more boxes of reduced price records, and clearly lower prices for once untouchable collector's items...

One of the reasons for this situation is the access to Ebay and many second hand stores (because technically that's what they are). Some time ago, if you bump into a first edition of your favourite collecting artist in your local store, you would be ready to pay almost anything in the ignorance and fear of not having such opportunity again. Luckily enough, you can take it easy now, put it aside, check a few stores in the net, and get the best deal for the same collecting pleasure. But of course, you are not the only surfer out there, and the sellers know it. So they started to push the prices, increase the sale`s information (release year, cover state, audio state) and unfortunately to lie.

It's all very romantic, trendy, exciting and fun to be part of the vinyl crowd. It's great to see new audiophiles discovering how much better was to enjoy music in the two sided format, with those gate fold editions, bigger photos, as opposed to the invisible hackery effect of an mp3 folder in your pc´s hard disk. It's even more rewarding to make buddies in the shops, learn the language codes, differentiate turntables and needles, even if you don´t particularly want to be a dj. But, what shall we do with the sound quality?

One of the supporting reasons for vinyl against CD or any digital format is the sound quality. Just google that for a few hours and you can get the explanatory information about sound waves, bass quality, range, etc. This is all true if records are preserved and offered fairly for second hand buyers. Although I don't have the figures at hand (but would love to know them, so please link me to any info regarding that) I'm sure a big part of the so called new business in vinyl relies on second hand sales. It´s true a big part of DJs worldwide still prefer 12" and LPs, and many popular artists (from Radiohead to Bob Dylan) are launching their music in alternative vinyl options, but even all those will one day find themselves in a crate having a second run for sale, only now with an injured quality.

Unfortunately, if you buy vinyl you have probably been ripped off many times. In my experience, at least half of the times when I bought a vinyl but didn't have the chance to check the quality I was fooled. Some times for a middle range price like 30€ or more. This can be avoided, obviously, when you deal with a local store with the minimum supply of a turntable and headphones. But if you buy abroad, or through Internet you are exposed. And there's nothing as frustrating as playing your beloved and highly paid vinyl at home and discovering is full of cracks, scratches and killed sound... It awakes your worst assassination instincts! And yes, you can always go back to the shop, write to the seller, complain and fight for your rights, but the moral damage has already been done.

So, it is all very exciting and encouraging to see sellers and buyers enjoying this vinyl comeback, specially if this will encourage companies to release new material in vinyl (the best guarantee for a good sound is an unopened/sealed record). But it is also very important to keep an eye for all those vinyl pirates who will not have a problem to overprice an old dirty dusty record and sell it as an all time well preserved jewel, when in truth, it's just another piece of junk.