FROM THE DESK OF LEN

Irecently overheard a comment by one of our staff which really resonated with me. He said that music is emotion, and when the emotion is missing from it you stop listening.

I was around during what many consider to be the ‘golden years’ of hi-fi, the 1970s and ‘80s, and often wonder what it was that made a good hi-fi system a must-have possession of the day. Have we since lost the emotion, or were other factors at work?

As someone who has always had a passion for music, it’s easy to go down that lack of emotion route, and there is considerable evidence to support that. While trying to avoid sounding like the antiCD brigade, we must admit that the early CD releases were pretty awful. I recall that one of my albums on high rotation at the time was Joe Jackson’s ‘Night and Day’. When I replaced the LP with a CD, it just never sounded the same. It was difficult to pinpoint why — all the music was there (less the surface noise) — but there was no involvement, and as a result I rarely played the album again.

MP3 was released in the early ‘90s but did not gain traction until the release of the first Apple iPod in 2001. Recorded music sales peaked in 2000, which was also around the same time as the release of Napster. Both the arrival of Napster and the iPod were considerable backward steps in terms of musical reproduction.

From 2000, when digital music first appeared as a serious format, people stopped listening! Recorded music sales declined at an alarming rate from this time, and by 2015 sales had dropped by close to 60%. The argument here is that if you are not emotionally attached to your music, why bother!

There is, of course, another argument. During those golden years were fewer distractions. At best you had radio, four channels of (black and white) TV, and recorded music as forms of entertainment in the home. There was no internet, phones, laptops, computer games or video streaming to divert your attention. The opportunities today for home entertainment are vast, and consuming recorded music is only one option — our limited leisure time is being continually sliced and diced.

However, there has been a marked turnaround in music sales since that low point of 2015, so much so that in 2021 sales exceeded the peak of 2000. Yes, part of this can be attributed to the COVID pandemic, but it has been a steady and consistent growth for a number of years. (Interestingly, it appears that Australia did not share in the phenomenal growth of some nations during that year — Latin America grew 31%, North America 22%, Asia 16%, Europe 15% and Australia 4%.)

“Aha,” I hear you say, “Vinyl is back, people are listening again.” Well, vinyl has seen 17 years of consecutive sales growth, and now outsells CD in both the number and value of sales. Over 43 million new vinyl LPs were sold in the US alone last year (though Statista research suggests only 50% of vinyl owners in the US own a record player — go figure!), and conservative estimates suggest that second-hand LP sales may even exceed this figure. Discogs lists close to six million used LPs on its site.

And it isn’t Baby Boomers reliving the glory days that are driving vinyl sales: the two age groups purchasing the most vinyl are 55+ (understandably) and 25 to 34, both with 21% of the market each.

So, has vinyl saved the music industry? Can it take the credit for enticing people to ‘listen’ again? While this may be a romantic notion, it isn’t the reality. Despite the consistent growth of the format, vinyl sales only accounted for slightly more than 5% of music sales in Australia (and just over 7% internationally) — small fry compared to streaming, which accounted for 86%. Vinyl may be growing at a faster rate, but it still has a lot of catching up to do.

But don’t let that put you off! Look for the emotion in your music, irrespective of your format of choice. And invest in a system capable of resolving that emotion. It may not cost as much as you think, and your life will be all the richer for it.