MUSIC

MUSIC Compact disc sales rally in decidedly sad fashion

by Mike Usinger

As difficult as this might be to fathom today, there once was a time when CDs were not only a thing, but the music world’s coolest thing. Record stores not only charged $19 for them, but had no shortage of takers willing to line up for Nevermind, Use Your Illusion (both volumes), and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, as well as everything ever released by Hootie and the Blowfish, Counting Crows, and the Spin Doctors.

Audiophiles (briefly) loved compact discs for the way they sounded on bookshelf-size Mission 753 speakers—the pops, hisses, and skips of vinyl were no longer a distraction. Thieves loved them because they cost a lot, were easy to steal from parked cars, ground-level condos, and detached homes, and could then be immediately traded in for cash at Charlie’s Music City on Granville.

Then came MP3s, Napster, and streaming services. Suddenly no one wanted to pay $20 for something that took up valuable space in a 360-foot Yaletown studio apartment. Which partially explains why Apple Music and Spotify today are kings, and CDs are something hung on strings

Adele’s 30 and Taylor Swift’s Red were among the big sellers in 2021 as CD sales experienced growth for the first time since 2004, while sales of wax cylinders and 8-tracks remained flat.

in backyard gardens to keep the crows, rats, and Fred Durst away.

But that changed a little last year, with CDs experiencing a growth in sales for the first time since 2004.

For those who hadn’t been born yet, 2004 was when click-wheel iPods were still shiny and new, with no one caring they tapped out at 40 GB of storage. Facebook was newly launched but was only available to those attending Harvard and looking to find the next frat party. Beyoncé was still best known as a member of Destiny’s Child.

Flash forward to 2021. According to Billboard—citing stats from MRD Data—nearly 41 million CDs were purchased last year, representing a 1.1-percent jump from 2020’s 40.16 million units sold.

Leading the way on the comeback front was Adele, whose 30 sold 890,000 compact discs. Taylor Swift came in second and third with reworked versions of Fearless (263,000 copies moved) and Red (clocking in 237,000).

If there’s a cloud to this silver lining it’s that back in the glory days of compact discs (a.k.a. the mid-’90s) the above figures would have represented first-day, openinghour sales at Tower, Sam the Record Man, and A&B Sound.

Continuing on that thread, vinyl outsold compact discs for the first time since MRD started tracking music sales in 1991. And while streaming is how the vast majority of people consume music, vinyl is once again the leading format for album purchases in the U.S. Of all physical albums sold in the U.S. in 2021, 50.4 percent were vinyl copies.

That means that CDs, despite a small bump in popularity, continue to bring up the rear along with cassette tapes, 8-tracks, wax cylinders, and old-timey player pianos. On the positive side, among those, they remain the easiest to steal. g

Jack White hasn’t been lounging around the house

by Mike Usinger

Giving us something in common with the rest of us, Jack White is making it crystal clear he’s had quite enough of sitting around the house. Or, if you prefer, sprawling Nashville estate.

The former White Stripes frontman turned solo artist (when he’s not busy with Dead Weather and the Raconteurs) has released a live-performance video for last October’s single “Taking Me Back”. What you get in the self-directed clip is four guys plugging and old-school rocking out.

Consider “Taking Me Back” part of White setting the table for not only two new albums in 2022, but also a return to normalcy with an ambitious touring schedule.

The Supply Chain Issues Tour will see White travel both sides of the Atlantic with shows not only in North America but overseas in the U.K., Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and France. Vancouverites will get the chance to see White at the Pacific Coliseum on June 7. The tour kicks off in the singer’s former hometown of Detroit on April 8.

As for new material, White’s never been one for leisure time. As he once told

Jack White is famously of the opinion that men look sexier with a little snow on the roof, and even hotter when their hair is the colour of Hawaiian Shaved Ice Blue Raspberry Snow Cone Syrup. the Straight, “I get bored with the idea of being complacent. I feel a responsibility— not really a guilt, but responsibility—to the word artist. That’s a heavy, heavy word to say out loud, to even think of yourself as an artist. A lot of people throw that word around. If someone who’s 80 years old comes up in an airport and says, ‘What do you do for a living?’, if I have the gall to say ‘artist’, instead of musician or producer or whatever, I’m really going to be responsible to that word—it’s not an excuse to not work.”

Not done there, he continued with, “So I push myself. I gave myself over to it a long time ago—gave myself over to not having a normal life or a normal experience, to not coming home and sitting on the couch and watching TV at night. I don’t get to have that. That was the sacrifice. But the good things that have come from that, the experiences and the things that have been created that didn’t exist before, I owe a lot of respect to.”

In light of that, it’s no surprise White hasn’t spent the past two years sitting around the house watching The White Lotus, Squid Game, and Fargo reruns during the pandemic. Two full-lengths are scheduled for release later this year, with Fear Of The Dawn arriving on April 8, and Entering Heaven Alive scheduled for July 22. White has described the records as entirely different, with each defined by different inspirations, themes, and moods. g