Old Is New Again & Enemy Is Now Friend
According to an article on Computer World vinyl is making a small but appreciable comeback in the 13-24 year old demographic. Although at 1.88 million vinyl records sold in 2008, vinyl sales are still an unassuming pimple on the large, albeit slimming butt of CDs – CD sales have plummeted by almost 200 million in the past three years.
The article interviews several independent record store owners including Brighton based Newbury Comic’s CEO, Duncan Browne. Browne reports the chain has created extra retail space for vinyl “in order to accommodate a more than 35% increase to date in vinyl sales.” Unfortunately, Browne also is on the record saying the increase in vinyl sales probably won’t last and is more of a “novelty” than anything, which is odd considering Newbury Comic’s shift in recent years to a seller of novelty goods such as toys and collectibles.
In the meantime, uTorrent creator, Ludvig Strigeus along with several others have launched a new online streaming application dubbed Spotify. The software, described to Torrent Freak by Spotify’s Andrew Sehr is “a hybrid p2p system where music is delivered both by our servers and using P2P,” which allows for a blazing fast product.
In my brief experience with the beta version of the software, it lives up to the hype and is immensely faster than comparable services such as Pandora, Last.fm, or imeem. The current downsides of Spotify include the “inability” to use it in the USA (although this problem is easily bypassed) and a limited catalog.
I searched for several artists and the results were hit or miss. Television’s catalogue was far from complete, as was Richard Hell & the Voidoids and Suicide’s. Crystal Stilts, Soltero, and Wavves were entirely absent from Spotify, while Crystal Castles, Department of Eagles and Arcade Fire were represented rather well. As expected, the more obscure an artist, the less likely you’ll find them on Spotify. The software is still in beta so full judgment would be premature.
So there you have it, a resurgence in vinyl and an application of P2P technology once considered the devil by majors now being put to good use for those same companies. I hope the upswing in vinyl continues because like so many others I love the physical qualities of vinyl and it’s big and bold album art. At the same time, I’m not purchasing a turntable for work (that is, when I start working again) so internet radio and similar programs such as Spotify have a necessary role in a music listener’s life. And anything that at least helps replace iTunes already antiquated and bloated service is fine by me.
I guess all we need now are vinyl torrents, or something.
