A vinyl revival was sparked in 2021. Nostalgia for older music technology has been taken up over the course of the pandemic and beyond.
MRC Data, provider of music sales data to the industry, reported 1.1 million vinyl records were sold in Canada last year, an increase of 21.8 per cent from 2020.
“I think that while the streaming and digital media certainly provides a convenience, it lacks part of the listening experience,” said Guelph vinyl enthusiast Rob Penfold, who owns over 1,000 vinyl records.
That experience he refers to is the tactile experience of taking a record out of the jacket, putting it on the turntable, putting the needle down and getting up to flip the record over. He said he is more invested and immersed when listening to vinyl records.
“Vinyl just sounds better,” said Penfold.
To make money through streaming services like Spotify, artists have to have a million streams of their song to make USD$4,000 according to Music Gateway and Wall Communications Inc.
Another older music technology are CDs, but in 2020, for the first time in 34 years, revenue from vinyl record sales surpassed CDs. Vinyl sold $619.6 million in revenue while CDs sold $483.3 million in the U.S. according to RIAA’s year-end report.
Penfold was around when there was a shift from vinyls to CDs in the late 1980s. This new format of music had portability with Discman portable CD players which vinyl record players didn't have.
“There is sort of a retro appeal to it. Things that are vintage tend to be attractive and people tend to think of vinyl as something from when their parents were younger,” said Penfold.
He first got into record collecting when he was a teenager because his father had a big record collection. He started with Beatles records, he has all of the original first Canadian pressings of their records from the 1960s.
Music from the pre-digital era was recorded in the 1960s on four track and eight track tape.
“When you listen to a vinyl record of something that was recorded on analog tape you’re listening to the exact audio transfer of how that material was recorded,” said Penfold.“Where if you were listening to something that was recorded digitally and then it's manufactured on vinyl.”
“While it still sounds good there is a little something lost in the translation there and then even more lost in the translation if you’re just listening to it digitally and the digital signal is the computer’s approximation of what it’s hearing.”
Bryan Munn owns Royal Cat Records with his wife Kara on Macdonell Street. They opened the record store six years ago and said sales rose during the pandemic.
“People are looking for a different experience with their music then they’ve had maybe over the last decade or so,” said Munn.
He said being able to have a record in your hand, the album art and the liner notes which is the basic information of the recording and listening to the album front to back are all factors of different listening experience compared to radio or streaming.
“We meet new customers every day who are just starting their collections and some of them are older customers who are maybe re-buying their vinyl collection for the second or third time,” said Munn.
“We’re seeing a lot of very young people coming in and just buying a turntable. Whether it’s out of novelty or a true passion for music they want to start accumulating actual records.”
Munn said many of his jobs have been within the vintage market, selling antiques and vintage clothing.
“At a certain point I noticed that I was selling more records than almost anything else and I never thought I would be able to own a record store.”
Munn said because of the popularity of vinyl and a lack of a manufacturing base for it, many of the pressing plants went out of business over 20 years ago. He said there is a backlog of vinyl record pressings. Young people in bands who want to press their album on vinyl are last in line when artists like Adele are far ahead of them.
He said some smaller bands are resorting to other older formats like cassettes while they wait for their records to be pressed on vinyl.
