Vinyl perfect storm

Interesting piece in the Observer from a week or two back looking at the plight of record labels and producers in the UK after Brexit and the pandemic where the effects of those two factors as well as an increasing shortage of supply of vinyl – due to the remarkable rise in that format’s popularity in recent years has left them unable to produce records. There’s more again in terms of problems:

But there is also a lack of PVC after a storm in February halted Texan petrochemical plants, and a fire in 2020 at a lacquer plant in California left only one factory in Japan making the master discs that records are cut from.

A delay for a new Taylor Swift LP is an inconvenience but for labels such as Kniteforce, it is catastrophic. “Because of the vinyl resurgence, the big artists I work with can afford to take time off in their life to make the music because it’s actually worth it,” Howell said.

And keep in mind that while a lot of this is a labour of love, it’s still labour. And the returns while not great, and look at the following with regard to streaming – something that reinforces in me the conviction that that is an abysmal way to listen to music – the least one would hope is that artists would gain something.

“With digital, there’s so little money in it that it’s just not worth doing.” Although Universal Music floated a fortnight ago on a valuation of £38bn based on expectations that streaming will continue to revive the music industry, the money from digital production is not trickling down to artists.

A typical artist needs about 300 streams to make $1 on Spotify (at $0.003 per stream), so those outside the mainstream rely on other income.

That’s genuinely shocking. The implications being:

“I don’t work with a single artist that’s money motivated,” Howell said. “But if you’ve got children and a job and a mortgage, you can’t justify spending three weeks working on a new album if you’re gonna make £50 – whereas the vinyl market will make them £5,000. I’ve been building bit by bit, and I’ve been able to give them an advance.

By the way, and I’m not hugely fond of vinyl myself, I dislike the framing in the piece that there’s nothing between vinyl and streaming. There are and remain download sites, there’s bandcamp which is particularly good, and there’s still CDs being produced. In other words if people value music, and musicians, then there’s lots of ways to ensure that some monies go towards them. 

 

Meanwhile got to applaud the sense of innovation:

Cannon is also capitalising on the vintage hardware and computers such as the Amiga and Atari that he uses to make music.

“People like records as a tangible piece of art,” he said, “especially in the underground scene. The last one I did comes with a floppy disk with samples that you can load on to an Amiga.”

Just like Pete Shelley did way back when with XL1 in 1983 which had a program for the ZX Spectrum and which allowed those who used it to combine graphics and lyrics and then show them along with the music.  That album also has a fantastic proto-techno piece… Many A Time (c.3.38 minutes in and on).