(Nielsen Music, 2018). While physical sales are dropping relative to streaming, down to 10% of total
industry revenue, vinyl sales are climbing while CDs and downloads are plummeting (King, 2018).
What’s more, these rosy sales figures are only for new records; secondhand sales aren’t tracked by the
industry, yet markets in used vinyl are thriving online and in record stores, as well as in thrift shops, flea
markets, and the like. Many chain stores have begun stocking records again, not only those with
electronics and media departments like Best Buy and Target but also places like Barnes and Noble and
evenWhole Foods. In 2014, Urban Outfitters sold over 8% of all new vinyl in the United States, trailing
only Amazon (Billboard Staff, 2015). However, independent merchants sell over two-thirds of new
records as well as virtually all usedrecords.In the Bay Area, home to infamously high real estate prices,
the past 5 years have seen more record stores open than close (California Association of Realtors,
2018). Suffice it to say that the Internet did not kill the record store as a local, independent cultural
institution any more than the CD or any of its digital descendants extinguished vinyl.
No doubt, countless record stores have been shuttered as distributers, retailers, and collectors
move their business online, but at the same time many savvy proprietors use online sales to
subsidize their brick-and-mortar shops as independent venues for culture and community as well as
commerce. In fact, it has become a successful strategy for new record stores to establish their brand
online and then open a shop once sales reach a consistent level that can sustain the added costs. In
Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I live and work respectively, the two shops
moving the highest volume of records both fit this description. They each continue to generate
more revenue online than from store sales; meanwhile, they also host parties DJ’d by owners,
employees, and regular customers, as well as free in-store performances by local and touring
bands, not to mention the hanging out that has always animated record store culture. (In addition to
the visibility and prestige that comes with a downtown address or otherwise desirable location, for
merchants of bulky goods like records, a shop also functions as valuable storage capacity, even if
the majority of sales occur online.)
Vinyl’s resiliency is not simply a case of weathering one digital storm after another; rather, each
new format from 8-tracks to mp3s has recast records in new light as well as shadows. The latest
dominant mode of music consumption, streaming, has largely cannibalized other digital formats:
downloads and CDs sales have plummeted alongside the ascent of streaming, while for 5 years
running revenue from streaming and vinyl have climbed at virtually the same rate (RIAA, 2018;
see Figure 1). In 2017, sales of physical formats surpassed downloads (Sanchez, 2018). Despite the
mp3’s recent hold on the popular (and scholarly, e.g. Sterne, 2012) imagination, revenue from
downloads only topped physical sales for about 5 years. And despite the growth in physical sales
overall, CD sales continue to plummet. Some chain stores like Target and Best Buy have cut back
on ordering new CDs or stopped stocking them entirely, while both chains have resumed selling
not only records but record players. In a June 2018 Rolling Stone article titled ‘The End of Owning
Music: How CDs and Downloads Died’, Jack White triumphantly predicted that ‘the next decade is
going to be streaming plus vinyl. Streaming in the car and kitchen, vinyl in the living room and the
den. Those will be the two formats. And I feel really good about that’ (Knopper, 2018). The former
White Stripes front man founded the music label Third Man Records, which recently opened its
own record pressing plant. For the past decade, White has been vinyl’s most prominent champion,
singing the format’s praises while plugging his own releases on outlets like The Tonight Show.
(Thanks in no small part to White’s popularity and mainstream appearances, it is again standard
practice for talk show hosts to hold up a record, rather than a CD, while plugging a guest’s product.
Even comedians such as Wyatt Cenac have embraced vinyl for their albums.
3
) Streaming is still a
very young format and one that major labels have helped cultivate for many reasons, despite losing
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