Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record Richard Osborne VINYL: A HISTORY OF THE ANALOGUE RECORD For Maria Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record RICHARD OSBORNE Middlesex University, UK © Richard Osborne 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Richard Osborne has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street Union Road Suite 3–1 Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-3818 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Osborne, Richard. Vinyl : a history of the analogue record. — (Ashgate popular and folk music series) 1. Sound—Recording and reproducing—Equipment and supplies—History. 2. Sound—Recording and reproducing—Equipment and supplies—Materials. 3. Sound recordings—History. I. Title II. Series 781.4’9’09–dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Osborne, Richard, 1967– Vinyl : a history of the analogue record / by Richard Osborne. p. cm. — (Ashgate popular and folk music series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-4027-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4094-4028-4 (ebook) 1. Sound recordings—History. 2. Sound recording industry—History. I. Title. ML3790.O825 2013 384—dc23 2012021796 ISBN 9781409440277 (hbk) ISBN 9781409440284 (ebk – PDF) ISBN 9781409472049 (ebk – ePUB) V Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, UK. Contents General Editor’s Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1 The Groove 7 2 The Disc 27 3 The Label 45 4 Vinyl 67 5 The LP 87 6 The 45 117 7 The B-Side and the 12″ Single 143 8 The Sleeve 161 Conclusion 183 Bibliography 187 Index 205 This page has been left blank intentionally General Editor’s Preface The upheaval that occurred in musicology during the last two decades of the twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study of popular music alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models. A relativistic outlook has replaced the universal perspective of modernism (the international ambitions of the 12-note style); the grand narrative of the evolution and dissolution of tonality has been challenged, and emphasis has shifted to cultural context, reception and subject position. Together, these have conspired to eat away at the status of canonical composers and categories of high and low in music. A need has arisen, also, to recognize and address the emergence of crossovers, mixed and new genres, to engage in debates concerning the vexed problem of what constitutes authenticity in music and to offer a critique of musical practice as the product of free, individual expression. Popular musicology is now a vital and exciting area of scholarship, and the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series presents some of the best research in the field. Authors are concerned with locating musical practices, values and meanings in cultural context, and may draw upon methodologies and theories developed in cultural studies, semiotics, poststructuralism, psychology and sociology. The series focuses on popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is designed to embrace the world’s popular musics from Acid Jazz to Zydeco, whether high tech or low tech, commercial or non-commercial, contemporary or traditional. Professor Derek B. Scott, Professor of Critical Musicology, University of Leeds, UK This page has been left blank intentionally Acknowledgements Many thanks to Steven Connor, Simon Frith, Dave Laing, Marybeth Hamilton, Keir Keightley and Leo Whetter who have all provided valuable feedback on the whole or part of this work. A different version of the chapter on the label was first published as ‘De l’étiquette au label’ in Réseaux. It next appeared as ‘The Record and Its Label: Identifying, Marketing, Dividing, Collecting’ in Popular Music History. This page has been left blank intentionally Introduction Mojo, one of Britain’s biggest-selling music magazines, decided that 2011’s trend of the year was ‘the vinyl revival’ (Aston and Eccleston 2012: 50). To start 2012 the BBC radio station 6 Music declared that its New Year’s Day would be ‘all vinyl’ (‘Vinyl Set to Make Radio Comeback for One Day Only’ 2011). Mojo and 6 Music were responding to an upturn in the sound carrier’s fortunes. Although vinyl lost its status as Britain’s leading albums format as long ago as 1985 and thus looked set for a permanent decline, sales of vinyl LPs rose year on year by 43.7 per cent in 2011.1 In the US the success of the format was better still: sales of vinyl LPs increased by over 1 million in the same year (Halliday 2012). And yet this wasn’t the first of vinyl’s revivals. British sales of 45 rpm, 7″ singles rose by 260 per cent between 2003 and 2006, and a more prolonged growth period was experienced by the 12″ single: here the British market produced more records in 2002 than it did in 1996. Crucial to vinyl’s successes is the fact that both old and new repertoire is issued on this format. Equally important is the fact that it is not just people who grew up with vinyl who are buying these records. Although a report issued in 2008 claimed that one in five 18-to-24-year-olds has no knowledge of analogue record players, there are many among this age group who are buying vinyl discs (‘Fantastic Gadgets of the Future’ 2008). According to HMV, Britain’s last high- street record store chain, ‘Teenagers and students’ constituted the ‘main market’ for vinyl singles during the 2000s (Tomkins 2008). In addition, it has been reported that the market for turntables is ‘in rude health’ (Pell 2007), reflected by the fact that John Lewis began re-stocking this product in 2011. There are different ways of looking at these vinyl returns. On the one hand, they are remarkable. There have been many other sound recording formats – cylinders, shellac discs, tape cassettes, compact discs, mini discs, and so on – but vinyl is alone in reversing sales trends in this manner. On the other hand, it should be noted that sales of the format are minor. In 2006 combined sales of 7″ and 12″ singles accounted for just 3.4 per cent of the UK singles market, and in 2011 vinyl LPs made up only 0.3 per cent of British album sales. But then again, it is arguable that these lowly sales figures only render vinyl’s survival more impressive. Vinyl receives attention out of all proportion to its market performance. In the twenty-first century it has been the subject of numerous articles in the music press and daily newspapers, including editorials in Music Week and the Guardian 1 Unless otherwise stated, all figures for music sales, trade deliveries and the price of recordings within the UK are derived from British Phonographic Industry statistics (<http:// www.bpi.co.uk/>). 2 VINYL: A HISTORY OF THE ANALOGUE RECORD (Talbot 2007: 20; ‘Vinyl Solution’ 2005; ‘In Praise Of … Vinyl Records’ 2007). It has been the common subject of questionnaires: ‘which format do you prefer: vinyl, CD or MP3?’, now often reduced to just ‘vinyl or MP3?’ (Hanman 2006; Roberts, J. 2008: 5). For many it is vinyl rather than the CD that has been more effective at offering an alternative and a complement to the digital download. Adam Woods of Music Week has stated, ‘it is easy to believe that the format could thrive even as the CD begins to lose ground to the Internet’ (2004: 15). The Financial Times has commented that ‘the 7 in single is fast becoming the last tangible format for the single release’ (Tomkins 2008). A similar view can even be heard at major record companies. Lyor Cohen, the CEO of Recorded Music for the Warner Music Group, stated in 2011 that ‘vinyl will definitely outlast CDs because of the resonance, the sound; the quality is closest to the way the artist wants you to hear it’ (Lindvall 2011). The digital file is the first incorporeal recording format; it receives its representation by means of its player or the interface on a computer screen. There remains a need to visualize individual songs or album collections. Here it is the vinyl record that has been turned to. While the CD is routinely ignored, vinyl imagery has proliferated. This tendency can be seen in advertising (T-Mobile, Sky and Yellow Pages have each used vinyl in TV commercials since 2005) and it can be seen in fine art (in 2010 Duke University gathered artistic responses to the format in the exhibition The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl). Musicians, too, are more likely to sing about vinyl than they are about the CD (in recent years it has been referenced by Corinne Bailey Rae in ‘Put Your Records On’ and Keane in ‘Perfect Symmetry’). In addition, digital technologies have attempted to mimic vinyl. In 2009 FreeStyleGames released the game DJ Hero, which features a digital reproduction of a vinyl record’s grooves. Playlist Player launched a hi-fi system in 2010 that plays MP3s as though they are vinyl discs: its plan is to turn ‘digital playlists into physical objects that you can touch, treasure, drop, lose or spill beer on’ (<http:// www.martinskelly.co.uk/PlaylistPlayer>). In 2011 the AirVinyl app was made available for Apple’s iPad, a product that aims to ‘recreate the ambience, warmth and experience of vinyl recordings, transforming your MP3 and digital collection into your record collection bringing back all the warmth of analogue harmonics’ (<http://www.itunes.apple.com/>).