Long silenced, vinyl turns up the volume

VINYL took a thrashing from the emergence of CDs, then from the music download trend and now streaming has become a dominant force in the music industry.

However, this vintage object par excellence has been experiencing a spectacular renaissance in recent years. A phenomenon fueled by some superstars like Taylor Swift.

Fans of the American singer have helped make her tenth album, "Midnights," the best-selling vinyl album in the UK this century, according to the Guardian, which relies on data from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).

Some 80,000 vinyl copies of the opus have already been sold since its release on October 21. A figure that shows to what extent the vinyl LP is in full resurgence, thanks to a new generation of young collectors.

Harry Styles, Arctic Monkeys and Liam Gallagher are also among the top-selling vinyl artists in the UK over the past 12 months.

Along with Taylor Swift, they have helped boost LP sales for the 15th consecutive year. The ERA estimates that they should reach nearly 5.5 million copies, something that hasn't happened since 1990.

"It's a watershed moment for the entire music industry," Kim Bayley, the trade association's chief executive, told the Guardian.

"After the CD came along and pretty much wiped out the vinyl business, few of us would have believed a renaissance like this was possible."

In comparison, CD sales have been declining since 2000, when 2.45 billion CDs were sold worldwide. This format has been gradually abandoned by music lovers with the advent of dematerialized music.

Streaming technology has become the main mode of music consumption and represents 65% of the turnover of recorded music, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

The nostalgic lure

Paradoxically, digital technology has revived the vinyl market by transforming it into a beautiful object with a rich, 'warm' sound, of a much higher quality than that of music streaming platforms. As a result, the famous black discs are being snapped up by connoisseurs who knew the LPs and 45s in their childhood, as well as by younger music fans.

The younger age of LP buyers is reflected in the ERA figures: eight of the top ten vinyl sales of 2022 are new albums released in the last 12 months, not old ones, according to the Guardian.

But should we be worried that this renewed taste for vinyl won't last? Signs suggest that this trend is here to stay. The Covid-19 crisis and the temporary suspension of concerts and music festivals resulted in a profound change in music fans' consumption habits.

Many are tempted by the comforting nostalgia of the LP and even the audio cassette. Even more vintage and less expensive than vinyl, the "K7" seems to be making a comeback in the United States and the United Kingdom. Taylor Swift has understood this and offers her album "Midnights" in this format.