The CD revival is real
“Spotify is disgusting,” says Manuel Sanz, flipping through the CD racks at Reckless Records, the second-hand music shop that’s been an institution in London’s Soho since 1984. “If there’s a band I like, I buy the product.”
This morning, Sanz and his 12-year-old daughter are shopping for American punk CDs, specifically anything by the North Carolina group Polvo.
What happened to the vinyl revival? Wasn’t that all the rage?
“Vinyl is fine,” he says. “But I still have my CD collection from the 1990s. My player’s bust — you have to push the drawer closed — but it’s the easiest way to listen to stuff.”
Shop assistant Connor Winyard says Sanz is far from alone.
“When I first started working here, two years ago, it was 80-20 [per cent] vinyl-CDs,” he says. “Now it’s 50-50. I’ve been surprised.”
Winyard cites a few reasons. Chiefly, price. Vinyl might have spun its way back from the grave — more than 41 million EPs and LPs were sold in America last year, a 45-fold increase since 2006, the year given for vinyl’s comeback — but it came at a cost. To the customer. It didn’t take long for record companies to get back to their old premium-charging ways. Arctic Monkeys’ recent album The Car costs £28 on vinyl on Amazon. The “Lavender Edition” of Taylor Swift’s Midnights will set you back £35. And that’s before you get into the silly money charged for “heavyweight” vinyl repressings of classic rock — The Beatles’ The Singles Collection, for example, at £158. It’s not just the good stuff. Today there apparently exists a market for an 180-gram, coloured-vinyl edition of Ace of Base’s 1993 best-of, All That She Wants, to someone willing to pay £84.95 for it.
“You can pick up almost anything on CD for £4 or £5,” says Winyard. “People buying albums to play in the car is another reason.”
The much-trumpeted “warmer”, superior sound of vinyl doesn’t always hold sway.
“We don’t really hear our customers saying that,” says Winyard. “Maybe occasionally.”
It’s a similar story over at Rough Trade Soho, were we find a customer called Richard going through the jazz CDs.
“I’m looking for Donald Byrd,” he says. “I’ve got a list. If I can’t find it on vinyl I’ll get it on CD. Music is music. I don’t care how I listen to it. But I still collect it.”
Citing a digital backlash, the media has made the case for the revival of almost any analogue delivery system you care to mention — from shops dedicated solely to selling VHS cassettes, to masochists who swear by typewriters — but the CD resurgence is surprising for a few reasons.
One, the CD never really lost its sheen of Brothers In Arms-adjacent naffness, as lampooned by Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. Two, ev
