I’ll admit, i’m an addict. I collect records insatiably, often with little regard for my bank account, and little regard for logic. If i already have a song legally downloaded, or on a cd, i will still go out and buy the vinyl if at all possible.
at estimate i have around 1000 vinyl / vinii?!?
Just for a frame of reference, a new 12″ single, with 1-3 songs will cost around $20, and a new 7″ single will cost around 12-16 dollars. Albums retail for around $30-40. Second hand vinyl varies tremendously, but albums usually cost around half the original price.
So why is it that i am so ready to part with my money for music?
“The buying is what counts, which is one reason why the record buyer is insatiable. The desire to buy does not always co-incide with the desire to hear music…a record is tangiable, like money.” – Evan Eisenberg, ‘Music Becomes a Thing’, 1987
Whilst music formats come and go, and whilst there are many other formats that are both commodified and collected, vinyl has an unbreakable grip on the balls of the collector. I want to begin to explain why, with a particular focus on 45rpm records (7inch singles).
Prior to RCA’s invention of the 7″ single in 1949, music was pressed on brittle shellac 78’s. These were heavy, fragile disks which required a turntable motor to spin at 78rpm.
Celebrating the notion of carefree, high school bobby soxers (whose only concern in life was to have a good time and dance), they began to promote a new social type they dubbed…’teenagers.’ Like bobby soxers, teenagers were tied to the new high school world of dating, driving, music, and enjoyment. The concept was spreading rapidly, particularly as a marketing tool. – (Palladino, 1996, p. 52)”
The rise of the 7″ co-incides with the rise of the ‘teenager’, as a distinct marketing group in postwar America. The upwardly mobile youth, with leisure time and disposable income were quick to grab onto the new format, which increasily catered to their musical tastes (in particular, ‘pop’ music, rock and roll).
As well as catering to music genres, the 7″ also shaped them. Time constraints of around 3 mins per side of a 7″ were essential in creating a standard generic length for a pop single, a legacy which continues until this day.
The 7″ single had the advantage of being small, flexible, cheaper to produce, lightweight and incredibly portable. Record players for the first time were marketed as highly portable, to be used outside the house. This was an interesting development as prior to this players were generally as impressive and cumbersome as possible, designed as peices of furniture made to blend into the modern home.
This was the birth of music portability, something which has been developed extensively with the ipod and walkman generations. The 1950’s in particular saw a huge number of portable, battery powered players hit the market, including Fisher Price and ‘Smurf’ players. This difference in portability is intially what bifurcated the pop culture format and equipment from the ‘high’ adult culture of the 12″ and home stereo.
Numerous historians of the US sound recording industry have noted that the post-war period saw the rise of what Philip Ennis calls ‘a strategy of age stratification’ within the white mainstream. This involved differentiating market segments by age, with teenagers and adults as the basic constituencies. Ennis argues that, in the early 1950s, the album and singles markets ‘diverged’ and two different ‘exploitation systems’ emerged, radio and jukeboxes for teen-oriented singles, and store display and print advertising for adult-oriented albums. - Spencer Drate, ‘45 Rpm’: Cover art
What is important to note is that the 7″ single, which was the birth of ‘disposable’ music, has slowly worked it was into a ‘high’ culture position. Original pressings of rare collectable tunes fetch exorbitant prices: northern soul vinyl can fetch well over $5000.
So why fetish the 7″?
-Because it was cheaper to produce, smaller labels could release vinyl: possiblity for rarity
-Cost allowed experimentation: skit records, instruction records (even toy instructions)
-Many 7’s contain alternate takes or instrumentals that were not released on album formats. This trend continues, with bootleg labels, mashups etc. still being produced and released on 7″.
-Free ‘promo’ records in magazines, picture postcards, stories. The 7″ was often used as a short-press promotional tool, so copies are scarce. These promos were distributed to radio stations and dj’s in order to generate attention for an album.
-Because records were treated as disposable, finding copies, especially ones in good condition, was difficult
-A physical music collection can be seen as cultural capital:
Cultural capital can be objectified or embodied. Just as books and paintings display cultural capital in the family home, so sub cultural capital is objectified in the form of record collections.” (Shank, Bennett & Toynbee, 2005)
Collector’s mythologize vinyl as a format that is somehow unrelated to the mass music machines of today, which, whilst entirely untrue, makes vinyl seem ‘free’ and authentic. Vinyl is a physical medium, an analog, rather than a digital format. And as such, it degrades, ages, wears and is imperfect. Many vinyls have defects, but it is almost a point of affection, like one grows to love the mole of a beautiful actor. It is a point of indivuality.
Shuffle, Fracture & Time:
Records created the notion that you could program your own listening: the autonomous listener. Rather than be pinned to what the radio dj was playing, you could play your own records, create your own collection. (Highly relevant to the Ipod generation).
“Where radio unites, records fracture. They are well suited to a society where everyone is off pursuing his own dream.” - Evan Eisenberg, ‘Music Becomes a Thing’, 1987
Recorded music also fractured time: a specific moment (iterally a live music recording, or what the recording become associated with) could be kept and listened to years later. How many movies show the reminiscing old man digging out his favourite song? But i think the format affects this. There is something human about the way a record ages with you, unlike the ‘picture of dorian gray’ digital file, to which time is infinite.
“Man uses the music itself to slip inside time and undermine it” – Evan Eisenberg, ‘Music Becomes a Thing’, 1987
