It’s 2009, and in Broad Street Jazz record shop in Bath there is a section dedicated to new jazz vinyl long playing records. There is another section with second-hand vinyl, but there are fewer sales from that rack and so Jon Turner, the owner of the shop, is thinking of scrapping it and expanding the new vinyl selection.
There is little likelihood of new shellac 78 rpm records returning, nor are we likely to see the comeback of pre-recorded jazz tapes. The rumour is that CDs may have had their day and that the future lies in downloading music as mp3 files to ipods or computer hard drives, or simply to use providers like Spotify where you can access the music you want at anytime without owning it at all. No need any more for physical music carriers, just music on demand - but here in Broad Street Jazz is Vinyl - still new, still spinning and still selling.
Jon’s shop currently carries around 30 – 40 vinyl titles. Many are jazz classics from Miles
Davis, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday and other key musicians, and prices vary from around £13.99 to over £20.00.
So who buys them? Mostly those people who believe that some of the warmth, texture and sound detail of recordings are lost when they are ‘digitalised’ and compressed to mp3 or other formats. Jon has customers who have returned to buying record decks and sound systems so they can capture the essence of the original recordings. They are primarily people who take time out to sit and listen to music and who have not just settled for the convenience of slapping on a CD or plugging in an ipod on the move. (Some of course do both).
It seems that there are a number of local people who have gone down this route, but there are also visitors to Bath who visit the shop and take away the vinyl rather than buy CDs. A generalised profile seems to be professional people aged between 30 and 55 with a reasonable income, who have invested in good quality hi-fi and want good quality records to play on it. Many return to the shop knowing that Jon holds a changing selection of LPs
Most of the vinyl is produced on the Continent – Germany, Spain - although some comes from the United States. Of course, the economic climate has seen prices of imports rise a little. The quality of the vinyl itself can also vary with some records produced on 180 gram vinyl, others on cheaper 140 gram material. There can also be a variation depending upon whether the transfer to vinyl has been made from original masters or from other vinyl – but that can be the same for any other recording format. Vinyl records are not made in huge quantities, and so inevitably the prices can be higher than CDs or downloads.
However, it is interesting that recently some recording companies, such as ECM, have simultaneously released a few albums on vinyl as well as CD and downloads.
The situation is not a new phenomenon. In 2002, the Telegraph newspaper reported a 
comeback of vinyl sales. An article by Chris Hastings noted that two million albums and eight million singles (not specifically jazz) had been sold in 2001 almost doubling the figures for 1996. The number of sales were in excess of those for tapes and MiniDiscs.
Ian Dewhurst, the head of Simply Vinyl, the country’s largest manufacturer and distributor of vinyl records at the time, said: “The vinyl we sell is massively superior to that which you would have found in a shop in the 1970s. Towards the end of its last life, the stuff being put out by record companies was of very poor quality. They were like Frisbees. Vinyl is the best way of showing your appreciation for music. If you want instant coffee, buy a CD; if you want fine wine, by an LP”.
In 2006, Thomas Green for the Telegraph was making a similar case for vinyl with predominantly independent labels fuelling the boom. The boom in single sales was nevertheless a ‘drop in the ocean’ compared with 1979, when single sales in Britain peaked at 89 million. Even so, the article pointed out that the CD single faced being phased out the following year.
The 2006 article saw the ‘saviours’ of vinyl being DJs who still preferred to operate with two turntables and a collection of records, and the company Simply Vinyl mentioned above which was still producing records. Once again the sound quality too was a fundamental argument in favour of the record: “A lot of kids are used to the crap sounds of mp3s,” said Khalid Mallassi from Catskills Records. “They’re normally 160kpbs (the quantity of memory per second) so the quality’s rubbish. As soon as they hear something with the warmth of vinyl, they tend to pick up on it because it sounds so much better.”
The article also pointed to the fact that a new generation of cutting engineers had revitalised the industry, and that pressing plants in England, Holland and Prague had been taken over by experienced, caring people who had previously managed the plants when they were owned by larger companies. Numaan Ahmed of the company GZ Media in Lodenice, just outside Prague, said: "The records can be cut to whatever size and colour is required. Twelve-inches can be anywhere between 140g and 220g.”
In 2008, the Times newspaper took up the theme with Tower Records reporting a 36% increase in sales of LPs. The sound quality and the more interesting packaging were again given as reasons. Clive Branagan from Tower Records in Dublin said: “It takes more of an effort to listen to a record – you have to sit down and play the thing properly from start to finish whereas a lot of people growing up now with mp3s listen to one track more than the album itself.” Dave Kennedy from Road records, also in Dublin, added: “We were getting people saying ‘All I want to do is go home in the evening, listen to a record and relax, but I’ve got to turn on my computer and find the files.’ Whereas you put on a record, sit down and read the paper.”
Last, but by no means least, there are the LP album sleeves – some great artwork and a good helping of detailed information that you can sit and read without a magnifying glass.
It will be interesting to see whether and how the sale of vinyl and CDs survives the current sacrifice of record shops to the economic climate. We must treasure the independent 
record shops that we still have.
Oh, and if you would like to know how a vinyl record is made, you will find an interesting video on YouTube: Part One : Part Two.
© Sandy Brown Jazz July 2009