If music be the food of love, let’s eat it.
Music: What Are You Listening To?
- This topic has 1,001 replies, 21 voices, and was last updated 11 months, 1 week ago by
.
Author
-
-
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
I can back up my opinion with facts:
1. Their music is sampled – totally fake. It’d done by machines cause they don’t make mistakes.
2. They don’t have no lyrics, their message is nil.
3. Whatever they tell ya, it’s mentally crap.Have some pity for the majority of people that enjoy their music!!
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
Fair points, but it’s not like it’s intended for sober listening!
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
This is a mix of shoegaze and electronica and somehow sounds like the opening to an anime show.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
In case anybody is interested, it’s another Bandcamp Friday.
https://isitbandcampfriday.com/
This is the day when music selling platform Bandcamp (already the best-paying way for independent artists to sell their music, according to everyone) waives their fees and give 100% of profits to the artists.
If there’s that new band you’ve been meaning to check out but never got round to it, today’s the day to do it.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
This works surprisingly well:
If @Nirvana released Smells Like Teen Spirit in the 80s 💥
Mashed with @softcellhq x pic.twitter.com/TruDdD5rPf
— DECO (@decobanduk) September 1, 2022
4 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
I’m 50 years old next year and I was an advert crop up on social media for Harry Styles supported by Wet Leg in the Principality Stadium in Cardiff and really wanted to go.
In these days of very fragmented music platforms it’s hard to get an entry into point into new stuff unless you are very into a single genre, which I’m not, all my favourite artists cross genres all the time and I tend to like slightly leftfield pop but not the hyper commercial stuff with a hivemind of 27 Swedish songwriters.
I found Radio 6 Music doing a summary of the Mercury Music prize (which is notoriously eclectic) and there was so much good stuff nominated. The only singer I’d listened to a lot before was Gwenno (who only sings now in Welsh and Cornish) but it introduced me to half a dozen artists I now follow.
5 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
A few years ago, I started listening to an indie station on satellite radio as I really wanted to hear some new and different music that wasn’t Top 40 pap. I have found a lot of music I truly enjoy that I would not have discovered before. Last year, Chaise Longue from Wet Leg and and was immediately taken with it. I really enjoy their music.
That is similar to my experience back in the day. REM was big in college radio and in the early 90s was the MTV show “120 Minutes” with all these indie bands (some British) and it was “alternative”, not top 40, and edgy. Then from that genre of music came Nirvana and their video and sound ended the Hair band era and Nirvana and Pearl Jam were like the new mainstream.
30 years ago though. That era’s nostalgia will come back, and I am patient. I still check out indie stations and bands.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
This is a fun article:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/oct/06/the-100-greatest-bbc-music-performances-ranked
The BBC is 100 years old (from its radio beginnings in 1922, the TV started in 1936 and then went on hiatus during the war). So this is a summary of the best exclusive live* performances they’ve shown over the years and Youtube links to them all. Nobody is going to agree with the order, I certainly don’t, so that’s not important but there’s every genre of music there dating from the early 60s to today. They have had exclusive Glastonbury coverage for many years so I guess technically they could add a lot of great stuff there but I get not including that.
Number 4 has a rather obscure show nobody remembers but the performance from poor Ian Curtis of Joy Division is probably the most intense thing you’ll ever see. His body jerking and eyes set back in his head, it gets repeated a lot.
* a few are mimed performances on Top of the Pops but are notable for more weird entertaining reasons. I remember watching that TOTP with New Order (no.69) and having several double takes that for some reason the Hoff in full Baywatch setup appeared. Also the Nirvana one (no. 11) where they took the piss out of playing with a backing track and Cobain sings it in a weird Morrissey voice, I always likes that TOTP always showed those however silly they got – despite pretending it was, it wasn’t aired live.
4 users thanked author for this post.
-
I’m not going to quibble, because it’s a bold and probably fair selection even though most of my favourites aren’t there
The BBC In Concert (radio) series that ran in the late 60s/early 70s was a tremendous live showcase that I don’t think has an equivalent today. Every big name was on it, and you could probably fill a top 100 just with those broadcasts. Many bands have subsequently acquired the rights to their In Concert sets and issued them on disc. Naturally I would recommend the Deep Purple sets from 70 and 72, but possibly even more than that I would recommend tracking down the Led Zeppelin set from 1971. It would have been the first time most people in the UK heard any material from the fourth album. as you can tell when Plant introduces a new song called Stairway to Heaven and the audience gives a smattering of polite applause. I think this was probably the first time I ever heard Led Zeppelin (on a Radio 1 repeat of the programme in the 80s), and the performance blew my mind. The studio albums were a bit of a let down after that.
-
On the Top of the Pops miming thing: it wasn’t necessarily miming to the studio track. I don’t know how widespread the practice was, but in at least some cases a band would go into the studio in the afternoon, record a live (audio) performance, and then mime to that.
You can see it in this video, Deep Purple from 1970. The recording is clearly not the studio version of the song (trust me on that
), it’s a completely new live performance. But the band is not playing it live on film — watch Ritchie’s fingers, and he’s not playing the guitar solo we hear. His problem is that he improvises solos, and can never remember what he’s played. -
On the Top of the Pops miming thing: it wasn’t necessarily miming to the studio track. I don’t know how widespread the practice was, but in at least some cases a band would go into the studio in the afternoon, record a live (audio) performance, and then mime to that.
My brother was in a band that got onto Irish TV about 18 years ago and they were given the option then, no reason to expect it’s gone away.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
From listening to the Chart Music podcast the approach from TOTP has varied a lot over the years of its run. Originally the logistics of setting the sound up for so many bands meant they insisted on miming, some acts would do the Deep Purple approach, then as tech got better they gave the option, at one point in the mid 90s they went the other way and demanded at least live vocals (which with some acts wasn’t always for the best – Dr. Alban managing to rap out of tune was memorable).
By the last decade or so it was left up to the bands how they wanted to do it.
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
The September music round up. Electronica, indie rock, shoegaze, prog and some metal. It’s been another great month.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Depeche Mode have announced a new album and tour and they’re doing one of the big open-air gigs at Malahide Castle next year. There are ads up in town now and it’s just a photo of Dave and Martin and that’s so weird.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
it’s just a photo of Dave and Martin and that’s so weird.
It really is.
The London tickets start at £85 standing before the fees so that’s a no from me.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
it’s just a photo of Dave and Martin and that’s so weird.
It really is.
The London tickets start at £85 standing before the fees so that’s a no from me.
I can probably get a slot volunteering at the bar if I don’t feel like paying the… checks ticketmaster €80 ticket price.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
I can probably get a slot volunteering at the bar if I don’t feel like paying the… checks ticketmaster €80 ticket price.
I’m not sure how things are in Ireland at the moment but there’s no way most people in England have the cash to blow on things like expensive gigs any more. We’re almost £7 a pint for average lager in most pubs at this point :/
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
I don’t think the cost of living crisis is as acute here as it is there, but it’s definitely a concern. No idea how much a pint costs in bars between being a weird hermit and not drinking…
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
Dublin in my experience is pretty bad on the price of a pint, maybe worse than London although not taking into account recent inflation, but aside from that I do think there has been a shift generally in music from making money from recordings to live.
My first single purchase in the early 1980s was 99p, that’s actually more, not adjusted for inflation, than it would cost me today to buy on iTunes or similar offerings. Live events though like gigs or sporting tickets have gone through the roof. Gigs I would have paid a tenner for then are ten times that now.
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
Nine Inch Nails Full Show Cleveland in 4k 9/24/2022
So I guess Reznor and Richard Patrick made up.
Patrick’s on stage at a NIN show and they’re playing Hey Man Nice Shot.
Good on them, doubly on Reznor.edit to add
Nice to hear Heresy, and early in the set.
My negativity just assumes, but there it is.and it had Ministry and Nitzer Ebb
Found an article ‘End of an Era’
https://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/2022/09/nine-inch-nails-marks-end-of-an-era-with-historic-performance.htmlFuck, wish I was there
-
This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by .
-
This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by .
-
This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by .
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by
-
So I guess Reznor and Richard Patrick made up.
Patrick’s on stage at a NIN show and they’re playing Hey Man Nice Shot.
Good on them, doubly on Reznor.Yeah, Trent mentioned Richard Patrick during his speech when NIN were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and they appeared there together a couple of weeks ago during a Q&A with a bunch of current and past members of the band
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
I have exactly one album from that list.
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
I have exactly one album from that list.
Yeah obviously, but within that band which Spice Girl is your favourite?
-
Mel B, of course
5 users thanked author for this post.
-
I have exactly one album from that list.
I have three. Because you are clearly out of touch with mainstream taste, not with it like me.
I am tuned in and switched on.
In short, I am a happening guy.
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
I have two, not so happening but more than Lorcan.
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
I’ve been trying to work out which one Lorcan’s is, and none of them fit what I know of him. Best I can come up with is Scissor Sisters
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
The only one from that list I own is GnR’s Appetite for Destruction, and I dont remember the last time I listened to it.
Edit: unless I listened to it yesterday and the Alzheimers has finally kicked in.
How would I know?1 user thanked author for this post.
-
I’ve been trying to work out which one Lorcan’s is, and none of them fit what I know of him. Best I can come up with is Scissor Sisters
Incorrect! It’s Jagged little Pill.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
The only one from that list I own is GnR’s Appetite for Destruction, and I dont remember the last time I listened to it.
Edit: unless I listened to it yesterday and the Alzheimers has finally kicked in.
How would I know?Do your arms feel tired from playing air guitar for 53 minutes solid? If not, you probably didn’t listen to it yesterday.
5 users thanked author for this post.
-
I’ve been trying to work out which one Lorcan’s is, and none of them fit what I know of him. Best I can come up with is Scissor Sisters
One of mine is Scissor Sisters, the other is Tubular Bells.
Since as the article says high CD sales at the time means there’s a lot of 90s stuff I have absorbed a couple more by osmosis in my college days. Jagged Little Pill and Definitely Maybe were on constant rotation so I know all the tracks on them.
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
Fun Fact: Dido’s brother is known as Rollo professionally and is most known for being the main guy behind the band Faithless although he’s even quite anonymous there, I couldn’t point him out in a police lineup.
He pretty much invented a very ‘hands in the air’ brand of house music around 92/93 that just builds and builds, expanding on the original Chicago house stuff that was moodier and not quite as driven by the adrenaline (or MDMA) rush. Recording under the names Felix and O.T. Quartet (early house guys in the UK all changed their name every record, Norman Cook has charted under 8 different names). With O.T Quartet he even spells out what he is doing with ‘builds like a skyscraper’ to describe the mix.
That synth build is hugely influential on pop music today which both sides of the Atlantic heavily uses house ticks of that period so while barely anyone knows who he is his legacy is actually much bigger than his sister’s who mostly sang pretty middle of the road ballads and one rap crossover with Eminem (which to be fair is a very good song).
4 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
I am tuned in and switched on.
In short, I am a happening guy.
Is that you, AL-X?!
I’m not ashamed to admit I own 9 of the 20 albums on that list — 1, 4, 7, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17 and 20. No regrets, though I only picked up the Keane album (#7) because they were the opening act for a U2 concert I attended.
I should have trademarked that…. Then again, it wasn’t mine to begin with. 🤣
And NO… Not all that all over again! 🤣🤣🤣
I see this article on Nicki Minaj and this back and forth Twitter feud with someone else:
Not that I care for her (defended her husband who r*ped in his teen age years, attacked and tried to pay hush money to the victim… Loves to “differentiate” herself being Carribean from African Americans for all the good that does her), but with regards to the Grammys, she said that she is being put in the pop categories more where the old (ignorant) Grammy voters will have to choose between her and a Harry Styles or an Adele. She implied the Grammys want her to win less.
Remember the Grammys are the ones of Jethro Tul over Metallica fame and let’s not forget MacClemore. 🤣
Fwiw… I can give a huge list of black and BIPOC entertainers and celebs that I can’t stand, but that is another story.
-
41-years ago today Queen released their single 'Under Pressure,' featuring David Bowie (1981) … pic.twitter.com/mJVW72j74C
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) October 26, 2022
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
It’s just occurred to me that I’ve probably never heard the original piano version of that before.
I think Ravel’s orchestral version works much better, to be honest.
And ELP’s version, of course
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
New month, new blog.
We have post rock / goth, electronica, screamo, indie / shoegaze and other stuff. It’s been an incredible month.
-
Always enjoy these monthly write ups.
I heard the Bicep song on the radio earlier in the week. I didn’t recognise who it was so had to Shazam it.
I tried a few tracks on the Bolts album after the mention of Four Tet but it qas a bit too out there for.
I’ve also downloaded the AA Williams and Knifeplay albums for future listening.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Watching these football and baseball games and the crowd sometimes chant the old “7 Nation Army” riff by the White Stripes.
My department’s office/staff base is directly across the centre quadrangle from the music department. I’ve heard that song being played with varying degrees of success by teenagers over the years. It has very much taken the joy out of the song for me.
-
Always enjoy these monthly write ups.
I heard the Bicep song on the radio earlier in the week. I didn’t recognise who it was so had to Shazam it.
I tried a few tracks on the Bolts album after the mention of Four Tet but it qas a bit too out there for.
I’ve also downloaded the AA Williams and Knifeplay albums for future listening.
Thanks for the kind words, it really means a lot to me that anyone reads it. 😄
-
-
Whenever Deep Purple fans discuss setlists, I always say I’d be happy if they left Black Night off for once, they play it every single gig, I’m bored with it, just give it a rest.
As soon as the riff starts in the gig, I’m like WOOOO! YES! BLACK NIGHT! WOOOOOO!
For similar reason, I will never tire of hearing somebody spin something like American Pie. Yes, I’ve heard it a million times, but there’s a reason why these songs are played so often. I still smile every time I hear it.
-
-
-
-
-
I’ve been following a few a few female Scottish artists over the past year or so and through them came across Becca Starr – a Scottish rapper/singer. I’ve really been enjoying her album over the past few days and while I do enjoy the novelty of a Scottish voice rapping I think it’s a genuinely great listen.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Oh! It appears we can embed Spotify albums on the board. Neato!
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Oh I like that, I’ll follow Becca. In a world where most singers centre on some pseudo-American accent I love artists that buck the trend. Be it The Proclaimers or Cerys Matthews, Bjork , Dolores O’Riordan or even Chas and Dave it adds so much.
On a related note, here’s a black guy rapping in Welsh.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
There’s an app that takes your Spotify streams and creates a fake festival bill based on which bands you’ve listened to most. I don’t use Spotify but being a nerd I write down every album I listen to. So I made my own festival poster without needed no fancy app (Well, apart from Excel and Word.)
I’m rather proud of having an almost perfectly gender-balanced* bill. Try finding that at any major festival.
. * Well, possibly short on trans representation, though I don’t actually know for sure.
-
So I just did the app and got this as my festival. I’m sure loads of people will want to come to the… Industrial and J-pop festival.
I do have some trans rep but does it count if they’re a real-world friend of mine?
5 users thanked author for this post.
-
but being a nerd I write down every album I listen to.
You should try Last.fm. It’s a free service and logs your listening. You can get lots of pointless stats about the music you listen to.
Here’s my most listened to bands of the 6 years I’ve been using it.
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
Anyway. New month, new blog post.
We have Korean trad crossed with post rock. Thinking about it, we have a lot of post rock. We have prog metal, some great electronica and a smidge of jazz.
We apologise for the prog and jazz
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
December is a busy auld time when you do music reviews. This is the ep’s and singles of the year.
We have electronica, metal and other odds and sods.
Next up the albums of the year, when I’ve finished writing the bloody thing
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
I’ve taken to watching old TOTP episodes randomly appearing on Youtube.
This 1984 one was amusing as it’s my kind of era when I first got into music but it’s not good at all.
There are 3 ratings.
Decent: Bananarama and Ray Parker Junior.
Absolute genius: Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy.
Shite: Everything else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASI8dvqbg_o
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
I’ve taken to watching old TOTP episodes randomly appearing on Youtube.
This 1984 one was amusing as it’s my kind of era when I first got into music but it’s not good at all.
There are 3 ratings.
Decent: Bananarama and Ray Parker Junior.
Absolute genius: Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy.
Shite: Everything else.
Having watched the episode, I’d put Ultravox and Flying Pickets in the Decent category as well, but yeah, there’s some serious novelty crap going on between Neil and the theme from Auf Wiedersehen, Pet being there.
I did find it amusing that they were using Yellow Pearl by Phil Lynott as the theme at that point, and Slade were on. One of Phil’s mum’s favourite anecdotes about him was that one of Thin Lizzy’s first big gigs was supporting Slade and the crowd hated them, but within a year Lizzy were playing the same venue as the headline act and Slade were the support.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Even though I actually bought that single at the time I am a bit torn on the Flying Pickets because it is a novelty cover of a really great song by Yazoo so it can’t be bad but it is a much worse version.
I agree Ultravox is decent too, I just forgot about it. 😏
I generally love Slade but that ‘My Oh My’ song is a proper annoying dirge.
Yellow Pearl was the theme for 5 years 1981-86. I also found this video of the all their intros from 1964 to today (as the show still comes out twice a year) and it’s quite amusing how unrelated a lot of the opening images were in the late 60s ones. People riding helicopters and cars exploding. In the 70’s it’s just pretty women looking fashionable, by the 80s it has moved to ‘flashy’ computer graphics and get progressively shorter and shorter until it’s just a 10 second sting.
I have to admit the most recent drum and bass influenced version of Whole Lotta Love is probably my favourite.
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
I’ve taken to watching old TOTP episodes randomly appearing on Youtube.
This 1984 one was amusing as it’s my kind of era when I first got into music but it’s not good at all.
There are 3 ratings.
Decent: Bananarama and Ray Parker Junior.
Absolute genius: Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy.
Shite: Everything else.
Are you kidding? Ultravox and Slade! (Though admittedly not the finest offering from either band.) I also liked The Flying Pickets, they had a nive sound and that was a great arrangement.
But… Neil!!!!
I actually bought Neil’s Heavy Concept Album back in the day. It really wasn’t very good.
You might be surprised to find I agree with you, Bronski Beat is the cream of the crop there.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Last night’s gig in York: Mostly Autumn’s home-town Christmas show. Always the highlight of the year, and the official start to my Christmas
This is an older show, but the spirit is the same…
A cover of Fairytale of New York in the encores used the original words. Though a look that passed between the singers after *that* line suggests they intended to change it and forgot!
-
You might be surprised to find I agree with you, Bronski Beat is the cream of the crop there.
Nah, we may have slightly different musical slants but you know what works.
As well as being a banging tune it was also an incredibly fucking brave song and video to make in 1985.
Chart Music’s latest podcast had me enjoying that randomness of TOTP. A 1980 episode presented (for the first time) by Timmy Vance it had a lot of rock for our Tommy. Whitesnake, Saxon and Motorhead, mixed in with The Nolans and Dexy’s at number one.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
My end of year write up. What a great year for music!
-
Tenacious D performing an incredible cover of Wicked Game
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
The Specials, they were special.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
I don’t really care much about the “vinyl revival” but I thought this was an interesting piece about the massive slowdown in its growth in 2022.
(I’ve got the whole thing because it’s on a subscriber exclusive Substack and meh)
A few months ago, I wrote about returning to vinyl after giving up on it 34 years ago.
But I was shocked at what I encountered. Few of the albums I wanted were available in vinyl. Prices were outrageously high. The whole market seemed designed to discourage buyers.
I’d heard so many grand claims for the vinyl resurgence, but the reality was tremendously disappointing. And I was a late adopter—the revival had been going on for a decade, but record labels still didn’t have their act together.
In my case, I ended up buying vinyl albums, but mostly used ones. I simply couldn’t find new pressings of the records I wanted. This was fine for me, but lousy for musicians and labels—who make no money on the sale of a secondhand vinyl album.
I have some experience in these matters—in my alternative career I worked with CEOs chasing after fast growth product categories. I know how they handle these situations. But, really, it’s no mystery. The strategies you use in this kind of business are very straightforward:
(1) You add manufacturing capacity aggressively—to make sure you have enough product to fuel growth.
(2) You bring down costs by getting scale advantages. But this only happens because unit costs drop as volume increases. So the single biggest goal is to grow sales as hard and fast as possible.
(3) You constantly reduce prices to keep demand building. In some cases, you even set prices below your costs to accelerate growth rates. When I originally saw companies do this I was skeptical—how can you make profits if you sell below your costs? But I soon learned that you eventually got a huge payback.
(4) You keep expanding the product line, so that you constantly have something new and exciting to sell to every potential buyer.
(5) You invest in R&D so that you eventually have a next generation technology to keep the growth going over the long haul.
None of this is easy to do, but it isn’t impossible. It just takes investment, focus, management commitment, and hard work. And later you reap the benefits. You turn a small business into a huge one, and enjoy a big payday.
The record labels could have done that with vinyl. It was taking off—unit sales doubled in just 5 years. And these sales were insanely profitable, because much of the demand was for old music. So labels didn’t even have to pay to sign artists, and cover the costs of recording sessions. The music was already there, with the fixed costs amortized long ago.
They just had to press the bloody album and ship it to the store. How hard is that?
But what did the music industry do?
They hate running factories—which is hard work. So they tried to outsource manufacturing instead of building it themselves. Chronic shortages resulted.
They refuse to spend money on R&D, so they stayed with the same vinyl technology from the 1950s. In other words, the record business became the only entertainment industry in the world with no plan for technological innovation. In the year 2023, even bowling alleys, bordellos, and bookies are more tech savvy than the major record labels.
They want easy money, so they kept prices extremely high. That was bizarre because their R&D and catalog acquisition costs were essentially zero, and they could have priced vinyl aggressively. Instead they treated vinyl as a luxury product, even as they dreamed of it also becoming a mass market option. But you can’t do both without a careful market segmentation strategy—which the labels never even started thinking about.
They love hype, so they focused on high visibility vinyl reissues, which look good in press releases, but couldn’t be bothered to make back catalog albums available. After a decade of the vinyl revival, they still hadn’t taken even basic steps in offering a wide product line.
This is a lazy strategy—and the exact opposite of what they should have done. And the results are, of course, predictable.
Here’s what I predicted in my article 11 months ago.
The level of greed is off the charts. Because it’s so hard to make money in music nowadays, the labels have decided to squeeze as much cash as they can from vinyl fans. This is one area where Spotify and Apple don’t call the shots, so why not charge twenty dollars for vinyl? Or maybe thirty dollars is better. Hell, let’s ask for forty, and see who will buy?
In other words, a technology that is 70 years old—and in which labels have invested almost zero additional dollars—is priced as if it’s a hot new innovation requiring billions of dollars in startup capital. This is like taking your old shoes, and trying to sell them for twenty times what you paid for them.
In a market where retro is hot, you might get away with this—at least for a short time. Some of my readers will probably respond: Well, if Taylor Swift fans are willing to pay forty bucks, it’s a perfectly fair price. That may be true, but it’s still a stupid price—because the vinyl revival won’t become a mass market phenomenon at these prices. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years studying the economics of pricing, and will tell you with absolute confidence that what record labels are doing right now will eventually be taught in business schools as a case study in mistaken priorities.
And now all this is starting to happen. Last week Luminate released its end-of-year figures for the music market.
Despite all the hype, vinyl album unit sales only grew 4%. I’ve heard some people praising this in silly news stories about the continued growth in vinyl.
But those numbers are a HUGE disappointment.
Just a year ago, the industry was bragging about a vinyl market that had doubled in size in a single year. In just 12 months, demand had increased from 21.4 to 41.7 million units.
But then in 2022, the growth rate collapsed from 95% to 4%. That’s not a slowdown—that’s slamming on the brakes right before you hit the brick wall.
Check out the trend line—which tells you immediately that the amazing growth spurt of the last few years is now over.
And if it wasn’t for Taylor Swift, the vinyl market would have actually declined in 2022. This one artist did more to support vinyl sales than the much hyped “Record Store Days.”
But here’s an even more ominous sign. Half of vinyl buyers don’t own a record player. They apparently bought the Taylor Swift album as a kind of memorabilia—something a little nicer than a band T-shirt.
This can’t be a good thing for the record business. After all, how many records are you going to buy if you don’t have a turntable? This is like trying to sell Teslas as a status symbol to people who don’t drive.
Maybe some brilliant minds at the major labels are already thinking ahead to the next fad—the supposed cassette tape revival.
But those folks are blowing smoke. Cassette sales are minuscule. Despite all the hype, they are still below a half million units—roughly the streams The Weeknd gets over a weekend.
Here’s the bottom line on album sales in all formats (physical and digital). The tiny growth in vinyl and cassettes isn’t even enough to compensate for the drop in digital album purchases.
On an aggregate level, consumers are simply not buying music. They prefer to stream it for pennies rather than purchase it for dollars.
As these figures make clear, vinyl has stalled out around the size of the moribund compact disk market.
I guess it could be worse—but it couldn’t be much worse. The music industry took its fastest growing segment and killed it through greed and laziness.
If they had followed the standard playbook for growth industries (outlined above), they could have brought vinyl back as a mass market option. They might have easily convinced 40-50 million consumers to buy a dozen vinyl albums per year. That would create a total market more than 10 times as large as the current one.
In that kind of world, musicians would benefit. Record stores would thrive. Fan loyalty would increase. And record labels would have more cash for themselves and a legitimate way of making money that doesn’t rely on Silicon Valley technocrats and hostile streaming platforms.
In short, the culture would be healthier.
Maybe this can still happen. But once you blow an opportunity like this, you rarely get a second chance.
For my part, I have zero confidence in the people who made this mess in the first place. Nothing will get fixed until they’re replaced by visionaries who can actually lead the music business in the right direction.
Sometimes those people emerge—as I recently reported with Barnes & Noble, where a new leader at the top reversed course and fixed longstanding problems. And I know that people like that exist in the music world. I’ve even met some of them—but not in executive suite of any major label.
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
A few months ago, I wrote about returning to vinyl after giving up on it 34 years ago.
But I was shocked at what I encountered. Few of the albums I wanted were available in vinyl. Prices were outrageously high. The whole market seemed designed to discourage buyers.
This is false thinking and/or bad memory.
Deep Purple’s Made in Japan had a retail price of £3.25 in 1972 (we know this because it had a big, ugly sticker on the cover). Run that through an inflation calculator and that’s around £55 today. Amazon will sell me the 2014 vinyl reissue for £33.25.
Vinyl is relatively cheap today. The guy writing this has just been spoiled by decades of under-priced CDs and (worse) downloads.
Edit: I should say that I like and agree with his article overall. I just think he’s wrong on the cost to the consumer.
-
“Reaction videos” are huge on Youtube but I love that this one shows nobody in any demographic cannot help but love ‘Ace Of Spades’ by Motorhead.
It’s a simple but unrelenting poke at perfection, you could stick me in a room with classical, indie and pop geniuses, you aren’t beating this.
5 users thanked author for this post.
-
“Reaction videos” are huge on Youtube but I love that this one shows nobody in any demographic cannot help but love ‘Ace Of Spades’ by Motorhead.
It’s a simple but unrelenting poke at perfection, you could stick me in a room with classical, indie and pop geniuses, you aren’t beating this.
-
Some Grammy winners have been announced and I think you will be happy. I know I am!
Nice to see some songs/albums on the list that I actually listened to last year.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
I stumbled on this on Youtube. It is apparently Nirvana’s first ever TV performance anywhere, on a UK show called The Word which was a provocative programme by design. I would have been 18 when this went out and almost certainly watched it live. The Word was a post pub staple you’d watch half drunk on a Friday and Kurt Cobain proclaiming Courtney Love to be the ‘best fuck in the world’ was the kind of material they wanted. To rile up the ‘moral majority’ and get good ratings.
When L7 were on the singer dropped her trousers and underpants and sang naked and they loved it. It got more contrived after a while with a section called ‘The Hopefuls’ which was about getting people to do extreme things like a 20 year old French kissing an 80 year old woman and ebbed away after that. Everything is better when it is more organic.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
I actually saw a really good documentary about Nirvana and their time in the UK last year that went into a lot of detail about the trip over where they got booked to appear.
They played a venue called TJ’s in Newport on that first visit and the number of people I have seen who said they were at that gig (TJ’s was a nightclub with a capacity of 400) is similar to the 250,000 that claim to have been at the Manchester Free Trade Hall to see the Sex Pistols.
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
I actually saw a really good documentary about Nirvana and their time in the UK last year that went into a lot of detail about the trip over where they got booked to appear.
They played a venue called TJ’s in Newport on that first visit and the number of people I have seen who said they were at that gig (TJ’s was a nightclub with a capacity of 400) is similar to the 250,000 that claim to have been at the Manchester Free Trade Hall to see the Sex Pistols.
So I did see them live, but at least I saw them in a 6000-capacity venue so people don’t look at you sideways in the same way.
-
The funny thing is a few of them will be genuine but the maths don’t add up overall for all of them.
In my hometown in the early 80s there was a local nightclub of a similar size that had a good band booker and the list of bands is pretty insane, 8 years or so before I was old enough to go to clubs but I knew guys a few years older who had been to them all.
The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds, Adam and the Ants and The Pretenders all played these tiny gigs there.
Just before I moved to Malaysia I was frequenting the Barfly in Cardiff which was even smaller than those two, more a pub size or 150 at most. Barfly was a chain that arranged tours to each venue and I saw Kings of Leon, Keane and Scissor Sisters there just before they broke big. In the 90s I saw Oasis and The Prodigy in Panama Joe’s nightclub, although that was quite a big one, closer to 1000 capacity. These clubs don’t seem to exist in the same way now looking from afar, when I go back they are ‘being closed down’ as The Specials would sing.
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
