The Pop Corporation

It is incredibly easy to be mildly irritated by Taylor Swift, but no-one is forcing anyone to like or dislike her here, because we’re not really talking about her music or her personality here. This is something else. This is about records, and buying LPs is good.

Her recent LP ‘Midnights’ – which we haven’t heard, but that’s moot – has broken a very interesting record, if record is the right word here. Her 10th LP is the first to sell more vinyl copies than CDs since any LP released since the 1980s. Now, we assume there’s some kind of caveat to this, because there’s definitely smaller bands who will have sold more LPs than CDs or something, so let’s assume this is artists that shift bare units focused.

‘Midnights’ arrived and didn’t mess around and sold by the absolute shit-tonne straight out of the gate. There were many special edition releases and all that (pretty typical for a massive popstar these days), and there were colour coded CDs and vinyl editions. The interesting thing is that the kids have been guzzling the vinyl editions up and the last massive albums to sell more copies on vinyl than CD were Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’, GnRs ‘Appetite for Destruction’ and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.

That is rarified air, no mistake.

This is all a signpost to a larger trend, with vinyl marking a 15th consecutive year in growth. That’s new releases too, as well as reissues of ‘Rumours’ which is the only thing that’ll outlive humans and cockroaches come the apocalypse.

In a statement published by The Guardian, Kim Bayley – chief executive of the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) – said the monumental sales have defined “a watershed moment for the entire music industry”. She said of vinyl’s ongoing popularity: “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.”

CDs are still a thing though, and likely to have a resurgence of their own at some point in the future, sales for vinyl records have risen to £135.6million (up 23%) and CDs fell 2.9% but still raking in a hefty £150million. Vinyl looks like it’ll overtake CDs in 2023, but don’t be surprised if smaller indie bands bring back CDs like they did with cassettes, as vinyl is prohibitively expensive to press when you’re skint.

Either way, in an age of media being encouraged toward clouds and streaming subscription services, it’s nice that people still want to buy stuff. Buying stuff is good for small businesses, small bands and creates jobs. And it’s nice just having stuff isn’t it?