Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So Originally I was going to do a
Speaker 1: tech stuff tidbits today to talk about something I just
Speaker 1: think is cool, which is really the history of vinyl
Speaker 1: record sales here in the United States. But it quickly
Speaker 1: grew beyond tidbits size. No big surprise there, y'all know me.
Speaker 1: I'm a chatty kathy at the best of times. But
Speaker 1: I thought we could look at a technology that traces
Speaker 1: its history to really the nineteenth century, the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and then evolved and grew gradually until it became a
Speaker 1: dominant technology that waned in the nineteen eighties, really hit
Speaker 1: its lowest point in the two thousands, and then starting
Speaker 1: around two thousand and six and continuing for seventeen years,
Speaker 1: has really made a comeback. So yeah, I am talking
Speaker 1: about the vinyl record baby. Now. I love vinyl records.
Speaker 1: I have a very small collection of vinyl records myself.
Speaker 1: I know people who have huge libraries of vinyl I
Speaker 1: am not that person. I would love to have a
Speaker 1: huge library a vinyl but I just have a modest
Speaker 1: collection couple one hundred records. Now, nothing in my collection
Speaker 1: is rare, nothing is particularly special beyond the connection I
Speaker 1: feel to the recording itself and the musical artists that
Speaker 1: are represented. So it's really just my own small library
Speaker 1: of records that I like to listen to on occasion.
Speaker 1: And there is a ritual to listening to a vinyl
Speaker 1: record because there's so many steps that are involved, physical
Speaker 1: steps that you must take to listen to vinyl records.
Speaker 1: And I truly believe that it's a combination of the
Speaker 1: technology and the steps you have to take to use
Speaker 1: that technology that create a very special situation that enhances
Speaker 1: our connection to the music that's recorded on that medium. Now,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, I am not one of the
Speaker 1: true believer audio files out there who swears that a
Speaker 1: vinyl record produces better sound than say, high quality digital
Speaker 1: recording you would get on like a compact disc. There
Speaker 1: are too many factors involved to make that kind of
Speaker 1: sweeping declaration. There are those who will swear that analog
Speaker 1: formats are just by themselves superior to digital formats. I
Speaker 1: think it gets way more complicated than that. There's everything
Speaker 1: from the quality of the recording master, of the type
Speaker 1: of stylists that your tabletop uses, the kind of motor
Speaker 1: setup that the turntable has that can all affect music
Speaker 1: quality all on its own. And that's before you even
Speaker 1: get to stuff like pre amps, amplifiers, speakers, cables, etc.
Speaker 1: Plus hearing and listening that involves psychology, right, That involves
Speaker 1: the gray matter in our noggins. So it's not just technology,
Speaker 1: and that means that my experience is at least to
Speaker 1: some degree unique to me, and that someone else who
Speaker 1: is standing in the exact same spot where I stood
Speaker 1: and listening to the exact same recording on the exact
Speaker 1: same equipment is going to have a different experience than
Speaker 1: I did. Now, it might not be vastly different, it
Speaker 1: might not even be something that they can identify or communicate.
Speaker 1: We might talk with each other and not find any differences.
Speaker 1: But the fact is they're sperience will be at least
Speaker 1: to some degree unique to them, and mine will be
Speaker 1: unique to me. So it's just like west Lee said
Speaker 1: in The Princess Bride, audio quality is subjective. Anyone who
Speaker 1: says otherwise is selling something I might have paraphrased that,
Speaker 1: So I am not here to say the vinyl records
Speaker 1: provide the superior acoustic experience. I don't believe they necessarily do.
Speaker 1: I think they can, depending upon all the other factors
Speaker 1: that play here. But it's more complicated than just what
Speaker 1: format is the music in? Is it in, you know,
Speaker 1: analog versus digital? Is it on vinyl versus cassette versus
Speaker 1: compact disc versus MP three. However, the activity of listening
Speaker 1: on vinyl has other values beyond audio quality. So, for
Speaker 1: one thing, a long playing vinyl an LP or an
Speaker 1: extended play vinyl EP. Those are big, you know. They
Speaker 1: can measure typically ten inches in diameter, that's twenty five centimeters,
Speaker 1: but they can be up to twelve inches that's thirty centimeters.
Speaker 1: And that means these records, these discs of vinyl, have
Speaker 1: to fit into a sleeve and then a cover that's
Speaker 1: even larger than the disc is right, and this actually
Speaker 1: gives artists a fairly large canvas to work with when
Speaker 1: it comes to designing album cover art, which for a
Speaker 1: while ended up becinding kind of a forgotten art form.
Speaker 1: So part of the ritual of listening to vinyls, specifically
Speaker 1: to LPs and EPs is admiring that cover art. Now,
Speaker 1: some album cover art is, to put it, lightly bad.
Speaker 1: Some of it is hilariously bad. So if you want
Speaker 1: to laugh, you can do a Google image search for
Speaker 1: the album Gary Getting down to Business. It's Gary gaar Y.
Speaker 1: So it features Gary Solim on the cover, striking a
Speaker 1: uh well, let's be kind. We'll call it a dramatic pose.
Speaker 1: And it most certainly is a product of the late
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, and viewed through the modern lens, it will
Speaker 1: look funny to you. Maybe you would want to recreate
Speaker 1: it ironically, and maybe eventually it would become unironic and
Speaker 1: that just becomes your thing. No judgment here. Maybe if
Speaker 1: you're a Simpsons fan and you happen to love that
Speaker 1: meme where Homer slowly walks backwards into some bushes in
Speaker 1: order to disappear, you should look at the entree Amigos
Speaker 1: by Camillo Sesto, because it sure does look like Camillo
Speaker 1: served as the inspiration for that particular moment in the Simpsons.
Speaker 1: He's standing halfway engulfed in a hedge, and I mean,
Speaker 1: you look at it, and if you've ever seen that
Speaker 1: Simpsons mean. You immediately think this must be where they
Speaker 1: got that image. Anyway, other album art can be amazing.
Speaker 1: You could get into like the beef cake and cheesecake
Speaker 1: covers of Molly Hatchett albums because they look like an
Speaker 1: advertisement for like a cheeky Sword and Sorcery film or
Speaker 1: a Dungeons and Dragons expansion set, or you know, something
Speaker 1: like David Bowie's Aladdinsane album with the simple image of
Speaker 1: David Bowie from the shoulders up with that lightning bolt
Speaker 1: makeup decorating his face. The art becomes part of the experience.
Speaker 1: It is augmenting what the entire album is about. But
Speaker 1: beyond that, you've got the actual physical actions you have
Speaker 1: to take. Right there is the action of removing the
Speaker 1: record itself. So maybe you pull the sleeve out of
Speaker 1: the cover and then you take the album out of
Speaker 1: the sleeve. Maybe you're a rebel and you just try
Speaker 1: to remove the album and leave the sleeve inside the cover.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you're really living on the edge and you
Speaker 1: lost the sleeve years ago and now you just put
Speaker 1: a record directly into the unprotected cover. You do you, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to, if you want to
Speaker 1: scratch up the vinyl. Oh okay, no, no, no, whatever you
Speaker 1: do is fine. So you carry this vinyl long playing
Speaker 1: album over to your turntable, and you gently place the
Speaker 1: vinyl so that the whole lines up with the spindle
Speaker 1: and settles down on the platform. You lift the tone
Speaker 1: arm with the stylus on the end up. You position
Speaker 1: that stylus at the outer edge of the LP. You
Speaker 1: very softly and gently set it down, and you have
Speaker 1: it catch on the groove of the LP, and then
Speaker 1: you prepare to listen to some music. Depending on the album,
Speaker 1: you might be taken on a journey, one where the
Speaker 1: artists carefully planned out that sequence of songs, the order
Speaker 1: of the tracks, specifically intending to inspire particular moods or reactions.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's even a concept album that tells a story,
Speaker 1: either one that is overtly obvious or one that's just
Speaker 1: merely hinted. At halfway through your journey, you have to
Speaker 1: pause because the needle has reached the center of the album,
Speaker 1: having followed a groove that spirals inward until it gets
Speaker 1: to the end, and then you have to lift the
Speaker 1: tone arm up, move it out of the way, flip
Speaker 1: the vinyl record over, settle it back over onto the
Speaker 1: spindle again, move the tone arm with the stylus to
Speaker 1: the edge once more, and play side to and your
Speaker 1: journey continues. It's like getting a little intermission in the
Speaker 1: middle of a play. Of course, some albums include more
Speaker 1: than one disc, right. That means you're not really halfway
Speaker 1: through when the stylust gets to the center. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: a quarter through or an eight through, so you'll be
Speaker 1: doing this a few times if you plan to listen
Speaker 1: to this album all the way through. But it's all
Speaker 1: part of that ritual. Now, there's no rule saying that
Speaker 1: you have to listen to an entire side of an
Speaker 1: album start to finish, or even the full album start beginning.
Speaker 1: There's no rule saying you have to do that. However,
Speaker 1: it is a little more challenging to do something like
Speaker 1: go to a specific track on the album if it's
Speaker 1: not the first one on either side. You can do it,
Speaker 1: but it's not easy. There's also no easy way to
Speaker 1: skip or to go back and listen to the same
Speaker 1: track again. It's not convenient, and unless you have one
Speaker 1: of the very few models that experimented with the idea,
Speaker 1: it's not portable either, So I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say that vinyl doesn't lend itself to every type of
Speaker 1: listening situation. It is not convenient, it is not portable,
Speaker 1: it is not for every kind of listening environment, but
Speaker 1: for a specific kind of listening it's fantastic at least
Speaker 1: of the album's good. Now, I've done several episodes on
Speaker 1: the history of recorded audio, so I'm not going to
Speaker 1: repeat everything I've talked about before, but I do want
Speaker 1: to give some context so that we understand why the
Speaker 1: Vinyl albums are the way they are, because that experience
Speaker 1: of sitting down to listen to a full album evolved
Speaker 1: over time. It didn't just magically manifest. The actual medium
Speaker 1: would shape things like music and collections of music. For example,
Speaker 1: if you've ever wondered why most songs tend to be
Speaker 1: between three to four minutes long, the restrictions of technology
Speaker 1: helped determine that. Now, songs were already kind of naturally
Speaker 1: falling into that length that was just sort of a
Speaker 1: comfortable length for a song to be, but the medium
Speaker 1: itself would create restrictions that meant that you really had
Speaker 1: to conform to that length, and it kind of made
Speaker 1: it a standard. The medium is why artists would create
Speaker 1: collections of songs to release at the same time, and
Speaker 1: why they typically do so in groups of ten or
Speaker 1: twelve songs, or if you're an artist like Meatloaf, six
Speaker 1: to eight songs, because your songs are all freakin' epics. Conversely,
Speaker 1: the Ramones first album had fourteen tracks, seven to a side.
Speaker 1: One of those tracks only lasted about a minute and
Speaker 1: a half, so your mileage may vary. But the medium
Speaker 1: shaped all of this and created the trends that we
Speaker 1: see carried through to this day. I would say long
Speaker 1: after the medium itself had sort of faded away, we
Speaker 1: saw those trends continued. However, I can't say that it
Speaker 1: faded away because, as I mentioned at the top of
Speaker 1: this episode, for the last seventeen years, it's been making
Speaker 1: a serious comeback, all right. So let's get into a
Speaker 1: pretty simple early history lesson of the LP in particular. So,
Speaker 1: the precursor to flat discs recorded discs were wax cylinders.
Speaker 1: There're also ten cylinders tin, but wax cylinders became kind
Speaker 1: of the standard. These could hold recorded audio, but they
Speaker 1: were not easy to store. The physical cylinders. You had
Speaker 1: to have like a box, and you had to be
Speaker 1: very gentle with them. They all would wear out relatively
Speaker 1: quickly because the wax would start to degrade. With each playback,
Speaker 1: the stylist being used would essentially be carving more into
Speaker 1: the groove, so each successive playback would be a little
Speaker 1: worse than the one that came before it. In the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century, an inventor named Emil Berliner came up
Speaker 1: with the idea of recording audio to a flat disc
Speaker 1: as opposed to a cylinder, and he figured that if
Speaker 1: he could devise a way to do that, it might
Speaker 1: be possible to create a means of mass production, which
Speaker 1: wasn't really possible with the cylinders of the time. See,
Speaker 1: cylinders were using devices that could both record and playback audio.
Speaker 1: But if you could create a way of just recording
Speaker 1: audio to a blank, you know, a disc that has
Speaker 1: nothing on it, you could do that much more quickly
Speaker 1: than you would recording in real time to a wax cylinder,
Speaker 1: so that you could playback in real time later on.
Speaker 1: It would be something that would allow business to scale
Speaker 1: and become something more than just a curiosity for the wealthy.
Speaker 1: So he got to work his first version used a
Speaker 1: disc made of zinc, coded in beeswax and gasoline, and
Speaker 1: then put through an etching process where an acidic compound
Speaker 1: etched away at a groove that was made in the disc.
Speaker 1: And I talk about this more in other shows that
Speaker 1: go into the detail of the history of vinyl and
Speaker 1: recorded audio, so I'm not gonna retread all of that.
Speaker 1: But these discs could only record to one side at
Speaker 1: first due to the process that Berliner was using at
Speaker 1: the time, so there wasn't a double sighted album. He
Speaker 1: received a patent for his invention in eighteen eighty seven. Now,
Speaker 1: the zinc discs were not meant to be the final product. Instead,
Speaker 1: these served as a master recording. So Berlenner would then
Speaker 1: electroplate this disc to create a negative, so instead of
Speaker 1: there being grooves, you would get ridgids where the grooves
Speaker 1: had been and the could be used as a stamp
Speaker 1: and you could use it to stamp blanks to imprint
Speaker 1: the grooves into the blanks. Now these blanks would need
Speaker 1: to be pliable for the stamping process, but then strong
Speaker 1: enough to withstand playback. Initially, Berliner tried celluloid, which could
Speaker 1: make a really good, you know recording, but it was
Speaker 1: far too delicate and it would wear out very very quickly,
Speaker 1: so that was out. Uh, there were some celluloid records produced.
Speaker 1: There are a few that still exist, but celluloid itself
Speaker 1: is a very delicate material and it can rot over time,
Speaker 1: so there are very very few existing celluloid records today. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're just getting started. When we come back, i'll talk
Speaker 1: more about the development of the record disc all right. Back,
Speaker 1: we left off with Berlinner working with celluloid and deciding
Speaker 1: that was not a very good material to use for records. Next,
Speaker 1: he tried hard rubber, and this would involve heating the
Speaker 1: rubber blanks to temperature so that they became soft enough
Speaker 1: to stamp, and at first he felt these were far
Speaker 1: superior to celluloid because they could hold up to a
Speaker 1: lot more abuse. They were almost unbreakable being made out
Speaker 1: of hard rubber. But the trouble was quality controlled because
Speaker 1: sometimes the stamps didn't leave a perfect imprint, so you
Speaker 1: could end up with blank spots where there should be
Speaker 1: a groove, and that meant that once the stylus hit
Speaker 1: the blank spot, it could just slide across the record,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was no good it just wasn't
Speaker 1: reliable enough to be able to produce en mass without
Speaker 1: lots of potential problems. So Berlinner's solution was to work
Speaker 1: with a company called Duranoid, which made a shell ac
Speaker 1: compound for coding electrical parts. Shell Ac is a resin
Speaker 1: and it comes from big so shell ack is actually
Speaker 1: it's extracted from the secretions made by a lack bug,
Speaker 1: and it's used for all sorts of stuff like including
Speaker 1: glaze on candies and pills. It also has insulator properties,
Speaker 1: so it made it great for coding electric components. You
Speaker 1: could insulate that so that you're not going to get
Speaker 1: shocked when you handle the things. And then there's the
Speaker 1: fact that it's really good at holding a shape, though
Speaker 1: it can be brittle. So Berlinner felt that the shellac
Speaker 1: coded records were superior to the hard rubber ones. The
Speaker 1: stamping process was far more reliable, and so Berliner switched
Speaker 1: to shellac by the late nineteenth century. Right before the
Speaker 1: turn of the twentieth century, Berlinner and some investors were
Speaker 1: creating companies several over the years, all with the name
Speaker 1: Gramophone incorporated in them. That was kind of the name
Speaker 1: of Berliner's technology, but while the medium had evolved, the
Speaker 1: equipment used to play the media was slower to change.
Speaker 1: So early machines used hand cranked systems, so that meant
Speaker 1: you had to sit there and you had to turn
Speaker 1: a crank in order to listen to your recorded album.
Speaker 1: The ideal sweet spot for speed would be to crank
Speaker 1: at a speed fast enough to get seventy to eighty
Speaker 1: revolutions per minute, because that's where the recorded audio on
Speaker 1: shell act discs sounded the best. But if you crank
Speaker 1: too quickly, you get chipmunks. If you crank too slowly,
Speaker 1: everyone becomes a basso profundo singer like Patrick Page in
Speaker 1: Haities Town. And if you're unsteady then you get a
Speaker 1: real warblee playback, and it wasn't ideal. So there's an
Speaker 1: era of innovation then in creating a motorized turntable that
Speaker 1: is both strong enough to work with the heavy tone
Speaker 1: arms of the time, because back then the tone arms
Speaker 1: put a lot of pressure on discs. That's why they
Speaker 1: would wear out so quickly if they weren't made of
Speaker 1: durable material. And the stylus was made out of steel,
Speaker 1: so you really did have to have something that could
Speaker 1: withstand some damage and some torture in order to be
Speaker 1: a long lasting product. So the motorized movement need to
Speaker 1: be consistent and smooth and strong enough to provide good
Speaker 1: audio quality, and that took a while. Now, another thing
Speaker 1: that helped shape both the medium itself and the music
Speaker 1: upon it was the rotational speed of these motors and
Speaker 1: the design of the albums themselves. So if you designed
Speaker 1: an album to be played at seventy eight rotations per minute,
Speaker 1: you would get superior sound quality, but the stylist would
Speaker 1: travel the groove pretty quickly, right, because it's rotating seventy
Speaker 1: eight times every single minute. So things would sound good,
Speaker 1: but you could not store very much music per disc
Speaker 1: side because the groove for a piece being played back
Speaker 1: at seventy eight rpm would have to be longer than
Speaker 1: one played at a slower speed. So if you designed
Speaker 1: the disc so that the recording was meant to be
Speaker 1: played back at a slower speed, like at forty five
Speaker 1: rotations per minute, or even thirty three and one third
Speaker 1: rotations per minute, you could store more audio on the
Speaker 1: side of a disc, but the quality of that audio
Speaker 1: would suffer. So even in the days of hand cranking,
Speaker 1: like I said, the ideal rotational speed was somewhere in
Speaker 1: the seventy to eighty rpm range. So how did the
Speaker 1: music industry settle on the standard speeds? Well, seventy eight
Speaker 1: rpm is very convenient when you start looking at things
Speaker 1: like gear ratios. So the motors that they were using
Speaker 1: to drive the turntables had their own rotational speed thirty
Speaker 1: six hundred revolutions per minute. So by using a gear
Speaker 1: system you could create a gear ratio of say forty
Speaker 1: six to one and forty six to one ratio gear
Speaker 1: would convert that thirty six hundred revolutions per minute down
Speaker 1: to seventy eight technically seventy eight point twenty six. So
Speaker 1: the turntable speed was set largely because of the actual
Speaker 1: limitations of the motor, the fact that it was an
Speaker 1: thirty six hundred revolutions per minute, and you know, creating
Speaker 1: a ratio that would allow you to step that down
Speaker 1: to a more manageable speed for the turntable itself meant
Speaker 1: that you could go down to seventy eight, which again
Speaker 1: was in that sweet spot between seventy and eighty rpm.
Speaker 1: So sort of the stars aligned for this particular type
Speaker 1: of implementation, but other gear ratios could produce the speeds
Speaker 1: of forty five rpm or thirty three and a third
Speaker 1: rpm without having to change the type of motor that
Speaker 1: you were using to drive the whole darn thing. Now
Speaker 1: these days, you could have had a variable speed motor
Speaker 1: and you could completely change the technology of pressed records entirely.
Speaker 1: But now it's kind of a legacy system, so no
Speaker 1: one has really bothered. A couple people have tried, but
Speaker 1: only small experiments. So the speed of the motor sort
Speaker 1: of determined everything else. So seventy eight rpm became the
Speaker 1: preferred format for early records, and even with a ten
Speaker 1: inch disc, that meant you could store about three minutes
Speaker 1: of audio per side. And again, while many songs already
Speaker 1: fell into that length restriction, the medium really helped cement
Speaker 1: it as the standard song length. It was a limit
Speaker 1: of the medium. So if you wanted to sell a
Speaker 1: lot of records and have people go gaga over your music,
Speaker 1: you really wanted it to be high quality stuff, and
Speaker 1: you know, not sacrifice the sound quality the fidelity of
Speaker 1: your recording, but you would sacrifice how long your track
Speaker 1: could be because you were limited to about three minutes.
Speaker 1: And think about that, these ten inch discs were singles.
Speaker 1: They could usually hold a single track per side, which
Speaker 1: is pretty big disc to hold one song is pretty wild,
Speaker 1: and it would dominate for decades, well into the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: So now we're going to do a quick jump ahead.
Speaker 1: So others at the time of Berliner were trying to
Speaker 1: come up with alternatives because they wanted to get into
Speaker 1: this market, but they didn't want to have to pay
Speaker 1: Berliner for his technology. So like Edison was one of those,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to come up with alternatives to
Speaker 1: shell Act too and really to compete with the Gramophone Company.
Speaker 1: But the alternatives were often more expensive, so they had
Speaker 1: very little effect in breaking into the market. People didn't
Speaker 1: want to have to buy new equipment and spend even
Speaker 1: more money to purchase the albums themselves. So even as
Speaker 1: early as the nineteen twenties you had people experimenting with
Speaker 1: plastic and by the nineteen thirties the technology was ready
Speaker 1: to go in some early implementations, but there were some problems.
Speaker 1: One was that companies were making boneheaded mistakes, but another
Speaker 1: was just that the economy in general was not good.
Speaker 1: Just like today, we were in a really bad time
Speaker 1: of economic uncertainty. In the nineteen thirties, the US was
Speaker 1: in the Great Depression and the cost of a record player,
Speaker 1: and then on top of that the cost of records
Speaker 1: to play on the record player. That was a luxury
Speaker 1: that very few were willing to pursue. A radio set,
Speaker 1: while also being very expensive, at least had the advantage
Speaker 1: of providing the content for free, well sort of free,
Speaker 1: like my show, the content was sponsored by companies paying
Speaker 1: to have their products and services highlighted on the air,
Speaker 1: so not really free, but free to the consumer. The
Speaker 1: plastic records were still a thing behind the scenes, however,
Speaker 1: DJs at radio stations were using them, but there wasn't
Speaker 1: much of a consumer market for vinyl or plastic records
Speaker 1: until the end of World War two. Partly that was
Speaker 1: because the war had put high demands on various materials
Speaker 1: and manufacturing facilities, which prioritized war efforts over stuff like,
Speaker 1: you know, civilian comforts and luxuries, which is understandable. But
Speaker 1: after the war things would change. In nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: an invention from doctor Peter Goldmark would make a huge
Speaker 1: impact on the recording industry. So Goldmark devised a way
Speaker 1: to create microgrooves on vinyl, a type of of PVC plastic,
Speaker 1: and these microgrooves allowed for a couple of really big advantages.
Speaker 1: It was possible to create long playing or LP albums,
Speaker 1: and you could reduce the rotational speed to thirty three
Speaker 1: and one third rotations per minute without an appreciable dip
Speaker 1: in audio quality. So that meant that a disc could
Speaker 1: hold way more than three to five minutes per side.
Speaker 1: Now it could hold more than twenty minutes per side,
Speaker 1: So you could put way more content on a single disc,
Speaker 1: particularly a twelve inch disc, than you could in the past. Now,
Speaker 1: RCA Victor, which had attempted to introduce the thirty three
Speaker 1: and a third album more than a decade earlier that
Speaker 1: when I was talking about there being companies that made
Speaker 1: boneheaded decisions, I was referencing RCA Victor at the time.
Speaker 1: It was a massive flop when they tried to introduce
Speaker 1: it in the thirties. They decided in the late forties
Speaker 1: to challenge gold Mark and Columbia Records, which was the
Speaker 1: comp that was making use of Goldmark's technology. So RCA
Speaker 1: introduced the seven inch record disc, designed to be played
Speaker 1: at forty five revolutions per minute, so the forty five
Speaker 1: can hold about as much music as the seventy eight
Speaker 1: ten inch discs could with the same level of fidelity,
Speaker 1: so they were arguing you're giving the maximum fidelity performance
Speaker 1: at a smaller form factor, so it's more convenient, which
Speaker 1: was debatable. Both of those were debatable, but these two
Speaker 1: form factors, the thirty three and a third LP and
Speaker 1: the forty five seven inch disc were incompatible with one another,
Speaker 1: so obviously they required different speeds rotational speeds to play
Speaker 1: back the music appropriately, although if you've ever played a
Speaker 1: thirty three and a third record on the forty five
Speaker 1: setting or vice versa, you can get some pretty fun
Speaker 1: experiences out of that, like you can you can turn
Speaker 1: a long playing album into a Chipmunk's album, or a
Speaker 1: forty five you can turn into something that's really creepy.
Speaker 1: The songs Staying Alive played on a forty five but
Speaker 1: at thirty three and a third RPMs becomes a horror
Speaker 1: movie song. It's fantastic anyway. RCA Victor's album form also
Speaker 1: had a larger hole in the center and you had
Speaker 1: to use a thicker spindle or later an adapter, and
Speaker 1: this was probably a decision to make the two formats
Speaker 1: even more incompatible, like it was trying to make sure
Speaker 1: that the two could not be played on the same machine,
Speaker 1: and this set up a pretty cutthroat competition in the
Speaker 1: market for a couple of years, with like each company
Speaker 1: trying to muscle the other one out. But by nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: RCA grudgingly began to license Colombia's system and began to
Speaker 1: produce its own thirty three and a third albums because
Speaker 1: the forty fives were really only good for singles that
Speaker 1: you couldn't sell a full album on forty fives. You
Speaker 1: would have to sell you know, five or six forty
Speaker 1: fives per album because they just couldn't hold that much
Speaker 1: music per side. Columbia, for its part, began to produce
Speaker 1: forty five albums in order to push out singles because again,
Speaker 1: that form factor was great for singles and B sides,
Speaker 1: but not so great if you wanted to do an LP.
Speaker 1: So both companies, essentially, after fighting each other fiercely for
Speaker 1: a couple of years, begrudgingly adopted the other companies formats. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have an older turntable or perhaps one of
Speaker 1: the boutique kinds made for audio files. You may actually
Speaker 1: have three settings for rotation speeds, the thirty three and
Speaker 1: a third, the forty five, and the seventy eight, but
Speaker 1: a lot of tables ditched seventy eight entirely because the
Speaker 1: industry pretty much did the same thing back in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: Most of the records produced after nineteen fifty were firmly
Speaker 1: either in the thirty three in a third LP camp
Speaker 1: or the forty five single and B side camp. The
Speaker 1: world began to embrace vinyl, and sales figures climbed year
Speaker 1: over year, and according to the RIAA AKA the Recording
Speaker 1: Industry Association of America, which in other episodes of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff serves as the villain of the piece, vinyl sales
Speaker 1: in the United States peaked in nineteen seventy eight, So
Speaker 1: that year people bought more than three hundred and forty
Speaker 1: million LPs or EPs so long playing albums or extended
Speaker 1: playing albums in the United States. These made up nearly
Speaker 1: half of all music format sales across every format, and
Speaker 1: they were the dominant format of the time. Now, I
Speaker 1: was born in the seventies, and that might explain why
Speaker 1: I have such a fondness for the vinyl format. Some
Speaker 1: of my earliest memories involved listening to records with my family.
Speaker 1: My parents had tons of vinyl record albums. I remember
Speaker 1: listening to the Beatles and John Denver and Linda Ronstat.
Speaker 1: I also remember listening to comedy record records from groups
Speaker 1: like Beyond the Fringe, The Fire Signed Theater, and Monty Python,
Speaker 1: and those experiences were great. But something was about to
Speaker 1: happen that would be another massive change to the music industry.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more after we come back from this quick break.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So what happened? Why did we
Speaker 1: go from nineteen seventy eight to a record breaking sales
Speaker 1: figure for vinyl to the decline of the format. Well,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, Sony introduced a technology that would
Speaker 1: create a sea change in the music industry. That technology
Speaker 1: was the Humble Walkman, a portable cassette player. So music
Speaker 1: cassettes had been around for more than a decade. In fact,
Speaker 1: they first hit the scene in the nineteen sixties, but
Speaker 1: for many years cassette played were these really big stereo
Speaker 1: components that you would buy. They were expensive, they were bulky,
Speaker 1: and they took up a lot of space and you
Speaker 1: had to connect them to other components in your stereo system,
Speaker 1: and if you already had a record player, you might
Speaker 1: feel like there's not much point getting a cassette player.
Speaker 1: Some cassette formats, like the infamous eight track, saw a
Speaker 1: brief spotlight moment due to being incorporated into vehicle audio systems,
Speaker 1: so then you could take your music on the go
Speaker 1: with you. But the humble audio cassette would really grab
Speaker 1: the baton in the late seventies and truly take off
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. So the cassette and the Walkman
Speaker 1: and later stuff like in dash entertainment systems and cars
Speaker 1: offered up portability, which was something that vinyl couldn't really do,
Speaker 1: despite a few efforts that aren't really noteworthy enough to
Speaker 1: dwell on. And as we would see again and again,
Speaker 1: things like accessibility, portability, and convenience can matter just as
Speaker 1: much or perhaps even more than something like audio quality.
Speaker 1: So while you might get an irritating hiss in the
Speaker 1: background of your music that's on cassette, particularly if you're
Speaker 1: using something like really cheap headphones, well you could still
Speaker 1: listen on the go, so that was an advantage. It
Speaker 1: still wasn't super easy to navigate to a specific track.
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of all the times where as a kid,
Speaker 1: I was writing those rewind and fast forward buttons like
Speaker 1: a maniac, trying to get to the beginning of a
Speaker 1: specific song in the middle of one side of a cassette.
Speaker 1: But the fact that you could take your music on
Speaker 1: the go changed everything. It only took a few years
Speaker 1: for cassette sales to not only make a dent in
Speaker 1: Vinyl's figures, but to actually out sell vinyl itself. So
Speaker 1: depending upon your source, cassettes overtook vinyl sales somewhere around
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three or nineteen eighty four. I've seen different
Speaker 1: citations for that. So the music industry was actually really
Speaker 1: worried about cassettes at first because they opened up the
Speaker 1: possibility for piracy, something that you didn't have to really
Speaker 1: worry about with vinyl. But cassettes were different, and the
Speaker 1: industry would remain worried about piracy for the foreseeable future
Speaker 1: because every time there's a media shift that becomes one
Speaker 1: of the big concerns. In fact, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of times where the music industry resists change, and that
Speaker 1: makes adoption much slower because of this fear of piracy. However,
Speaker 1: the industry eventually came around to cassettes because they realized
Speaker 1: they could do something that they couldn't do before, which
Speaker 1: was they had the chance to sell the exact same
Speaker 1: album on two different formats, potentially to the same customer.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they would include exclusive content on one format or
Speaker 1: the other or both, where you could buy the album
Speaker 1: on vinyl and you'll get one track, you buy it
Speaker 1: on cassette and you get a different track, And so
Speaker 1: for some people were super fans, they would end up
Speaker 1: buying both formats because they wanted to be a completionist.
Speaker 1: So there were ways for the music industry to make
Speaker 1: even more money by introducing this new format. But another
Speaker 1: big blow to vinyl sales was right around the corner.
Speaker 1: So cassettes dominated most of the eighties, but the technology
Speaker 1: of the compact disc, which actually traces its history to
Speaker 1: the seventies, would leave both cassettes and vinyl behind, so
Speaker 1: vinyl sales took another blow. Cassettes would be hit even
Speaker 1: harder considering how far they had to fall because vinyl
Speaker 1: had already fallen due to cassettes, but vinyl was able
Speaker 1: to hang on it increasingly took a smaller part, especially
Speaker 1: for the consumer side of media, but it didn't die.
Speaker 1: Remember when I said that vinyl LPs hit their sales
Speaker 1: peak in nineteen seventy eight, that was specifically for America.
Speaker 1: If we look at global sales figures, the peak actually
Speaker 1: happened a little bit later. And we have to turn
Speaker 1: to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which tracks
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, and it says the peak of
Speaker 1: vinyl LP sales globally was in nineteen eighty one, and
Speaker 1: that was one point one billion units sold worldwide. Now,
Speaker 1: that same group says that the lowest point for vinyl
Speaker 1: sales worldwide was two thousand and six. That's when just
Speaker 1: three million LPs were sold globally. So think about that.
Speaker 1: A peak of one point one billion units and a
Speaker 1: low of three million. That's a huge drop. However, since
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, the vinyl industry has been on
Speaker 1: an upward climb, and CD sales, while you know they
Speaker 1: were the dominant format for the two thousands, really have
Speaker 1: been taking a hit, partly because of a new means
Speaker 1: of music consumption streaming. Once that rose to prominence, that
Speaker 1: really to take a bite out of CD sales, and
Speaker 1: two years ago, in twenty twenty one, something really interesting happened.
Speaker 1: For the first time since the CD took the crown.
Speaker 1: Vinyl sales ended up outpacing CD sales. Yeah, in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, more people bought albums on vinyl than they
Speaker 1: did on CD, and that remained true last year in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. So for two years vinyl has been
Speaker 1: out selling CDs. So last year the number of vinyl
Speaker 1: albums sold in the United States was around forty three
Speaker 1: point four to six million units, So forty three point
Speaker 1: four to six million in the US alone compared to
Speaker 1: three million units sold globally in two thousand and six. Now,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say vinyl is dominating, but it's definitely not dead.
Speaker 1: It's not nearly as dead as folks thought it was
Speaker 1: back in the mid two thousands. But then, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I should say that it is dominating because according
Speaker 1: to Illuminate, forty three point four percent of all albums
Speaker 1: purchased in the US last year were on vinyl. Now
Speaker 1: that includes not just physical media, it also includes digital formats.
Speaker 1: So this includes everything from MP three's to compact discs,
Speaker 1: to cassettes to I don't know, wax cylinders. Forty three
Speaker 1: point four percent of all sales were on vinyl. When
Speaker 1: you look at just the physical formats, well, vinyl made
Speaker 1: up fifty four point four percent of all albums sales
Speaker 1: last year. They really did dominate. But these figures aren't
Speaker 1: really the ones that truly blow my mind. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: they are impressive, and the fact that vinyl has made
Speaker 1: such a comeback is amazing, especially for someone who was,
Speaker 1: you know, alive when Vinyl hit its peak and then
Speaker 1: also alive when Vinyl hit its low. It's amazing to
Speaker 1: see it have a comeback. But no, the thing that
Speaker 1: really shocked me was that Illuminate found another interesting statistic here.
Speaker 1: Maybe y'all won't find it shocking at all, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not surprising at all to you, but it was to me.
Speaker 1: So here we go. According to Luminate, about fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the folks out there who are buying vinyl don't
Speaker 1: have a record player. Now, granted, this was discovered in
Speaker 1: a survey that had a fairly small sample fewer than
Speaker 1: four thousand respondents. Around three thy nine hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: or so responded to the survey, and about half of
Speaker 1: them said that they had bought a vinyl album but
Speaker 1: did not own a record player. Maybe when you expand
Speaker 1: that out to the general music audience, that percentage won't hold.
Speaker 1: Maybe you won't see it be like a fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1: But even for a small survey, fifty percent having no
Speaker 1: means to play back the media that they have bought,
Speaker 1: that's banana to me. Now, I suppose some of the
Speaker 1: explanation here goes back to what I was talking about
Speaker 1: at the top of the show about the ritual of
Speaker 1: playing vinyl. So, yeah, you can't actually play the vinyl
Speaker 1: if you don't have a record player. That arguably key
Speaker 1: component of the process is not accessible to you. However,
Speaker 1: you do end up having a physical object that represents
Speaker 1: the thing you love, the music you love, the artist
Speaker 1: you love. You have something that is tactile, It is real.
Speaker 1: So it's not this ephemeral file that only exists in
Speaker 1: digital zeros and ones. It's something that you can hold
Speaker 1: in your hands and you can look at it. You
Speaker 1: can admire the album art. A lot of modern vinyl
Speaker 1: albums come with incredible liner notes that give thoughts about
Speaker 1: how the songs came to be and what the artists
Speaker 1: were doing when they were creating the music. Some of
Speaker 1: them come with other supplemental material like artwork and photography
Speaker 1: and all sorts of stuff. The vinyl itself might be
Speaker 1: a work of art. We've left the days of generic
Speaker 1: black vinyl discs behind, and it's no surprise these days
Speaker 1: to pull out a vinyl album that's bubblegum pink or
Speaker 1: Da Glow Blue or even Glow in the Dark or
Speaker 1: Tie Die in all sorts of colors. The vinyl is
Speaker 1: a collectible and a physical object that connects the audience
Speaker 1: to the music, even I guess if they can't actually
Speaker 1: play the music that's on that disc. And I do
Speaker 1: get that music is capable of encouraging strong emotional bonds.
Speaker 1: There are certain songs I listen to when I'm in
Speaker 1: a particular mood because the music emphasizes feelings. Sometimes that
Speaker 1: might not even be the feeling that the artist was
Speaker 1: intending to impart, but that's okay. The way the audience
Speaker 1: consumes art and what the artists intended don't always align,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. And
Speaker 1: owning something physical seems to make it more real, like
Speaker 1: there really is something going on more than just listening
Speaker 1: to some music. Now, if you go down that path
Speaker 1: too far, you start to stray into dangerous parasocial territory.
Speaker 1: But I do think that celebrating a connection to art
Speaker 1: is fine, just you know, don't project that into a
Speaker 1: situation where you and the artist or artists are magically
Speaker 1: besties in your mind and imagination or something that's not healthy. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm not quite old enough to just shake
Speaker 1: my head in confusion at hearing that, you know, half
Speaker 1: the people who are buying vinyl don't have a way
Speaker 1: of playing it. I do get it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: do have collectibles that don't really have any other purpose
Speaker 1: other than to be collectible. Right. I've got things like
Speaker 1: action figures. I don't play with them. They're connections to things.
Speaker 1: I even have things like Funko pops that really can't
Speaker 1: play with at all. You just look at them. So
Speaker 1: I do understand collecting things that give you a connection
Speaker 1: to something you love. I also think that listening to
Speaker 1: vinyl albums is a really cool celebration of technology, of music,
Speaker 1: of art, and of your own emotional experience to that art.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it if you haven't experienced it. Like.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying go out there and buy a turntable
Speaker 1: and a bunch of albums, but if you have access
Speaker 1: to one, I do recommend just sitting down to experience it.
Speaker 1: It might take a little practice to experience music this way,
Speaker 1: because we have trained ourselves to be more impatient and
Speaker 1: more demanding. You know, we have expectations for being able
Speaker 1: to experience music on our terms, not the artist's terms.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. It's just different,
Speaker 1: you know. We hit that skip button so quickly, and
Speaker 1: I ain't gonna lie. A lot of albums have at
Speaker 1: least one real clunker of a song that screams, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a good chance for you to go to
Speaker 1: a bio break. You don't really need to listen to
Speaker 1: this one. That happens a lot, at least for me.
Speaker 1: But with some albums, you might find that listening in
Speaker 1: this way, where you are sitting down and deliberately listening
Speaker 1: track to track and having that intermission and having to
Speaker 1: turn a record over and start it up again, you
Speaker 1: might find that that experience creates a whole new way
Speaker 1: to appreciate music that you like. But be warned it
Speaker 1: could make it harder for you to listen to tracks
Speaker 1: and isolation in the future. There's certain songs where I
Speaker 1: feel it's incomplete if I haven't heard the track that
Speaker 1: plays before it, because the artist made such a clever
Speaker 1: way of one track leading into the next that I
Speaker 1: feel that it's not really the right experience if I
Speaker 1: just listened to that one track completely isolated from everything else. Also,
Speaker 1: before I conclude, there are a couple of other tidbits
Speaker 1: from that Illuminate study that I thought were interesting. So,
Speaker 1: out of all the music genres out there, vinyl sales
Speaker 1: were most popular in the rock genre. Rock albums made
Speaker 1: up more than fifty percent of all vinyl sales, so
Speaker 1: this is not something that is represented across every genre.
Speaker 1: Rock really dominates. Second place was R and B and
Speaker 1: hip hop, which also includes rap albums as well, so
Speaker 1: a pretty big umbrella, and that made up around eighteen
Speaker 1: percent a little less than eighteen percent of all sales. Also,
Speaker 1: nearly half of all vinyl sales were made in independent
Speaker 1: record stores, which is freaking awesome. I highly recommend seeking
Speaker 1: out a local record shop in your area. You could
Speaker 1: find all sorts of gems. There a lot of independent
Speaker 1: shops sell both new and used vinyl, and sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: find stuff that you didn't even know existed that will
Speaker 1: delight you. Some of the records you come across might
Speaker 1: be quirky, Some of them could be really funny when
Speaker 1: viewed through a modern lens. Some come across as really
Speaker 1: corny or square or whatever other adjective you'd like to
Speaker 1: use for not very cool. You know, lame would probably
Speaker 1: fit for a lot of these albums. But I promise you,
Speaker 1: even in those categories, you can find stuff that has
Speaker 1: a sleeper or two in it. In fact, that's why
Speaker 1: I think soundtracks for films like Quentin Tarantino's movies, or
Speaker 1: like James Gunn's films, specifically the Guardans of the Galaxy movies,
Speaker 1: those soundtracks end up being huge hits because they contain
Speaker 1: tracks that are seriously awesome but were largely overlooked. And
Speaker 1: of course, there's new vinyl being pressed every year. It's
Speaker 1: not all just old vinyl. There's lots of new stuff.
Speaker 1: Bands that are active right now that are pressing albums
Speaker 1: in vinyl, and indie stores carry that stuff too. So
Speaker 1: if you do have an independent record shop near you,
Speaker 1: take a trip and check it out. Look at some
Speaker 1: of those albums, laugh at the cheesy album RT and
Speaker 1: ooh and a the really cool ones. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: pick up a couple of albums, particularly if you have
Speaker 1: a record player at home, though I won't judge you
Speaker 1: if you don't. And I just want to give a
Speaker 1: quick shout out to a couple of independent record stores
Speaker 1: that I love. Back in Athens, Georgia, where I went
Speaker 1: to college, there's a shop called wax In Facts, which
Speaker 1: still exists, I'm happy to say. When I was in school,
Speaker 1: they actually had a room of used vinyl where they
Speaker 1: sold records by the pound. You paid one dollar per
Speaker 1: pound of records. It didn't matter what albums you picked,
Speaker 1: so if you came across a rare pressing, just by
Speaker 1: flipping through all the albums, you could get an insane bargain.
Speaker 1: So a big shout out to my buddy John who
Speaker 1: scored a pressing of meat Loafs Bat out of Hell
Speaker 1: album on red vinyl that was really cool. And then,
Speaker 1: not too far from where I live today, there's a
Speaker 1: record store called Criminal Records. It's in a little five
Speaker 1: Points area in Atlanta, Georgia. It's another great spot to
Speaker 1: buy music. And comic books, and it's one of the
Speaker 1: busiest shops in that little neighborhood, and it attracts a
Speaker 1: wide variety of music fans. That's another cool thing about
Speaker 1: Vinyl and these independent record shops. They have a broad audience.
Speaker 1: And when you go to these physical locations, you run
Speaker 1: into really interesting people. I mean, these are sometimes people
Speaker 1: who are extremely different from yourself, but you'll find you'll
Speaker 1: get caught up in conversations about music and art and
Speaker 1: collections and things that you thought were really interesting and
Speaker 1: maybe some lost gems. And it's just a great place
Speaker 1: to connect with people as well as to the music itself.
Speaker 1: And all of that is thanks to this technology. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to do this episode not just to talk
Speaker 1: about the tech, but to talk about its impact in
Speaker 1: culture and society, because I find that to be the
Speaker 1: really fascinating piece of technology. I think all of tech
Speaker 1: is really cool, but seeing how it interacts with us
Speaker 1: is really where the magic is for me. And yeah,
Speaker 1: just thought it'd be fun to talk about this. Also,
Speaker 1: just big shout out to Vinyl like continuing to climb
Speaker 1: year over year. The most recent increases have been more modest,
Speaker 1: but it's still been on the upward track, so I
Speaker 1: hope to see that continue, and I hope I can
Speaker 1: go shopping for some new vinyl pretty soon. Hope you're
Speaker 1: all well, and I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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