A big crowd of record collectors and music fans is expected to attend the 12th Ottawa Community Record Show on April 12, with organizers predicting a full house at St. Anthony’s Banquet Hall – as it has been for the previous 11 shows.
According to Dave Aardvark, the show’s organizer, there have been as many as 700 people at the event in the past. He expects there to be at least 500 people checking out the vintage recordings in the age of the iPod.
The success of the show, which has been held twice a year over the past six years, shows there is still significant commercial interest in vinyl records.
Up until the late 1980s records were the main form of music storage. Although the compact disc became commercially available in 1982, it wasn’t until 1988 when popular music in Canada moved almost exclusively to CD format, as required by the record labels at the time.
Today, most music is released on CD or digitally, but vinyl records never stopped being produced or purchased. John Westhaver, owner of Birdman Sound, a record store on Bank Street that exclusively carries vinyl, says he’s noticed a recent growth in interest.
“Records did not go bye-bye over the planet,” he says.
“They disappeared from chain stores and mainstream locations, which is where most people take in their music. About five or six years ago, for some reason, from the depths of the underground, somewhere, there started to be a bit of a resurgence of interest in vinyl from a wide variety of demographics.”
The question is what caused this resurgence of vinyl in an era of digital music? Westhaver says it is all “money motivated.”
According to Billboard, while overall physical music sales dropped last year, vinyl record sales rose by 52 per cent. In 2014, there were already as many records sold in the first half of the year, as there had been the entire year before.
Aardvark says record stores are now stocking more vinyl to increase sales.
“Some of the shops around town who primarily were selling CDs now have moved into selling more records. If you want to stay alive . . . you’ve got to have vinyl too now,” he says.
The average record sells for $20 to $50 depending on the artist. However, due to the supply and demand of some records, prices can be astronomically high for rare, limited edition finds. For example, a copy of Death Grips’ 2011 EP, Ex-Military, costs around $1,100, with bootleg copies costing up to $125. Only 500 copies of the album were ever pressed, making it extremely valuable.
Kyle Rogers, a Carleton University student and record collector, says he thinks the growing popularity of vinyl is, in part, a pop culture phenomenon.
“I think it’s because records are becoming more and more cool. I think movies like High Fidelity and 500 Days of Summer have a big role in that because a lot of people watched those and there’s a lot of records in them.” he says. “Movies like that, like quirky, indie movies that have a lot of music in them . . . lead to an increase in the popularity of records.”
Rogers says vinyl appeals to him because of the sound quality, album artwork and the longevity of the record itself. “There’s something more permanent about records,” he says. “If I have these records and I die, they will still be there for someone else to access. My love for records, I guess, stems from my fear of death, because records have such a great degree of longevity.”
Aardvark says that vinyl just offers something digital music doesn’t. “(Digital music) doesn’t have any appeal to some people . . . I’m just not excited about getting digital files of music,” he says.
While vinyl seems to be making a comeback, Billboard reports that record sales make up less than four per cent of overall music sales. However, there has been a definite increase in the past decade. Ten years ago, vinyl records could only muster 0.2 per cent in sales. “It’s made quite a comeback, but it’s very niche,” says Westhaver.
Westhaver is optimistic about the growing popularity of vinyl. “Records are back and they’re enjoying a great renaissance the last five or six years. Right now, standing here in the spring of 2015, there is absolutely no sign of it slowing down.”