#hardtrax

In the last few years there have been many news and reports about the return of vinyl-records. In times when the music industry is suffering from a constant decline in music-sales on an international scale, black gold seems to be back as the only physical medium that actually sells better and better since quite a while already. The tekkno- and hardtekkno-scene (as well as electronic music in general) has seen several important vinyl-distributors biting the dust, and subsequently plenty of (especially independent electronic) record-labels have followed them into nirvana. Those who still kept on pressing vinyls ended up making little to no profit at all, or - like the vast majority – just lost crazy amounts of money. Thus the constant increase in vinyl-sales is great news to the tekkno-scene… or maybe it is not? Even known key-figures of the electronic music scene such as Love Parade-inventor Dr. Motte aka Matthias Roeingh are quite euphoric about the current trend, which at first glance appears to lead towards a glorious comeback of our favourite medium (read his German blog-post “Die Wiederauferstehung der Schallplatte“). Magazines, newspapers and even television-channels report about the resurgence of vinyl-records, creating quite a bit of a hype as well. However, I wonder whether anybody who is into electronic music has actually taken a closer look at the figures presented to us. Though I think it is generally a good idea to shout out great news about a fantastic vinyl-comeback and join in on the current euphoria to show some love for vinyls in general, I also believe a certain portion of realism is missing. Personally I feel somewhat sceptic concerning the so-called return of vinyl as hyped by mainstream-media. Despite my label-partner James and me wanting to get back into pressing plenty of dark hardtekkno vinyl-records on our own imprint, distributing them and spreading our specific kind of music to the world just like in the good old days, I cannot quite believe in a comeback of vinyl that would actually lead to higher sales in genres like tekkno too. Why you ask? Well, right at this moment I am unable to recognise any significant improvement concerning the amount of vinyl-sales to our target-audience. In fact, I do not believe that the current rise in record-sales is affecting the electronic music scene here in Europe very much. To understand this, we have to look closer at some of the facts: Vinyl sales have tripled in the USA over the past years This is probably the main reason for many to believe that vinyl is coming back for us electronic music lovers in Europe too. However we do not really profit from the boom of vinyl album-sales in the USA, because the largest part of North Americans usually tends to listen to different genres such as rock, alternative, hip hop and the likes. Tekkno music or similar/related electronic genres are definitely not playing any significant role in the 41% increase in US vinyl album sales in the first half of 2011 (source for these figures: Digital Music News). The European market is a completely different thing anyway, and the US-sales do not really concern us much. The massive rise in LP-sales in the USA is mainly due to mainstream-music Buying music on vinyl records is “in” again, and those who listen to mainstream-styles jump on the wagon again. Compared to rock and similar styles that currently enjoy increasing vinyl LP-sales in the USA, electronic music looks like nothing but a tiny niche-market. However genres like for example tekkno have constantly brought out new vinyl-releases, regardless of any mainstream-trends. This persistant, high output went on until the conquest of DVS (digital vinyl systems for DJ-usage) started. Thanks to affordable digital vinyl systems like for e.g. MixVibes, Serato Scratch Live, Final Scratch, Quad, Torq etc. everyone can have the feeling of vinyl-mixing while actually using MP3s. This has eliminated the need to buy vinyl-records for DJing – and it is the DJs who have always formed the main-market for electronic music recordings. Only a small part of clubbers actually spend their hard-earned money on vinyls, thus leaving more cash on festivals, raves and club-events. The rise of autosync controller-”DJing” did not help either (some people labelled this type of auto-beatmatched button-pushing “controllerism” to imply that skills would be needed to perform, just like in turntablism in which you actually need to learn something for real, in order to achieve decent results). Yes, the boom of vinyl-sales in the USA is real of course, but it is thanks to listeners who purchase LPs which are mainly re-releases of mainstream-albums on vinyl-records. Vinyl-sales in the electronic music scene in Europe (and beyond) however mostly depend on purchases by DJs and not the average, general listener who tend to rather spend cash on clubbing than on vinyl-records. Furthermore, the majority of tekkno vinyl-sales consists of singles/EPs – not of LPs. Sales of vinyl-singles are still dropping into a bottomless pit in the USA by the way, and according to Nielsen SoundScan who monitor the US-market, even those American vinyl-LPs sold only make up for just 0,2% of total album-sales. It is very cool to see that mainstream-listeners in the USA start to rediscover a format that has been the main-medium for the electronic music scene ever since the start, but there is very little positive effect on our local tekkno-scene coming from the US-sales. Even if the average tekkno-DJ may love vinyl-records, they could not care less about alternative rock records for instance. And according to Amazon.com, alternative rock albums and classic rock albums are the best selling vinyl-LPs from their vinyl-only shop including 150.000 titles (source: Time.com). Great for them, but of no concern for fans of electronic sounds, and hence this is no criteria that lets me rejoice over a rise in record-sales. The number of vinyl-records sold in 2010 is the highest since 1991 This might be true, but have a look at record-sales before 1991, and you will see that this particular year was a record-low in the history of vinyl-sales anyway. Duh…