Hot Wax – Vinyl Making a Comeback

Perched behind his old Apple laptop and a glass counter filled with stickers and buttons emblazoned with the names of punk bands, Scott Wishart is an anomaly. Lunchbox Records, the Central Avenue storefront he owns, is one of an ever-slimming number of truly independent record stores. As the posters for local shows and indie-label releases plastered on the windows of the shop can attest, Lunchbox isn’t the place to go to pick up the latest T-Pain or Taylor Swift CDs. But that’s precisely what drives Wishart’s business.

As a specialty shop, Lunchbox has been largely unaffected by the record industry’s catastrophic fall from grace that began around the turn of the millennium when a kid named Shawn Fanning developed a little computer program he called Napster. Internet file-sharing boomed, then gave way to digital music sales through services such as iTunes. All the while, CD sales busted with little help from the antagonizing efforts of the Recording Industry Association of America. Big box stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart continually downsize the floor space devoted to music. At large, the future of recorded music looks dismal.

But at Lunchbox, business is just fine, thanks in no small part to the store’s unique and eclectic offerings—and helped along by a surprising resurgence in the popularity of the most outmoded of recording formats, vinyl records. Wishart, who has been in the music retail business since 1997, says, “I’ve always bought records, but when I first started, records were on the way out. Labels, especially big ones, weren’t even releasing them and it kind of continued that way until a few years ago.”

Today, I’m talking to Wishart with an armload of new (at least, new to me) records stretching the flimsy handles of the plastic bag in which they’re ensconced. He’s blasting “Old Wounds,” the latest CD from the Louisville, Ky.-based punk band Young Widows, through the store’s speakers as customers comb through shelves for hidden treasures. In the course of our conversation, Wishart sells three copies of the Charlotte-based band Yardwork’s self-titled EP to three customers. He sells an armload of obscure metal LPs to a couple who sheepishly admit that they didn’t intend to spend so much money. They couldn’t help it. “People like to own things,” Wishart says. “Even though you can go and download anything in the world, if you want to look at the art or something physical, it’s a nicer, more tangible product.”

“Me buying 1,000 records is just like some guy that has 200 pairs of shoes in his closet,” he adds. “It’s just different consumer addictions.”

And he’s happy to be the well-stocked dealer of choice for the Queen City’s discerning music junkies. As record stores close nationwide, Lunchbox keeps its doors open. As the record industry as we know it spirals downward, Lunchbox’s CD sales stay constant, and even rise some months. And with vinyl’s new vogue status, Lunchbox reaps the benefits of being one of only a small number of retail outlets in town carrying the hip toy. Says Wishart, “Most stores it’s like less than 10 percent of their sales, and for me it’s like around 40 percent from [vinyl] records.”

Success stories like Lunchbox are beginning to perk journalists’ ears nationwide, too. News stories in big-time publications like Time, “The Chicago Tribune,” and Wired Magazine and on NPR all point to a dramatic resurgence in vinyl’s viability as a recording format. Industry statistics showed a 15.4 percent increase in vinyl sales from 2006 to 2007 – from 858,000 records to 990,000, overall. But that doesn’t include small stores like Lunchbox. More telling are the record-pressing plants that can’t keep up with demand, the small record labels offering vinyl editions of albums also available on CD or digital formats, or the mere fact that retail giants such as Best Buy and Amazon.com have begun making room for vinyl records.
What, then, would bring a younger generation of music fans back to the format their parents discarded years ago? Well, price could be a factor. Used records often sell for much less than a new – or even a used – CD. While visiting Lunchbox, I bought used vinyl copies of Willie Nelson’s classic “Red Headed Stranger” and Marvin Gaye’s essential “Let’s Get It On” for a paltry $6 each. There’s the collectible nature of records, as well. The cover art is much bigger, making them seem more like a keepsake than CDs for many consumers. Records also tend to be more limited in quantity than their 5-inch counterparts. Most records are limited to only a few thousand – even for bigger releases. Boutique records are often made into limited-edition items with mere hundreds of copies in existence. Plus, say some consumers, a record just sounds better.

Or does it? “If you have good equipment, yes it does sound better,” says Wishart. “But, I mean, most people have crappy record players. If you get one of those crappy USB Ion turntables, and you play it on that, versus a CD player through a real stereo, the CD player’s gonna sound way better.”

He adds, “Then people talk about, ‘Oh, I like the pops and clicks of vinyl.’ If you have pops and clicks in your vinyl you have scratched-up records and you’re not taking care of them. That’s not what records are about. Good records sound good. If you have pops and clicks then you’re doing something wrong. That’s like saying, ‘I got a hamburger and there’s pieces of bone in it, but I like that because it makes it more homey.’”

So without audiophile equipment or misguided notions of aural “authenticity,” it would seem consumers are left with little incentive to purchase a record over a CD. And that’s why many records offer a little something extra. On their Top 100-charting album “The Second Gleam,” Concord’s favorite sons The Avett Brothers offer two extra songs exclusive to the LP version. Many record labels also have begun to include coupons for free MP3 downloads with LPs, giving customers the improved sound quality and novelty of owning vinyl and the convenience of the digital format.

But even at a vinyl-centric store like Lunchbox, CDs are still the most prevalent format. “There’s only been a couple months where I’ve sold more records than CDs,” says Wishart. Despite the Chicken Little claims of music-industry reports, it seems unlikely the CD will ever disappear entirely. “They’re too cheap to make,” Wishart opines, suggesting the 5-inch plastic discs might eventually assume an entirely promotional role, or become the province of small, local bands eager to get their music out quickly and cheaply.

This, of course, leaves a wide opportunity for vinyl to reassume its position as the dominant physical format for audio – especially in the realm of independent music. “Some genres never stopped making records,” Wishart says. “All the indie rock stuff always came on records…if you go down to Reggae Central they still sell 45s that they get from Jamaica because they never stopped making them.” And as more and more independent – and even local – bands begin to release records, it certainly seems to be possible. The Raleigh-based punk band Double Negative released its debut, “The Wonderful And Frightening World of Double Negative,” exclusively on vinyl in 2007. It sold out its initial pressing in a matter of days. Wishart runs a boutique label that has released 7-inch EPs from local bands Obstruction and Calabi Yau. And the sale of turntables has increased, as has their availability in mainstream outlets like Urban Outfitters and Target.

Already, vinyl records have moved beyond the scope of obsessive collectors and teenagers unearthing their parents’ dusty collections in the attic. The once-obsolete format, it seems, is regaining its footing in a very real way. Just spend some time in Lunchbox Records watching the customers entering in waves as they file through the store’s inventory for a dusty classic or a shrink-wrapped new release.

~ Bryan Reed