PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- It was a fortuitous typo for the Fred Meyer retail
chain.
The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer
is The Beatles album "Abbey Road."
This spring, an employee intending
to order a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.'s latest release
"Accelerate" inadvertently entered the "LP" code instead.
Soon boxes of the big, vinyl discs showed up at several stores.
Some sent them back. But a handful
put them on the shelves, and 20 LPs sold the first day.
The Portland-based company, owned by
The Kroger Co., realized the error might not be so bad after all. Fred Meyer is now
testing vinyl sales at 60 of its stores in Oregon, Washington and Alaska. The
company says, based on the response so far, it plans to roll out vinyl in July
in all its stores that sell music.
Other mainstream retailers are
giving vinyl a spin too. Best Buy is testing sales at some stores. And online
music giant Amazon.com, which has sold vinyl for most of the 13 years it has
been in business online, created a special vinyl-only section last fall.
The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer
is The Beatles album "Abbey Road." But musicians from the White
Stripes and the Foo Fighters to Metallica and Pink Floyd are selling well, the
company says.
"It's not just a nostalgia
thing," said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer. "The
response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has
a better sound."
According to the Recording
Industry Association of America, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped
more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of
CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they
lost some ground to digital formats.
The resurgence of vinyl centers on a
long-standing debate over analog versus digital sound. Digital recordings
capture samples of sound and place them very close together as a complete
package that sounds nearly identical to continuous sound to many people.
Analog recordings on most LPs are
continuous, which produces a truer sound -- though, paradoxically, some new LP
releases are being recorded and mixed digitally but delivered analog.
Some purists also argue that the
compression required to allow loudness in some digital formats weakens the
quality as well.
But it's not just about the sound.
Audiophiles say they also want the format's overall experience -- the sensory
experience of putting the needle on the record, the feeling of side A and side
B and the joy of lingering over the liner notes.
"I think music products should
be more than just music," said Isaac Hudson, a 28-year-old vinyl fan
standing outside one of Portland's larger independent music stores.
The interest seems to be catching
on. Turntable sales are picking up, and the few remaining record pressers say
business is booming.
But the LP isn't going to muscle out
CDs or iPod soon.
Nearly 450 million CDs were sold
last year, versus just under 1 million LPs, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Based on the first three months of this year, Nielsen says vinyl album sales
could reach 1.6 million in 2008.
"I don't think vinyl is for
everyone; it's for the die-hard music consumer," said Jay Millar, director
of marketing at United Record Pressing, a Nashville based company that is the
nation's largest record pressing plant.
Many major artists -- Elvis
Costello, the Raconteurs and others -- are issuing LPs and encouraging fans to
check out their albums on vinyl. On Amazon.com, one of the best-selling LPs is
Madonna's latest album, "Hard Candy".
Some artists package vinyl and
digital versions of their music together, including offers for free digital
downloads along with the record.
"We've definitely had some
talks with the major retailers about exclusives on the manufacturing end,"
Millar said of United Record Pressing, which focuses primarily on independent
recordings.
An avid music fan himself, Millar
says he has moved to vinyl in recent years.
"Once I got my first iPod ...
I'm looking at my wall of CDs and trying to justify it," Millar said.
"The things I like -- the artwork, the liner notes, the sound quality --
it dawns on me, those are things I like better on vinyl." He welcomed back
the pops and clicks, even some of the scratches.
"I like that fact that it's
imperfect in a lot of ways, live music is imperfect too," Millar said.
Independent music stores, which have
been the primary source of LPs in recent years, say many fans never left the
medium.
"People have been buying vinyl
all along," said Cathy Hagen, manager at 2nd Avenue Records in Portland. "There
was a fairly good supply from independent labels on vinyl all these years. As
far as a resurgence, the major labels are just pressing more now."
In this game, big retailers aren't
necessarily competing head to head with independent sellers' regular clientele
of nostalgic baby boomers, independent label fans and turntable DJs.
"I cannot see that Best Buy or
Fred Meyer would order the same things we would," Hagen said. "They
aren't going to be ordering the reggae, funk, punk or industrial music."
Share
this on:
Mixx Digg Facebook del.icio.us reddit StumbleUpon Myspace
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All
rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed.