Vinyl Revival
No longer just for audiophiles, design buffs and neophytes are tuning in to the trend.
The weekend scene at Four Barrel coffee shop on Valencia Street looks pretty much like any other gathering of in-the-know San Franciscans — cool kids sipping highbrow coffee, locals noshing delicious pastries and posh couples chasing after their kids and dogs.
But pay close attention and you’ll find that you should be going to Four Barrel as much to listen as to taste.
Owner Jeremy Tooker certainly knows coffee, but he knows about as much about audio gear, equipping Four Barrel with thousands of dollars’ worth of high-end vintage turntables, amplifiers and other paraphernalia, all designed to create an atmosphere that no Spotify subscription can approximate.
“It would be so easy to have an iPod with a mix, but then we’d wind up with the same music for three months and everyone would get sick of it. By playing only records, there’s a lot more intention, and baristas really choose what they want to hear during their shifts,” he says.
If Tooker’s high-fidelity take on sipping music is an appealing throwback or, just as likely, a concession to the whims of a true audiophile (he confesses to owning over 10,000 records), he’s not alone.
Last year might aptly be called the year of the record. According to Nielsen Soundscan, an industry tracker, new-LP sales were up 51 percent from the previous year. All told, 9.2 million records sold last year, and though that’s a sliver of total music sold in the U.S., the format is on the upswing even in our age of streaming services and instant-gratification downloads. And experts expect vinyl to continue to grow in popularity in 2015, in part because of its new appeal to casual listeners and design buffs in addition to collectors.
Mainstream retailers like Urban Outfitters now sell vinyl ( just check out the selection at the Powell Street store), and in 2013 even Whole Foods got into the groove. In San Francisco, restaurants and bars feature record players and albums — some as their primary sound system, and others, like Chambers Eat + Drink at the rock ’n’roll-themed Phoenix Hotel, as an integral part of the decor.
Consumers and record companies alike are dropping dollars to drop the needle on the seemingly moribund format. Retro blues rocker Jack White’s 2014 album “Lazaretto” sold 87,600 copies, the most for a vinyl album since Pearl Jam’s 1994 release “Vitalogy” and well ahead of the 2013-pacing 49,000 copies of Daft Punk’s “Discovery.” According to Billboard, 94 albums sold at least 10,000 copies on vinyl in 2014, up from 46 titles in 2013. Perhaps the most ambitious vinyl campaign of 2014 came from Blue Note Records. To celebrate its 75th anniversary last year, the venerable jazz label began putting out reissues of 100 of its most celebrated albums. The initiative will spread into next year and beyond with the goal, according to President Don Was, to put out the entire back catalog on LPs.
“Not long ago I sat down with 15 independent record store owners,” says Was. “I asked them ‘If you were president of Blue Note, what would you do?’ And a couple of them said, ‘We’d reissue vinyl, but not for audiophiles, not high-end box sets; do a people’s-priced high-quality vinyl issue.’ And I thought, yeah, I totally get that.”
There’s a thrill in sliding a little Thelonious Monk onto the platter that you’ll never get from cuing up “Round Midnight” on your iPod, and record execs are betting that 12-by-12-inch sleeves, large-format liner notes and free download codes will keep sales high.
“I think 2014 has been the biggest jump for casual listeners or first-timers that just scored a turntable,” said Chris Veltri, owner of Groove Merchant.
Veltri has run the Lower Haight record store since 1997, and though he says interest in records has run in cycles, he’s found that the last year has been especially good for the vinyl trade. In his view, it’s only a matter of time before those casual listeners get hooked.
“Once they figure out how fun it is to make new discoveries,” Veltri says, “that’s when the magic happens and they’re usually all in from that point on.”
Veltri has even seen success curating a couple of crates of records for non-music stores. Robert Patterson owns the clothing and housewares store Voyager in the Mission District, and the four crates he stocks from Groove Merchant have pride of place not far from the front door. Adobe Books on 24th Street is another of Veltri’s clients.
“There is something really nice to slowly enjoying a full record in the format intended by the artist,” says Patterson. “Records require a more active listening experience that matches our aesthetic and goals. Slow food, slow music, slow clothing, slow relaxation and focused attention.”
Bobby McCole, who deals vintage vinyl at Pyramid Records on 24th Street in the Mission, sees the two biggest markets for vinyl today as “DJs and domestic types.” He classifies the latter as “folks who really just like the ambience that records provide in their home lives. This seems especially true of nesters — people or couples settling into a new apartment or house together. People who entertain at home a good deal also seem to like to have a turntable around, almost as a talking point.”
That pretty nicely describes Red Gaskell. The 25-year-old lives in SoMa, works as head of social for the fashion company Everlane and just bought his first record player from Amazon, a roughly $100 Audio Technica LP-60.
“I have a certain aesthetic that I want my home to have,” says Gaskell, “and records fit in that category. I like the idea of having a Sunday ritual where you’re relaxing or with a friend, you put on a record and you actually listen to it instead of having music just play.” Gaskell intends to make rapper Nas’ 1994 classic “Illmatic” his first record purchase.
“One of the reasons we’re bringing in lower-priced products is that we have a lot of techies who come into the coffee bar,” says Michael Woods, owner of Elite Audio Systems and Coffee, an audiophile’s paradise at Folsom and Fifth streets. “I had a couple in their late 20s or early 30s looking to buying a table for a workmate. They bought a turntable for him; they spent maybe $500 for a Thorens. But then they bought one each for themselves.”
Gifting habits of the young and liquid aside, a generation raised on CDs and MP3s is craving a new experience, new sounds and the tangibility of records.
“It’s fun for me to see young people buying vinyl again,” says Woods. “There’s nothing like it. You touch it, you play it, you clean it. You become more involved with the music from the moment you take it out of the sleeve.”