Vinyl LPs have always had their champions. Ever since the point in the
80s when CDs became the dominant medium for listening to music, there have been
people who swore the swore the sound was always better on a 33 RPM LP, and
vinyl albums have often been priced at a premium to those little silver plastic
discs.
This seems to have stepped up a gear since digital downloads knocked
CDs off their perch, and there have been plenty of magazine articles, radio and
TV documentaries exploring the enduring appeal of vinyl. A couple of weeks ago
BBC4 gave Danny Baker three hour long shows to talk with various mates about
what made the old LPs so great.
So far it’s been a minority interest, but this week I saw a sign that
it’s a love affair that has obtained some weight in the mainstream media. On a
platform at Baker Street Underground there was a large poster for the online
dating service match.com, conveying a sense of expectancy with the words “I listened
to her favourite album before the date so I could understand why she loved it
so much”.
Alongside the words was an image of a vinyl LP, the stylus on the
grooves of the first track. It was a surprising choice, as for the vast
majority of people that moment would mean slipping a CD into a slot or pressing
a button on an MP3 player, but it was obviously meant to convey that there was
something special about the man, the woman and the prospects for their
relationship. The message was that it would produce something better than most
first dates, or whatever any other dating service could offer, because playing
an LP produces something CDs or downloads can’t match.
You could argue over whether it’s a message that stands up to scrutiny,
but when the advertising industry stars to use an idea it believes it is
sufficiently widespread to seduce a large number of people. It’s betting that
there’s a demographic with money to spend and a readiness to accept the association
of ideas: in this case that a guy who listens to vinyl is worth a serious
relationship.
It might amount to a load of old tosh, but it shows that listening to
music on vinyl – or at least the idea of it – has become seductive to more than
a few music geeks.
Mark
Say's collection of fiction, Perversities of Faith, is available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com. Also check out www.marksaywriter.com.