The compact disc celebrates its 40th anniversary in August this year. After having completely supplanted vinyl during the 1980s and 1990s, this medium was given for dead ten years ago with the arrival of digital and the resurgence of microgroove. But now the CD is experiencing an unexpected resurgence in popularity among music lovers.
Inflated by growing demand from collectors, the price of vinyl has skyrocketed in recent years, and even more so in recent months. Music lovers, those who still want to hold a physical version of the albums they listen to, are thus increasingly likely to fall back on the good old compact disc.
“A used CD sells for about $5. It’s a bit more expensive for more niche styles, like rap and metal. But it’s still much more affordable than vinyl, which has become overpriced. People left in fear and, each year, it gets worse. The price keeps climbing,” laments Jean-François Ouimet, owner of Musique Cité, in Sherbrooke.
Founded in 1958, the oldest independent record store in Quebec will close its doors in a few months, in particular because the business is struggling to keep pace with the resale of vinyl records on the Internet. On classified ad sites, the average vinyl retails for around $20. Some collectibles sell for more than $100.
This overheating in the vinyl market has implications not only for the second-hand record market, but also for new releases. While Quebec artists had resumed the habit of releasing their new opuses on this medium, some today no longer have the means to produce LPs for their fans. This is the case of singer Jérôme Minière, whose the latest album, The melody, the river and the night, is only available in stores on CD. Printing would have taken a year of waiting.
“There is between 10 and 14 months of waiting for a vinyl. It’s been piling up for a long time, but it got bigger last year with Adele’s latest recordwhich monopolized many pressing plants with the printing of 500,000 copies at once. Everyone fell behind, and the big record companies got stuck on the pressing plantswhich left little room for more independent artists,” explains Jean-François Rioux, owner of the Le Vacarme boutique in Plaza Saint-Hubert.
no nostalgia
For Luc Bérard, owner of the L’Oblique boutique since 1987, it is essentially the price of vinyl that explains the sudden rebirth of the compact disc, and not any feeling of nostalgia. The CD player will never have as much luster as the turntable. “Vinyl will always be more valuable to collectors. Because of the size of the covers, among other things,” points out the Montreal record store.
And yet, music lovers would have good reason to miss the days when the CD was the most popular format. Because everyone agrees, the sound quality is immeasurably better on disc than on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.
Now, does music on CD sound better than on vinyl? An endless debate that has divided music lovers for forty years now. “It depends on the times. I think, for albums recorded before the 1980s, they sound better on vinyl, because they were recorded specifically for analog storage. As for the CD, it is sure that at the beginning, it had weaknesses. But digital continues to improve, while analogue has not evolved”, notes Luc Bérard.
Still down
While independent record stores are seeing growing interest in compact discs, CD sales are still down in Quebec. There are indeed always more elderly people who are abandoning CDs for digital than music lovers who are reconnecting with CDs because the cost of vinyl has exploded. But the latest figures from the Observatory of Culture and Communication are revealing, and they could be the harbingers of a trend.
Between 2019 and 2020, CD sales fell by 26%, only to then collapse by 48% between 2020 and 2021, partly due to the pandemic. Last year, the decline was limited to less than 8%.
Will we see the curve reverse in 2022? In France, sales of compact discs rose by 10% last year. “It’s hard to make a prediction at this stage, but we hope so. Physical sales are much more interesting in terms of revenue for artists than the streaming. It is therefore a trend that we see in a good light, ”underlines Ève Paré, general manager of the Quebec Association of the recording, entertainment and video industry.