As we begin another year, it is also time to reflect, looking back at the unusual - and sometimes unbelievable - achievements of 2023. Rather than focus on a personal achievement in this case, one which caught my own eye was the continual success of vinyl records, a format which in 2023, rose for a 16th consecutive year to sales of 5.9m in the UK alone; this despite the fact they'd been once written off as an inferior and largely inconvenient product.
And whilst there's no argument that streaming is without question the most convenient and accessible way to access music (what would you have thought if, even 20 years ago, we'd been informed there would one day be a service that would access and play virtually any song in the world in a matter of seconds?) you cannot help be secretly delighted for the successes of the past.
Alongside the sale of vinyl records there was also celebration for the cassette tape - once relegated to the fate of being in older, second hand cars - with the rates of its sale actually reaching record breaking figures; sales of cassettes are at 100,000 for a fourth year in a row. Even the humble compact disc, whilst not as popular as it once was, found its plummeting sales figures slowing down considerably during 2023.
But, if we have streaming, why is this happening?
In some ways, its all about the experience, both the visual and the physical interactions. A few years ago, when interviewing record buyers during an event in Sunderland, I was informed by at least three people that they were purchasing records despite having no means of playing them. The purchase of a turntable demands careful consideration, respect and financial investment, and in some cases those I spoke too would rather wait until such time as they had a turntable worthy of the records they wanted to play on it; as opposed to just "any old one will do".
And this behaviour is not just restricted to the occasional audiophile, as younger generations decide to engage - and invest - in record buying practices due to the tangible, physical, relationship with the record; often purchasing the record but continuing to stream music - seeing the packaging, presentation and delivery of the product just as important as the music contained therein; or even the ability to hear it on that format.
I can remember inheriting several of my parents record collection from the attic, at such a time when they considered them essentially useless, and many of my earliest and fondest memories were playing those sounds and learning about the information they contained. My initial tastes and music fandoms were formed from those sessions, and in an age before streaming, I was also gifted these records because it wasn't within our financial means to afford CDs.
In fact, we were regularly taping music (and films) on blank cassettes - and often I'd have family members, cousins and uncles gifting me a cassette copy of the original album. Cassettes were, therefore, probably a bigger part of my initial musical education. They were less expensive than CD and they could be handled with a heavier hand, so I found myself gravitating towards receiving Christmas and Birthday gifts in the form of cassette albums. My most treasured, mostly all original albums, were contained within a specific yellow case I can remember to this day. I only wish I'd kept it.
In the Channel 4 comedy 'Derry Girls' there is a scene in which Claire tells Erin, having spoken to her Mum about a loan of money, that a mythical 'trust fund account' doesn't exist, and in fact she thinks they might actually be "quite poor". Erin, having had a similar response, simply responds "I think we might be too, yeah...". For me, there was an ignorance in our financial detriment, or certainly there was never actually a concern that there was anything wrong. Hindsight is both a blessing and a curse, and in some ways, its only due to realising that our family was limited in terms of income - to some respects - that allows me to realise why I received the specific items I did, and that I didn't gravitate towards something else...or they didn't end up in landfill.
When it comes to vinyl and cassette, younger generations don't always have more disposal income than before, but they are choosing to use it in different ways. A recent report by the Resolution Foundation found that "disposable incomes of US millennials in their early 30s are now 21% higher than their predecessors had at the same age in 2007. In contrast, UK millennials of the same age actually have lower incomes than earlier cohorts had before the financial crisis."
But when we look at interaction with music, specifically, one of the greatest gifts that legal streaming services have given us is the ability to hear a lot more for a lot less. In the 1990s I was restricted to radio stations, old records and whatever could be recorded from a relative. If only, I consider, I'd had the ability to actually access as much music as I possibly could - listening to the length and breath of an artists entire discography for one low low cost (or maybe, if you can tolerate the ads, nothing at all). Even a few years later, I was phoning TV stations to request specific music videos played on rotation, but had I high speed broadband and a YouTube account I could've saved my parents phone bill a hefty fee.
Purchasing physical music, especially in larger formats, is as much a rite of passage for any music fan as it's ever been - eager as they are to then share and boast about such collections in TikTok videos. The acquisition of physical media is now another way of showing intense support and fandom of a particular artist, perhaps over another, or perhaps in collaboration with others. An article for a different time.
And although it's not been as visually evident as moving from the 1950s to the 1990s, let's say, the advancement and accessibility of technology in 2024 means younger generations have less and less excuses not to know the wide length and breath of music catalogues whilst spending almost nothing. The first album I ever bought with my own money cost me a considerable premium, for the same amount, you could now get almost three months subscription to Spotify.