Vinyl. A forgotten musical medium that has become a hunting trophy that can cost around thousands of euros. once sleeping in attics as a souvenir of a bygone era, today it is an object coveted by all generations. In major stores, at record stores, in flea markets or on the internet: vinyl is everywhere and its price continues to rise. Blame it on bottled demand and unscrupulous retailers. A brief overview of the vinyl market and its speculators.
Abandoned by the general public when the CD arrived precisely forty years ago, vinyl has been experiencing renewed interest for several years. According to the Syndicat national de l’édition phonographique, in 2021 vinyl accounted for 33% of physical sales with more than 5 million units sold and ranked third in revenue, up more than 50%.
Since 2016, the record market, increased to 51% by those under 35, has continued to grow. “In France, we have young people who stream and buy vinyl. They have a more pronounced commitment to their artists. And I imagine it’s because they are much more connected and close to them thanks to social networks”, deciphers Paulin Pigorot, head of studies at SNEP. Instead of posters hanging on the walls of their teenage bedrooms, the younger generation today prefers vinyl.
And who says new consumers, says increased demand in the face of an offer that is still too low. And as with most products, when demand exceeds supply, the price increases. In 2021, three French majors (Sony, Universal and Warner) increased the prices of part of their catalog, thus increasing the prices excluding tax by more than 19 euros for some. So the vinyl Phone hard limit would have gone from 12.49 euros excluding tax to 30 euros excluding tax, according to the union Le Gredin (group of independent French record stores).
To justify this surge in prices, the majors have drawn the card of the increase in the cost of raw materials, in particular the polymers used in the manufacture of the black cake. Inflation noted by Alexis Castiel, co-founder of the site Diggers Factory linking artists and fans to press vinyl on demand, and which was accompanied by “a shortage of raw materials such as cardboard”.
Added to this is the lack of factories capable of meeting a significant production demand. In France, the companies M Com’Music or Vinyl Records Makers are no match for the giant GZ, which concentrates 32% of world production. But this simple slowdown in production turned into a real traffic jam when the Californian factory Apollo Masters, one of the two factories that make the lacquer essential to making a vinyl record, burned down in February 2020. So the places are expensive, and small independent labels that want to press their records have to be patient with music industry behemoths ordering thousands of copies.
However, these prices do not prevent customers from jostling at the gate, quite the contrary. In a few years, the majors have made vinyl a real collector’s item before being a musical medium. Which explains why according to a 2016 survey commissioned by the BBC from ICM Unlimited, 48% of Britons who bought vinyl in the previous month didn’t listen to it. Lured by a well-rehearsed marketing speech, fans are ready to pay the price to obtain a collector’s item that links them a little more to the universe of their favorite artist.
“There are plenty of marketing campaigns that are put on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok to develop and engage the audience of the artist. We see this in particular with the merch operations that are put in place when a new album”says Paulin Pigorot, taking as an example the marketing operation around the release of the latest album by rapper Orelsan. “We can clearly see through this type of operation that the links that artists create with their fanbase make it possible to maintain and develop the physical and vinyl market”.
For the release of Civilization, the rapper had released 15 exclusive versions of his album on vinyl, each decorated with unique visuals. In eight hours, the site had sold its 22,500 copies at 38 euros each, thus causing the annoyance of certain Internet users. According to the SNEP, online sales alone represent 1/3 of physical revenue, or 63 million euros, 6 million of which come solely from artist boutiques.
Heyyyy The limited editions are finally coming out on vinyl ✨ It’s on sale from tomorrow 10 am ✌ Thank you for waiting ✌ there are only 1500 of each. See you at https://t.co/LrrjhmQdxa pic.twitter.com/5dytZ6Ihx0
— OrelSan (@Orel_san) May 10, 2022
“The exclusive side of the product is put forward to push people to buy because they are afraid of missing out”, believes Victor, digger (collector) and creator of the account Hip-Hop on vinyl. More recently, the duo Caballero & JeanJass skipped streaming when releasing the album ZushiBoys only on limited edition vinyl. As often, it was necessary to pre-order the disc on the Internet before its release. But after barely five minutes, the dedicated site, drowned under a million requests, no longer worked. “Those who have managed to get it are already trying to resell it at a high price because they know that there is a certain enthusiasm, continues the young man. Demand is growing, but there are not enough copies on the market to meet it. And that the speculators understood it well”.
.@zushiboyz Vol.2 in numbers is:
: 1 million requests on the site in 5 minutes
: 170 sales/minute
: A peak at 600 sales/minute
: Sold out in 14 minutesGood game @caballerobxl & @JeanJass !! pic.twitter.com/IQq8IkM7EU
— Diggers Factory (@DiggersFactory) July 29, 2022
In the vinyl sector, speculators are making their teeth cringe. When we talk about the subject, Francesco, record store and owner of Music Avenue Paris in the 11th arrondissement, gets off to a flying start. “Me, I prefer to sell to a collector, to a guy who mixes or who goes to listen at home. Not to a pseudo-investor”. Behind the petrol-colored counter of his vinyl store, Francesco is bustling about. The record store has just refused a sale on the Discogs site, a platform dedicated to musical media. “The guy wanted to take it from me for 70 euros, I went to his profile, I knew he was buying to resell for more directly afterwards. It’s done for him!”breathes the fifties, pulling up his mask which had slipped during his energetic story.
Originally used as a music database to access discographies, Discogs has for some years been a marketplace where users dictate vinyl ratings. As one would consult the argus before buying a car, Discogs allows, for example, a potential vinyl buyer to check the reasonableness of the prices offered by a record store. Except that in reality, the platform would house a phenomenon of speculation which it does not necessarily seem to want to put an end to. “Since they created the site, they have been absent subscribers”, criticizes Victor from the twitter account Le Hip-Hop en Vinyle. The site, which receives 8% commission on each sale, could probably benefit from this trend. Contacted by Franceinfo, the site did not respond to our interview request.
In the jargon of regulars on the site, these buyers/speculators are nicknamed sharks. Their prey: compulsive buyers or whales. “The sharks have their market assured because the whales are numerous on Discogs”, metaphorizes Roméo, a 27-year-old doctoral student and vinyl collector. To achieve their ends, these sharks of the vinyl 2.0 trade are full of methods: fake buyers to artificially raise the price of one of the records offered for sale on their profile, disguised copies or even false comments to make believe that the record has been played by a reputable DJ.
But sometimes little effort is enough for these predators to catch a good catch. “I remember selling records for 15 euros. Two days later, I found them on Discogs at much higher prices. Sometimes it was a 10% increase, other times 500%”, testifies Nicolas Williart of the independent French metal label XENOKORP. The pressing time being longer for the independent labels, the sharks take advantage of this to increase the rating of the vinyl while it is being repressed. “For us, it has changed our way of proceeding, we sell at the same price on the website, but we have sometimes kept around ten copies under our arm and resold it two, three years later at the price that was on Discogs”admits the label manager.
The problem is that by doing so speculators artificially raise the price of a vinyl to disguise it as a certain rarity and thus make it even more desirable. “I have a perfect example. The day after David Bowie died, all his records went up in value because people absolutely wanted to have one. In the store I had pressings that I sold for ten euros. Since they weren’t rare, they weren’t worth more than that.“, confides Francesco, the record store. Because in theory in the sale of second-hand vinyl, the more vinyl is difficult to find, the more expensive it is.
For Mr Vinyle, a French youtuber who created his channel in 2015 to talk about his passion for the black cake, the rarity does not justify these exorbitant ratings. “The received idea of saying it’s rare it’s expensive, it comes from Discogs and the fact that the platform displays median prices. Between collectors with a little experience, we know full well that the real quotation does not is not that of the Internet”, he said. The enthusiast says he fell on the disc Smile of Michael Jackson, rather sought after by collectors. It was then offered in the 200 euros on eBay. However, in the quotations, the vinyl in very good condition is around 1,500 euros. “When you know a little bit, you know you can get vinyl at a much lower price than what the Discogs listing offers”.
Although Discogs is a very practical and complete tool for referencing vinyl records, the specialist advises to favor human relations and to meet record stores so as not to be blinded by a smoke screen. On his YouTube channel, Mr Vinyl takes care of prevention by mainly targeting young people whose lack of experience can sometimes be lacking in the environment. “It is necessary to be in this prevention. Otherwise we will fall into a collectionnite, a Panini syndrome [maison d’édition de vignettes à collectionner ndlr] , which can become toxic and dangerous. I always tell them: favor quality over quantity, be in the music, not in the object.”