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Tables have turned

Marcus Berkmann

Wednesday, 30th July 2008

Marcus Berkmann on Travis Elborough's nostalgia for LP records

Prices then leapt in the mid-1980s when CDs came in. The average CD cost £12 — roughly equivalent to £30 today. Once again the album had been repositioned as a premium product, even though CDs cost less than vinyl LPs to produce. My god, they made a lot of money. I have a friend who has been going to the same therapist for 15 years, and when she sits in her house for her weekly session she looks around and thinks, ‘I’ve paid for about a quarter of this.’ I feel the same towards record companies. How much cocaine have I inadvertently bought for their rising young executives? How many taxi journeys to gigs by awful up-and-coming bands for their half-witted A&R men?

Even three or four years ago, we were still all paying £11 or £12 for a CD, because that was how much they cost and there wasn’t any way round it. There is now. My local record shop, which couldn’t or wouldn’t reduce its prices to Amazon and Asda levels, went under with terrifying speed. The record companies are crying foul, but that’s the way the market goes: if you profit by it in the good times, you have absolutely no right to complain when the good times end. (Banks seem to have the same problem.) Not that we, as consumers, are complaining exactly. Indeed, it’s all I can do not to cheer when I see something I really want in Fopp marked down to £5. Travis Elborough thinks the album is finished, that downloads will wipe it out completely. So shop now while you can. It’s the buyer’s prerogative: cash in when the opportunity arises and take no responsibility for anything whatsoever.