Scratching an itch – NZ’s vinyl junkies are joining the rush to records

As vinyl sales hit record levels overseas New Zealanders are also doing their bit to keep the music alive, forking out $8 million on records last year.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 41.3m EPs/LPs were sold in the United States last year, outstripping sales of CDs for the first time since 1987. Vinyl albums earned US$1.2 billion, compared to $483m for CDs.

It’s a similar scenario here, albeit on a much smaller scale. Figures just released by Recorded Music NZ​ show overall physical sales of recorded music here increased by $1.7m to $11m in 2022, driven by a significant increase in vinyl sales, at $8m, up from $5.9m in 2021. That was offset slightly by a small decline in compact disc sales.

It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that the organisers of what’s touted as Wellington’s biggest vinyl fair, On the Record, expect hundreds of dedicated audiophiles to make the pilgrimage to the event in Upper Hutt on Saturday.

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Amanda Barber, a Wellington College English and history teacher, is the brains behind the wahine-run operation, which aims to dispel the myth that vinyl collecting is “a bit of a boys’ club”. Her own collection – a mix of LPs and 45s – numbers close to 1000.

“For me, my music collection is definitely about the sound quality … For older generations, there would be [a] nostalgia factor, in some cases for the status.”

Slow Boat Records’ Jeremy Ward is also noticing a distinct shift in the Cuba St store’s clientele.

“Vinyl used to be very much the domain of older men (at least 40+), but over the last decade has become much more something that transcends easy categorisation.”

Ward says the biggest growth sector is younger women, helped by the rise of artists like Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish, for whom record shopping is a group activity.

“I would also say it is definitely a bit of a status thing, a badge of honour, something more tangible than streaming, a way to declare your love for an artist – and that those LPs hopefully assume an almost talismanic importance.

The store had ’’Swifties’’ queueing from 5am for a very limited Taylor Swift release on Record Store Day in April.

While staunch vinyl enthusiasts will often turn their noses up at other formats Ward himself isn’t too precious about how he listens to music.

“I see streaming as an excellent tool for deciding what you might like to buy. Also, I think CD is a more convenient format for multi-disc box sets, with its longer playing time.”

Having said that, however, he also points out there really is something special and unique about vinyl, or to put it another way, 100-year-old technology:

“Someone once joked that the thing they liked about vinyl was ‘the expense and the inconvenience’, but I think people really do enjoy the experience of listening to an album from start to finish, as the artist intended.

‘’An LP also breaks an album into two distinct sides, each of around 20 minutes, which I think is the perfect duration of listening to music before a reset.”

WHO’S BUYING – SLOW BOAT, SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Way back when Kāpiti’s David Stuart kept his vinyl in old ABC beer crates. Bob Dylan, early U2, Lou Reed, Edie Brickell​. These days Stuart’s collection is housed in a far more sophisticated style, and he’s a little more cautious as to what he spends his dollars on. But the thrill of the hunt remains – where once it was bootlegs or rare vinyl from Silvio’s, it’s the more mellow folk of the 60s he’s flicking through today. And then there’s the cover art and what Stuart calls the “experience” of vinyl – “you are forced to listen all the way through rather than just to snippets from the universe of music”. His dad had a collection of World Record Club jazz and big band.His daughter, 12-year-old Milly, is a massive Chills fan. Their latest buy? Ideal Home Noise, an album by young Wellington singer/songwriter Vera Ellen​.

If you have a long-held image of a typical vinyl junkie Sharon Learmonth​ and Denese​ Mentor​ are probably not it. The pair couldn’t resist stopping by during a recent visit to the capital from Toowoomba in Queensland. Mentor, 73, lived in Cuba St, just up the road from Slow Boat, for 18 months between 1966-67. A Simon and Garfunkel fan, she recalls evenings spent at the Chez Paree coffee bar in Majoribanks St listening to live music. Now, though, she has more pressing things to attend to – a birthday present for her son who turned 50 this week. Learmonth is shopping for her 56-year-old partner, a big vinyl fan whose collection spans everything from Pink Floyd to Paul Kelly to jazz. “It’s fantastic that vinyl is having a bit of a renaissance,” she says, adding that walking past a record store would be like ignoring an old friend. Mentor holds up the LP she’s picked for her son. Bread’s Greatest Hits, issued in 1973, the year he was born.

A younger Darryn​ Gear​ would buy four or five albums a week. “Then I had kids,” he says with a laugh. Gear, from Christchurch, was in town for English punk band The Damned’s gig at San Fran. Appropriately enough, he’s sifting through the “Alternative” bin. He’s a serious audiophile – a replacement stylus for the cartridge ($500) on his “old” but top end Ariston turntable set him back $1200 after his “would be hip hop artist” son damaged it attempting a needle drop. He’s a member of NZ Vinyl Lovers, a Facebook group for exactly what it says, and during the Covid lockdown spent a day listing his collection on Discogs, a massive online musical database. Again the “ritual” or process of playing a record was something that attracted Gear. Sunday’s purchases included albums by the Pixies and Straitjacket Fits and This Time I Know it’s For Real, an EP by disco queen Donna Summer, at the urging of his partner Jan Hickey.

Sam Thompson​ collects “physical media” – (real) books, video games, and when she can afford it, records. The 23-year-old masters student/cafe manager moved to Wellington from Auckland last year and despite finding the capital expensive reckons it beats Auckland hands down when it comes to artistic culture and choice of music. “I probably bought a couple of albums every few months in Auckland, but there’s more of a selection here.” Her taste runs to a “bit of everything”, including shoegaze (bands such as The Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine) and Soviet synthpop (bands influenced by the early 80s electronic pioneers from the UK).

• On the Record Vinyl Fair, Saturday, June 10, 10am-4pm, Whirinaki Whare Taonga, Upper Hutt