Vinyl was meant to have died decades ago, but has instead roared back to prominence. Duncan Greive walks through its long, strange history in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
I used to have a dealer at a flat in Newton. A friend and I would go round in the evening and nervously buzz at the gate to a set of 90s townhouses. Once inside, he\u2019d bring out the goods, and we\u2019d settle into his couch for a couple of hours sampling what he had available.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was the early 2000s, and this dude had the best connection to fresh Jamaican dancehall 7\u201ds of anyone we knew. It was near the peak of the genre\u2019s biggest chart impacts, when Sean Paul, Elephant Man and Vybz Kartel had major crossover moments, and the sound profoundly influenced everyone from Rihanna to Lil Jon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But if you wanted to know what was happening in Kingston, this dude and his shoeboxes was the only way. The music didn\u2019t exist on CD or the internet \u2013 these poorly pressed, paper-sleeved curios were the only door into this music we loved. That\u2019s one of the things which kept vinyl alive as a medium and a culture in the 90s and 00s. For some music, scenes, labels and artists there was just no other way to stay connected.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the mainstream though, vinyl was a barely remembered curiosity \u2013 all but dead, killed by the CD, of interest only to society\u2019s fringe and clogging up corners of op shops. The future was digital, first in downloads (music was free, regardless of what that cost musicians), then in streaming. In the background, something was brewing. Starting with Record Store Day in 2008, there was a small but perceptible uptick.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Back from the dead<\/p>\n
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As the above chart shows, though, 2005 was the beginning of a scarcely believable growth curve, which saw what was assumed to be a defunct medium increase its sales almost 100-fold in the space of two decades. Vinyl appeared at JB Hifi, became a crucial part of every pop artist\u2019s release plans, skyrocketed in price and availability (making it a rare Veblen good \u2013 one which increases in demand as it increases in price). Despite New Zealand\u2019s last vinyl plant shutting down in 1987, recent years have seen two separate local manufacturers, Holiday Records and Stebbings, open their doors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How did this happen? Why did this cumbersome, expensive and questionably sustainable format come roaring back to relevance? That\u2019s the question Charlotte Ryan set out to answer on The Long Play, a new four-part podcast from The Spinoff and Daylight, in partnership with Coffee Supreme, Holiday Records and Recorded Music New Zealand. It\u2019s Ryan\u2019s first big project since leaving her role as the beloved host of RNZ\u2019s Music 101, and sees her telling the more than century-long history of vinyl in this country. We get the rise, fall and renewal, along with perspectives from all the constituencies involved in its revival. Young fans, DJs, bands, label owners and record stores, with me along for the ride.<\/p>\n
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The story that emerges is fascinating and very much of this era. It\u2019s in part a reaction to the shrinking of culture down to binary code and phones becoming the centre of everything. There\u2019s something about how fragile, cumbersome and truly physical vinyl is, in contrast to the apps and AI era, which is undeniably part of this story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Christoph El Truento is a DJ, artist and true believer in vinyl, and articulates its appeal well on The Long Play. \u201cIt feels like that should have been the peak of technology,\u201d he tells us. \u201cI still don\u2019t understand how you can take audio and stamp it into a physical piece of plastic, and it\u2019s like there inside that piece of plastic all of a sudden\u2026 That\u2019s the height of human achievement, is what I feel. How did we do that? It\u2019s magic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within the story, what emerges is that our attachment to vinyl is also partly about what it forces us to do. Playing a record is deliberate, requires a physical action and requires an attention span longer than a Reel or TikTok. It can feel like an act of resistance to the way music can seem like just another form of user-generated content for the tech companies that define how we interact with the world now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not uncomplicated. Most records are pressed on plastic, and the cost means many fans who would like to participate in the vinyl revival can\u2019t begin to imagine how. And because every part of the chain is more expensive now, from manufacturing to shipping to distribution, those high prices often don\u2019t automatically mean greater returns to artists and labels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While some argue that vinyl has superior sound to digital formats, there are just as many who believe the reverse, and more still who just can\u2019t hear a difference. It\u2019s also slightly strange to put so much energy and money into a technology which was surpassed for convenience in the 80s, and became almost anachronistic in the 00s. For some musicians and fans, vinyl is a sideshow \u2013 culture moves on, and for all its flaws, streaming represents where music lives and breathes right now.<\/p>\n
Like magic<\/p>\n
It might, even now, be a niche pursuit. As much as it\u2019s grown, vinyl still represents a tiny share of recorded music revenues, and of listening. Many buyers don\u2019t even own a record player, and buy it for the artwork, or as a collector\u2019s item unto itself, with its utility beside the point. But for the tragics, the slightly mystical quality is precisely what makes it so compelling \u2013 and essentially unique for some of its biggest retailers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still selling albums that came out 60 years ago on the format they came out 60 years ago,\u201d says JB Hi-Fi\u2019s Karl Lock. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing else in our business that\u2019s like that. We sell new technology, the latest iPhones \u2013 but we\u2019re selling this old, almost 100-year-old technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
We live in an ultra-optimised world, with many goods and services a few clicks or swipes away (if you have the money). Vinyl suggests a reverence for culture that is hard to sustain on social and streaming platforms. When it first arrived in Aotearoa, hundreds gathered to Christchurch in 1879 to hear the first gramophone to land on these shores. In decades to come we went through milestones like the first recorded music (waiata M\u0101ori<\/a> in 1927), the first local label (TANZA \u2013 To Assist New Zealand Artists) and local hit (Pixie Williams\u2019 Blue Smoke<\/a> from 1949).\u00a0<\/p>\n The story of recorded music can be told in formats. Shellac gave way to vinyl, which gave way to CDs before downloaded mp3s reigned briefly ahead of streaming\u2019s arrival. Of those, none lasted so long as records, which were the most popular form for decades. And while there has been a revival of all physical forms \u2013 teens priced out of vinyl are buying CDs, while even cassettes have their adherents \u2013 none has attracted the kind of devotion LPs generate. In The Long Play, Ryan speaks to young people who\u2019ve dropped $150 on a 7\u201d single, the generation of teenagers onboarded by Taylor Swift\u2019s vinyl variations, as well as older collectors who suddenly find themselves surrounded.<\/p>\n All that surging demand \u2013 yet getting it made was a challenge for decades due to the lack of any local manufacturers. EMI\u2019s legendary plant shut in the late 80s, with a rumour that part of it ended up in the Manukau harbour. A cottage industry persisted, with the Geraldine hand-cutting lathe records in tiny runs. But the end of EMI\u2019s plant should have been the end of domestic vinyl pressing.\u00a0<\/p>\n And was, until Ben Wallace tried to get a record pressed for his tiny folk band. An indifferent response from an Australian plant led to him reaching out to a friend in lawyer Joel Woods, with the pair ultimately founding Holiday Records, which now produces thousands of LPs each week \u2013 both small runs for local artists and huge numbers for the biggest stars in pop. Demand has been so keen that Stebbings, one of the most revered names in New Zealand recording, started their own plant a few years later.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a connection back to the foundational days of recording in this country, a tradition nearly a century old which looked to have moved forever into a digital realm not long ago. But this form \u2013 expensive, unwieldy and largely unchanged in a century \u2013 has a peculiar hold on the human imagination. That\u2019s the story Charlotte Ryan set out to tell with The Long Play, with significant help from Daylight\u2019s Charlie Godinet.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a four-part podcast which documents the rise, fall and revival of the format. And thanks to Holiday Records, it is itself pressed onto vinyl: one episode per side, distributed throughout an astounding 40 of Aotearoa\u2019s record stores. And not just any vinyl \u2013 we used Holiday\u2019s BioVinyl, with sustainable materials and a manufacturing process that minimises both waste and energy consumption. If you find a copy, it\u2019s yours \u2013 they\u2019ll be hidden away in their crates from this Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Much like making records, it\u2019s been a fiddly process, one which doesn\u2019t quite make sense. But that\u2019s essentially the point. Telling the story of these irrational objects, how they survived a near-death experience and the emotions they bring out in a small but somehow still growing group of devotees.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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