This past weekend, Queen West record shop Criminal Records sent out a minor shockwave with a tweet that announced “the end of CDs/DVDs at Criminal Records”. Could this be another step in the ongoing death march of these shiny metal discs?
Could vinyl finally overtake CDs as the physical music format once and for all?
Well, not quite. It turns out their announcement wasn’t the major as it initially seemed.
“We’ll still be selling new releases,” clarifies Criminal Records co-owner Paul Simcoe. “Those account for over 90% of our CD sales, and we still have too good a relationship with labels and artists to get rid of them entirely. What we will be phasing out are back catalogue CDs. That stuff moves very rarely.”
Starting this weekend, the shop will begin selling off all its back catalogue CDs at cost. Without the sort of markup that drives retail, even perennial sellers like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon will be sold at bargain-bin prices. The sale will continue until everything is gone.
Though Criminal’s owners are still going through negotiations with their landlord, the eventual plan is to renovate the shop and expand the vinyl selection until it accounts for at least 80% of the store’s offerings. That will mean more focus on more “marginalized” genres like jazz, blues and hip hop, as well as used records.
For years vinyl fetishists have been preaching the quality benefits of vinyl records over CDs, but when a popular shop like Criminal Records makes a move like this it shows that, at least in the world of independent record shops, vinyl can also be more financially viable.
“Even for a popular release, let’s say the new Fleet Foxes, I think we’ve sold 15 CDs and over 150 on vinyl,” explains Simcoe. “Queen Street rent is very expensive, so we’re looking at each square foot of the store and asking ourselves ‘is this working?’ Looking at shelves with old CDs that just sit there, it just seems like a poor use of space.”
Considering vinyl’s once-held reputation as an outmoded medium, it’s interesting to see its return to prominence, at least on a small-scale.
Simcoe theorizes: “The way I see it is that a lot of people who wanted to convenience of CDs have switched to digital download, either legal or illegal, and a lot of the people more interested in collecting have moved to vinyl, or moved back to vinyl depending on how old they are.”
“Records are a bit more expensive than CDs, and I think that forces people to make better choices. They know what they want to buy first. They’ve researched the record, they’ve listened to tracks online, and they know what they’re getting.”
“A record is something that you buy, you take home, you put it on the player, you remove the shrink wrap, you read the liner notes and you sit down and you engage yourself in it. It tends to put people a little bit closer to the music.”
“The days of people buying CDs for that one hit song, they’re long gone. If you want to, you can go to Grooveshark or one of the other cloud services and listen to that song until your ears bleed. It’s not going to cost you a dime.”
