I got my wife a classic vinyl record player for her birthday a few weeks ago. Since then we´ve both found ourselves rediscovering the music of our youth and has begun to explore music in a brand-new way, looking for classical vinyl records wherever we can find them. I know that we are a bit late to this party, but the revival of analogue music can teach us something about the dynamics of a world where everything is going digital at the speed of 5G.
Emile Berliner was granted the patent for the “Gramophone” in 1887 and as with many inventions that at some point turns out to be groundbreaking, the inventor was clueless on the impact the novel technology would have on the world. Berliner thought his record would be a way for individuals to become immortal. Music was not the big thing for Berliner initially, instead he predicted that the invention would be used for voice recording:
“Future generations will be able to condense into the brief space of twenty minutes the tone pictures of a lifetime – five minutes of childish prattle, five moments embalming the last feeble utterances from the death-bed. Will this not seem like holding veritable communion with immortality?”
A killer app?
It turned out that Berliner´s idea of using his inventions for death-bed recordings wasn’t a killer app (no pun intended) but instead revolutionized both the distribution and creation of music. The vinyl record dominated the scene until 1988 when the CD took over the throne as the most sold music medium. From there, the only way was down and in 2006 vinyl sales hit the all-time low, at least according to the Swedish numbers that reveals that as few as 7000 vinyl records were sold throughout the whole year. Although it had nothing to do with the demise of vinyl, Spotify was founded in Sweden this very same year and as we know by now a new revolution in the music industry was dawning.
I can´t remember when I played a vinyl record before this summer´s renaissance. And hadn’t it been for the fortunate fact that all my records were stuffed away in my dad´s house since I moved from home, they might have been lost somewhere along the many places I´ve moved between since then. I got them back when my father visited us a while back and when I could play Alphaville and Forever young after getting the vinyl player it was a stroll down memory lane like nothing else. Of course, I´ve heard this song a gazillion time over the years in other media and formats but holding the cover in my hands along with the sparkly crackling of the vinyl was something else.
Predicting the unexpected
If any trend spotter or business analytic claim that they could predict that the vinyl would increase sales in Sweden from the all-time low in 2006 of 7000 records to 700 000 records ten years later, they would be the Pythia of modern day. This parallel trend to the digital transformation of the music industry was simply off the charts. So, the question is, what other digital transformations that we embrace today has a similar, parallel trend that will surprise us when it eventually surfaces before our eyes?
Of course, vinyl records are no threat to the streaming industry, digital music today accounts for 90% of the global music revenue and the share keeps growing. The key is that the digital transformation did not kill the analogue predecessor, it rather boosted it. So, what can we expect? A renaissance of Filofax, Kodachrome cameras exploding in sales and paper letters becoming the new status marker? During the Corona-epidemic the harsh digitalization a lot of people were forced into will probably fuel this development as the threat from the virus wears off. If there are any oracles out there who can tell me what the future holds, I would be more than happy to listen. If not, let’s keep an open mind and perhaps add some humbleness when sharing posts on social media on the theme that “everything that can go digital, will go digital”.
Famous last words
To conclude, I heard an interview with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek a few days ago, where he described how voice recordings, predominantly podcasts, are emerging as huge business area. Who knows, perhaps people will start recording their death-bed words and publish it on Spotify and create the next killer app on the platform? In that case I would do a recording of Emile Berliner´s quote above and publish it as a reminder of how the evolution of ideas sometimes takes really strange ways.
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