The Czech Republic is a vinyl superpower. Records survived the recession thanks to punk, metal and DJs – Médium.cz

Today, vinyl records are experiencing a revival and their sales are breaking records among physical music carriers. At the time when compact discs started to dominate the market, no one would have thought that the Czech Republic would become a vinyl superpower in a few decades.

But let’s start with today. Last year, vinyl records in the US for the first time since 1987 CDs sold outin the Czech Republic both physical formats with music equaled 49%, with the remaining two percent accounted for by DVD. So many statistics. It must be added that the sale of physical carriers is still a marginal issue compared to streaming, which represents the majority of the profit of recording companies.

But the return of music fans to handheld music cannot be underestimated. Not only do they increase sales of LPs. In 2021, after two decades of decline increase in sales of new CDs and even some people they will return even to such a dead format as cassettes (MC).

The return of music fans to physical music carriers, in my opinion, is due to the current ease of access to millions of songs available practically at the click of a button. However, the abundance of songs and their large selection may not be an advantage for many serious music listeners, moreover, they are mostly compressed songs in lossy mp3 format.

Understandably, individual compositions can easily get lost in such music. So music becomes a kind of alternative to consumer goods, when most songs are forgotten after one listen, because there are hundreds to thousands of others on the playlist.

The concept of physical music albums is still a unique format for many. With vinyl in hand, but also with another physical medium, the listener comes to an imaginative dialogue with the artist. Even the album cover itself represents a kind of independent work of art. Nowadays, bands mainly focus on this aspect of physical media, releasing limited editions, booklets sometimes resembling books, t-shirts added to albums or even signed by the fans – art itself.

Such a return to the roots is good for collectors, but it also has its advantages when it comes to LPs. The die format, which was much cheaper than hard disks in the nineties, has become the main product today, and the prices of new records on vinyl often go around a thousand crowns. On the other hand, new CDs are very cheap right now. In the nineties, when it was at its peak, new records cost 500 to 600 crowns. Today there are about three hundred, tra Average salary in the Czech Republic it is almost four times higher.

Collectors have never bothered with Vinyl. The cult of black records has not been left behind, but the young generation who grew up in the digital world are also discovering them. The distinctive sound of the records is more authentic than a cut epetroika. The physical format, large, elegant packaging with artwork and the ritual of placing the record on the turntable creates something for the audience that digital formats cannot provide. We also cannot forget the older generation, who return to vinyl out of nostalgia. The records remind them of their childhood and the times when listening to music was a conscious experience, not just a background as it is today.

Vinyl records, as I said at the beginning, were bent in the nineties of the last century. Their decline came mainly with the advent of the CD, which offered higher capacity, easier portability and purer sound quality. Many assumed that LP records would disappear completely, as evidenced by the closure of factories around the world where the records were pressed.

However, one black cake company survived the crisis. The company GZ Media, based in Loděnice near Prague, has been producing records for over 70 years and is currently one of the world leaders in the field. How is that possible? His boss is Milan Štěrba himself he admitsdue to underground music like punk or metal.

It was these fringe genres, along with techno, that kept vinyl alive in the Dark Ages. Metal and punk bands usually couldn’t release new albums on hard disk. This was too expensive for them, so they naturally stuck to the tried and tested cheap form, which could be pressed in several dozen pieces in Loděnice. The fans of these bands, in turn, appreciated the real sound of the records, which became a sign of their independence from the mainstream of the music industry.

Paradoxically, electronic music also helped to keep vinyl alive. Styles such as techno, house, drum’n’bass or hip hop would probably not have developed into their current form without black records. The first DJs in Chicago sometime in the middle of the seventies of the last century started using two turntables to mix specific parts of disco songs, which eventually became house music. Harder techno was then created in Detroit. All this is just thanks to the records with which it was (and still is) possible to create dance sets, scratch and bring the audience into a trance with the help of a mixing desk. Today, most DJs are already mixing music from digital formats, but with the amazing skill of the first, who only had vinyl until the late nineties, records came to life.

Today, the Czech Republic is a vinyl superpower. The shipping company has become a major player in the market, supplying black pancakes to the whole world and pushing music from famous artists around the world into them. . There is even respect in the US. In Nashville, the center of the music industry, a Czech company in 2022 she opened his third bush over the ocean. Nevertheless, the head of the shipping company still thinks of the little ones and says that he is grateful to underground bands for living with vinyl. And so even young metal bands can come to Loděnice to press their album in a small edition.