HAPPY new year! I hope you and yours had a good festive break and aren’t tempting fate by thinking, 2023, surely it can’t be as bad as 2022, or 2021, or 2020…

One positive that the new year has going for it, at least, is that 2023 is the 75th anniversary of the long-playing record. The first ever LP was released back in 1948 by Columbia Records, and was a recording of the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor. Older readers may remember that before then, records came in the form of 78s – as the name suggests, these played at a whizzy 78 revolutions per minute (rpm). The downside of such speed was the brevity of the disc – a standard 10-inch 78 could only squeeze about three and a half minutes per side. The LP, playing at a slower 33 1/3 rpm, could get about 23 minutes per side: the concept of the album, the mainstay of modern music, was born.

Back in the 1980s, however, the arrival of the compact disc appeared to signal the death knell of the vinyl record. CD sales first overtook vinyl back in 1988. By 2000, the world was buying 2.45 billion CDs a year. Then the musical baton was passed on again thanks to the advent of streaming. By 2021, this accounted for over 80% of how we listen to music.

Vinyl records, however, have quietly, stealthily, been making a comeback. Figures released last week showed that in 2022 sales of vinyl records overtook CDs for the first time since the late 1980s. While other formats – the MiniDisc player, the iPod – have come and gone, the fortunes of the record player continue to turn.

Some of this shift might be down to lockdown – people stuck at home and spending money on new music equipment. But these days, it’s not just old farts like me who are buying LPs. In recent years, the top ten vinyl sellers have been predominantly classics like Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, as middle-aged blokes revisit their youths. The bestsellers of 2022, however, are dominated by new releases like Harry Styles’ Harry’s House or Taylor Swift’s Midnights (the latter shifting 80,000 copies in the UK).

In an age of ever improving technology, it is a curiosity that such an old format continues to survive and thrive. Is there something in the physicality of the record that appeals, in the same way that the hardback has held off the rise of the ebook? Does vinyl really sound better, as audiophiles claim?

I’m not sure, but as I start 2023 being officially old, it’s nice to know that that there remains life in long players yet.