return the cd

Adele's album '30', on vinyl at a music store.

I discover an anomaly in the statistics of the American music industry: in 2021, CD sales increased.

It's not exactly a high — 1.1% — but it stops a 20-year decline that seemed unstoppable.

They try to explain it by alleging, for example, that the increase corresponds to the publication of wide-ranging titles, such as the album

, by Adele.

It turns out that, among the millions of buyers of the fourth installment of study of the English vocalist, 900,000 opted for the CD.

Even taking into account the price difference —the vinyl version tripled the price of the CD—, it is surprising that almost a million buyers despise the format that is in fashion and prefer a support —attention— that is more comfortable, lighter and theoretically longer.

Here you have a million consumers who are regularly ignored by the vinyl craze.

Get ready: soon we will read headlines like “The return of the CD” or “The resurrection of the silver discs”.

It's not just a

;

also the industry pushes the consumer of physical product towards vinyl.

In case you hadn't noticed: Many department stores no longer carry CDs;

car and computer manufacturers don't include CD players, and even an iconic device like Sony's Discman now appears to have been discontinued.

And it is not a chain of coincidences.

Bookshelf with CDs in a house. Marc Volk (Getty Images)

Remember the motto of the CD launch: "Perfect sound for eternity".

It was, to put it politely, a lie, just like that milonga that it cost much more to make a CD than an LP.

This is not a case of planned obsolescence: what is ultimately sought is to shift all music consumption to digital, through downloads or

, paying a subscription or even accepting advertising.

A bargain, they assure us.

Certainly not for the musicians, songwriters and producers who have seen compensation for their work shrink to the ridiculous.

One aside: isn't it strange that the major labels don't protest this cut in revenue?

Simple:

platforms pay multimillion-dollar amounts to record companies for the right to use their catalogues, thus, in general, without the artists seeing a penny of the signing.

Then, they will collect

according to the number of reproductions.

We don't even know if a Sony superstar, like Adele, is paid the same as a veteran Mavis Staples type, now recording for a humble label (Anti).

Actually, yes: we guess which of the two charges more for each reproduction.

What we do know is that a high percentage of record stores, once social centers for music lovers, have disappeared.

We are talking about those rare creatures that study the credits of an LP or a CD, that appreciate releases that include lyrics, that fantasize about covers and that need a tactile relationship with the musical support.

Innocent vices, certainly.

The tragedy is that multinationals no longer make those historic CD boxes that offered panoramic views of a genre or subgenre, the sound of a city or region, a producer or a composer, a theme or an attitude.

These are tasks that are now being carried out by small companies such as the British Cherry Red, the Australian Raven Records, the French Frémeaux & Associés, the American Collectables Records, the Spanish Ramalama Music or the German Bear Family Records.

Take advantage if you find them: your survival is not guaranteed.

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