SOCK IT TO ME DISC-ITS! WHEN TWO TRIBES VINYL AND CD (AND CASSETTE) WENT TO WAR

Dream, if you can, a courtyard. An ocean of violets in bloom. Alternatively, a 1984 record shop and all its pristine treasures. Close your eyes, let’s go there together. What do you see? From chest-level down – vinyl.

Chest to eye level – cassettes, pressed tight against the wall like teenagers at a school disco. High above those – picture discs, promo displays, collectibles, charts, and a menu of new releases. 

What do you hear? Music, some wonderful sounds, but also the soft slap of record sleeves being browsed, and perhaps, from the classical corner, an unfamiliar sound, the metronomic clack-clack-clack of CD jewel cases.

The UK recording industry hadn’t spent 1983 in the rudest of health. Brian Southall at EMI, interviewed on the BBC in March: “Over the last two or three years it’s dropped between 20 and 30 per cent overall. The prime area for loss of sales has been the LP. Singles have remained static over the last couple of years but that’s significantly lower than it was four or five years ago. And the pre-recorded cassette market has consistently increased.” The pattern held for most of the year.

Nineteen eighty-four opened with the first Now That’s What I Call Music at No 1; a Virgin-EMI collaboration designed to pump album sales and promote 28 artists at once. The labels were like toddlers with a Sherbet Fountain and went giddy with it. The year ended on Now 4, and CBS-WEA’s fastfollowing Hits.

Flaccid single sales turned into a ski jump. One single went platinum in 1982, one more in 1983, then half a dozen in 1984. Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Two Tribes was a million-seller by summer and Relax did the same on 7” alone. Careless Whisper and I Just Called To Say I Love You, ditto. Ghostbusters and Last Christmas/Everything She Wants both sold a million without bothering to reach No 1.