How Taylor Swift Took Over Your Local Record Store

With his Instagram posts of previous Thrasher journal covers, flyers of seminal post-hardcore group Jawbox, and footage with Neko Case, Matt Jencik shouldn’t be your stereotypical Taylor Swift goal. The 50-year-old, long-haired, bespectacled longtime purchaser for Chicago’s legendary Reckless Records admits he’d most likely be listening to Van Halen at house. But in records shops like Reckless and across the nation, issues have modified drastically.

“I by no means in my wildest goals thought I’d have to consider Taylor Swift [vinyl] as a lot as I do now,” Jencik, who’s labored on the retailer for greater than twenty years, says with a heat chuckle. “I’ve to hustle so laborious to get that stuff as a result of it all the time sells out actually quick, it’s laborious to search out, and folks need it. If we don’t have it, it’s an issue. It’s modified how I strategy my job.”

Jencik is considered one of many report retailer reps nationwide who’ve seen an analogous shift over the previous a number of years. As a Rolling Stone evaluation of the 100 bestselling vinyl albums of every yr since 2012 reveals, pop is taking on from rock because the medium’s dominant style. As vinyl has as soon as once more grow to be a mainstream listening and collectible format, vinyl patrons are getting more and more youthful, a number of homeowners say, and the preferred albums have shifted from the indie rock and basic rock catalog albums that outlined vinyl’s resurgence up to now decade to mainstream pop records from the likes of Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and Lana Del Rey. 

Reckless has lengthy carried some stage of pop music, however Jencik says he’d by no means seen it so outstanding as in recent times. “There’s all the time been ebbs and flows for what we’re promoting, however I don’t keep in mind a time the place our entire retailer was simply totally different due to it,” Jencik says. “It makes it appear to be it’s shifted our identification. People assume that’s the shop we are actually, however we’re nonetheless an indie-leaning store. But we’re promoting hundreds of copies of those [mainstream pop] records. By far, the vast majority of what we promote now could be this main label stuff. And what are we going to do? Just not try this? It’s not like we made a concerted effort to alter what we promote; it’s simply what folks preserve asking us for.”

Matt Vaughan, the longtime proprietor of Seattle’s famed Easy Street Records, has an analogous perspective. When he opened his retailer within the late Nineteen Eighties, it turned a mecca for laborious rock, significantly with the town’s burgeoning grunge scene that gave delivery to legends like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. That’s nonetheless within the retailer’s DNA, Vaughan says, and mirrored in a few of his top-selling records of 2023. (Pearl Jam, former Seattle rock group the Rockfords, and Duff McKagan are all within the retailer’s prime 5.) But simply as outstanding had been 4 Swift records, Gracie Abrams’ Good Riddance (Number Six), Rodrigo’s Sour (Number Eight), and the Barbie soundtrack at 14. 

“We’re following the traits; typically the most effective leaders are the most effective followers,” Vaughan says. “We noticed much more youngsters of their teenagers and twenties coming in. Pop was the minority 5 years in the past, and we put our arms round it as a result of we favored these prospects and lots of the music too. That minority turned the bulk. And these followers are shopping for a duplicate of [Pearl Jam’s 1991 debut album] Ten and DMX on the identical time too. They’re extra open-minded than we give them credit score for.”

Vaughan says he recalled the primary inklings of the shift with Del Rey’s second album, Born to Die, over a decade in the past. But for the reason that pandemic, he says, it’s grow to be rather more obvious. “I began to essentially discover the shift extra with launch events,” he says. “There was a time the place there have been actually low turnouts, [and] these events had been simply forgotten. Now, we’re over capability, understaffed, and ill-prepared when now we have one for a child like Omar Apollo, and the road’s across the block. What’s taking place?”

For Matt Mona, who’s owned and operated Ka-Chunk Records in Annapolis, Maryland, since 2011, the change has been clear. In his first yr of operation, the Black Keys, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, and Neutral Milk Hotel had been a few of his bestsellers. Last yr, nevertheless, Swift took up six slots, whereas Phoebe Bridgers and boygenius — decidedly rock however with vital pophead enchantment — had three spots. 

Other notable albums on Mona’s Top 20 included music that went viral on TikTok corresponding to Steve Lacy’s Gemini Rights and pop-leaning hip-hop records like Mac Miller’s Swimming and Tyler, the Creator’s Igor. (More randomly, Mona’s prime vendor was Minecraft Volume Alpha, a soundtrack from the favored online game.)

“Pop music was like field workplace poison once I first introduced it into the shop years in the past,” Mona says. During our 30-minute telephone name, he rang up prospects on Panic! on the Disco’s Death of a Bachelor alongside Katy Perry, boygenius, and Lorde. “I simply couldn’t promote pop; I couldn’t get it off the shelf. I nonetheless have all these indie-rock records I prefer to promote like Dinosaur Jr. and the Wipers, however the sheer quantity of pop music has simply elevated and elevated.”

Rock remains to be vinyl’s greatest style — not less than for now — however its maintain continues to slide because the shift towards pop turns into extra obvious. On the year-end Top 100 vinyl chart from Luminate, the music information platform that powers the Billboard charts, Swift alone made up half of the Top 10 in 2023, whereas Rodrigo’s Guts took sixth and Del Rey took the eighth and tenth slots for final yr’s Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd and 2012’s Born to Die. (Travis Scott’s Utopia took fourth, whereas Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours was the lone rock album within the Top 10 at Number Nine.)

That shift appears apparent when bearing in mind the restricted report choice at big-box retailers like Target, the place pop albums from Swift or Rodrigo dominate the cabinets alongside a extra restricted smattering of Queen and Beatles biggest hits albums. But it’s not simply taking place on the most informal stage of vinyl gross sales. 

The Indie Record Store Top 50 (which Record Store Day launched on the finish of 2023 as a substitute for Luminate’s chart) has equally proven heavy gross sales from the music that’s topped the Billboard charts up to now yr corresponding to Swift, Rodrigo, Del Rey, Noah Kahan, and Zach Bryan. 

“How can we preserve report shops related? We want youthful prospects,” Record Store Day co-founder Carrie Colliton says. “It was a pair years in the past we had Taylor Swift as an envoy. We had been placing Post Malone on our record. Obviously we had been reaching out to that viewers, and we nonetheless are. But I don’t know that even 5 years in the past we might’ve stated, ‘Let’s take a look at our charts; that’s lots of pop music on there.’”

In 2012, 75 of the Top 100 bestselling vinyl records had been rock albums, per Luminate. That dominance held regular for the following few years, however by 2017, rock was right down to 50. Last yr, rock fell to only 32. Pop has gone the other manner, beginning with solely 11 albums within the Top 100 in 2012 and steadily rising annually. Pop reached a brand new excessive of 28 albums in 2023, the second most-listed style on the chart and poised to grow to be the style chief. (The change is much more dramatic among the many hottest records on the charts. In 2012, rock made up 20 entries within the Top 25, whereas pop solely had two entries. This previous yr, rock fell to only 4, and pop is now as much as 12.) 

Unsurprisingly, Swift is the most important driver of that change and virtually a style on her personal. With simply over 1,000,000 models offered in 2023, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) itself offered greater than 2012’s complete Top 100 record mixed. This is each a staggering feat for Swift and testomony to how a lot increased quantity vinyl is now versus a decade in the past. The common vinyl report on the Top 100 chart final yr averaged 116,000 models offered final yr, versus simply over 9,000 in 2012.

It took simply 33,000 models for Jack White’s acclaimed Blunderbuss to prime the year-end Vinyl 100 again then. Meanwhile, Mitski’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We was the ultimate report on 2023’s year-end chart with practically 50,000 gross sales. 

Nearly each report retailer rep who spoke with Rolling Stone says they started to see youthful prospects after enterprise kicked again up once more following the pandemic. Doyle Davis, co-owner of Grimey’s in Nashville, says excessive schoolers coming to his retailer has grow to be a standard incidence that hadn’t occurred practically as regularly a number of years in the past. 

“I by no means thought we’d promote tons of of copies of an album in a pair weeks. We used to make our cash promoting three to 5 copies of lots of totally different albums,” Davis says. “Business wasn’t reliant on blockbuster titles, and now it’s. It’s just like the Seventies.

“We’d by no means been averse to pop music. We simply try to keep lean. I don’t wish to have too many records within the retailer that aren’t transferring, and we don’t top off on records in large portions except they promote,” Davis continues. “We couldn’t survive with out the Taylor Swift gross sales. I’d have by no means stocked that many Harry Styles records or one thing like that, however the prospects confirmed me that they’ll simply carry on going and it’s by no means gonna cease.” (In 2020, in the beginning of the pandemic, Swift donated cash and paid for 3 months’ value of well being look after every worker.) 

Stocking extra pop doesn’t need to imply shifting away from lesser-selling genres, both, a number of homeowners inform Rolling Stone. Mona claims the upper quantity from the mainstream pop records has really afforded him extra flexibility to purchase area of interest records he enjoys which will have to sit down in his crates for longer like British singer-painter Billy Childish, Portland storage rockers Dead Moon, and beloved ragged indie rockers Guided by Voices. “It’s the mark of a wholesome trade,” Mona says. “The pop stuff I promote makes it attainable for me to inventory the stuff I solely promote one copy a yr that I feel is actually good. It makes it sustainable to maintain the much less well-liked albums within the retailer and lets me take extra dangers.”

As pop music continues to grow to be an more and more irreplaceable a part of report shops’ enterprise, some report retailer reps have stated it might change their shops. Still, each report retailer employee who spoke with Rolling Stone has been broadly embracing of the pop wave not simply from gross sales however from a cultural standpoint, a rejection of the type of elitism that may nonetheless be related to vinyl tradition snobbery. At some level, they need to let youthful customers determine what their tradition is. 

“The motive I nonetheless do it is because I wish to run an organization and a retailer that children can come into and be stoked about,” Jencik says. “I’m a complete crusty report retailer man, however I really feel like I nonetheless maintain onto that side of this. I bought into this as a result of I went to a retailer I believed was cool, and I would like that for the children.”

As Vaughan says, “If it’s solely going to be the graying of the report retailer, guys with Record Collector and Goldmine journal below their arm, that’s no enjoyable. There’s pockets all through the nation right here, the place you might have these shops like a Easy Street. And in the event that they haven’t pigeonholed themselves at this level, and so they’re open to the anti-High Fidelity type of customer support, and so they’re simply completely happy to have prospects taking a look at music as a commodity of their life, these sort of report shops must be doing fairly nicely proper now.”