FEATURE:
Are ‘Friends’ Esoteric?
PHOTO CREDIT: Benjamin Suter/Pexels
Be Here Now: Can We Connect the Rise of Coffee Culture and a Decline in Physical Music Sales?
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I was going to leave…
IN THIS PHOTO: Noel Gallagher/PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Crockett/Press
a somewhat ridiculous comment from Noel Gallagher and leave it at social media mockery and general exhaustion. His comments do raise to mind some interesting questions. First, as reported here by NME, Noel Gallagher feels that the boom in coffee shops and the seemingly bad example U.S. sitcom Friends set has led to a decline in people buying physical music:
“Noel Gallagher has said he thinks the sitcom Friends and coffee culture are to blame for declining music sales.
The former Oasis guitarist and songwriter discussed how changes in people’s spending habits has affected how they support artists, particularly when streaming services have given them access to all the music they could possibly want for free. Indeed, he said that he struggled to understand how people will spend their money in coffee shops – the growth of which he put down to the characters in Friends frequently socialising in one – but not music.
According to the Daily Star, Gallagher said: “Sitting around in sweaters drinking overpriced coffee and talking about nonsense.
“Since the rise of the coffee shop, culture has disappeared. People are horrified that they have to pay for music! But $20 for two coffees, oh, absolutely. I haven’t got the brain capacity to process this.”
IN THIS PHOTO: The main cast of Friends (Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green, David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay, and Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani)/PHOTO CREDIT: NBC
It’s not the first time that Gallagher has pointed the finger at coffee culture either. He told NPR: ““I blame Friends [for] the rise of the coffee shop. Since the rise of the coffee shop, culture has disappeared, don’t you think? People are horrified that they have to pay for music. Music! But $20 for two coffees, ‘Oh, absolutely’.
“I feel like the resistance to pay for music came after people got used to that. Maybe it’s that they got used to spending a lot on commodities that feel like culture – like coffee – and then changed their financial priorities. Or maybe it’s that, all of a sudden, music was free.”
Gallagher is currently gearing up to release a new album, ‘Council Skies’, with the High Flying Birds. Set to drop on June 2, it features the singles ‘Council Skies’, ‘Dead To The World’, ‘Easy Now’ and ‘Pretty Boy’.
Yesterday, Gallagher confirmed that there will be a reissue of Oasis’ ‘Definitely Maybe’ album coming in 2024, though once again shut down the idea of there being a reunion tour taking place any time soon”.
Maybe this is a musician who was once on top of the world not selling as many albums as he should. Having written two genius Oasis in the form of 1994’s Definitely Maybe and 1995’s (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, he is used to seeing people buy huge amounts of physical music. His modern music as part of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds is popular, but the units being shifted is not the same as it is. Reports are showing that vinyl sales are climbing:
“In 2007 there were less than 200,000 vinyl units sold in the UK and now we're over 5.5 million, so you can definitely see that massive turnaround since Record Store Day began,” said Megan Page, RSD coordinator at the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).
Page said the event has played a key role in vinyl’s fortunes, an opportunity seized by labels.
“Record shops coming together and asking for these exclusives, celebrating the art of vinyl, was the catalyst for people to take more notice of [vinyl] and take it a bit more seriously,” said Page.
Vinyl album sales reached 5.5 million units during 2022, the 15th consecutive year of growth for the format, according to Official Charts Company data.
For the first snapshot of 2023, Music Week can reveal that vinyl LP sales increased by 14.7% year-on-year in Q1 to 1,322,977 units. That compares to year-on-year growth of 6.7% in Q1 2022.
Issues with production capacity for vinyl have actually restricted growth for the format, although that situation has improved.
“That's what we're hearing, that the pressure’s easing off a bit, so that's really helped with demand and getting things landing on time,” said Page”.
PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels
Alongside rising vinyl sales, cassettes are making a comeback. An almost obsolete physical format, a new rise in sales has provided much cheer. NME provides some fascinating and encouraging news regarding cassettes. It seems that a desire to own physical music post-pandemic has led to a rise:
“As Radio X reports, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) found that the popularity of the format had increased for 10 consecutive years. The sales of cassettes, however, remain much lower than those of vinyl records.
The total number of cassette tape sales has risen from 3,823 in 2012 to more than 195,000 in 2022.
It is said that the spike has been driven by recent releases from major acts such as Arctic Monkeys, Harry Styles and Florence + the Machine.
Per the BPI, all 20 of last year’s biggest-selling cassettes were released in 2022.
Mark Burgess, Founder of Flashback Records in north London, told Sky News that cassette sales had “shot up” at his shop post-pandemic.
He said the old-school format appealed to younger music fans in particular due to its “collectability”.
“Because cassettes are a smaller format, it’s easier to set up a collection,” he explained. “Also, people like to have an album of music that’s sequenced in the way an artist originally intended it to”.
Even though vinyl sales are overtaking C.D.s, that is not to say that the format is dying! There is no doubting the fact that physical music is in good health. Maybe Noel Gallagher was reacting to C.D.s struggling. Maybe we are not seeing the same sales as we had in the '90s with people queuing around the blocks regularly, but one cannot reasonably say that physical music is declining. Also, what sort of impact does coffee culture have?! It does seem weird that Gallagher mentioned Friends (could he BE any more old-fashioned?!). That series ended over twenty years ago, but I think it did encourage more people to go to coffee houses. Even in the '90s when that boom was happening, people were still buying physical music. Even if they forked out a few dollars for a coffee, they would still spend a few times that (or more) for an album! The same is true in the U.K. I was keen on visiting cafés, but I also made sure that I had enough money for singles and albums. The fact that coffee shops are springing up has nothing to do with Friends, Fraiser or any other American influence that you can name! Those series’ ended a long time ago. There are far more complicated reasons why coffee shops have become more prevalent and people are buying less physical music compared to decades past. Less disposable income is one reason. Costs in general have got steeper and more severe for the average Joe (or Joe-drinker!). Even if Noel Gallagher is having an old man tantrum or ranting like he normally does, there are a couple of takeaways…
IMAGE CREDIT: macrovector via Freepik
It is evident that coffee culture has had some influence when it comes to our spending and socialising. One can say that cigarettes and alcohol (see what I did there?!) costs more money and leave less for music, but we are becoming more of a coffee-drinking nation. It can be an expensive habit, but very few people are staying and drinking rather than going out. If Friends’ Central Perk featured its main characters drinking and socialising seemingly all day, you see less of that now. Music was never a part of Central Perk, but you do hear it in coffee shops now. I have said how more upcoming artists should be on the playlists of chain and independent coffee shops. Not only would it compel people to buy their albums. It would also mean that more people would stay in and linger. I also feel physical music is too expensive. Certainty vinyl is very high in price; people cannot really play cassettes. Rather than coffee culture leading to physical music being less demanded, maybe we need to look at the ease and low cost of streaming versus the affordability of physical music. Most people only buy one coffee a day at the most, and that can add up – but it is not a huge expense. If you buy one album on vinyl, you could be talking £25-£30. That could be as much as ten weeks’ worth of coffee! As we see from figures, physical music is holding strong. It could grow even more fruitfully if we lower the cost of physical formats, make it easier to play cassettes and C.D.s, and combine that with an overhaul of streaming sites so that artists get paid more and are less reliant on physical music to earn money. It would also be nice to see more people staying in coffee shops and mixing that with music listening!
IMAGE CREDIT: Freepik
Maybe designing coffee shops that also sell music. Easier to talk and feel relaxed than at a crowded pub, you could have something that satisfies a need for caffeine, but it also means people listen to and buy physical music – which would make Noel Gallagher very pleased. You could (as I did) wonder what he is on about and whether he is pining for a time that doesn’t exist. If you take out the inanity and random Friends name-drop as being in any way responsible for us drinking more coffee (which it is not) and physical music struggling (which it isn’t), there are a few points that make sense and raises issues. Are we buying more coffee over music because of prices, or that music listening is less sociable than it once was? Are there realistic ways of lower the cost of physical music so that people buy more? Is the rise in vinyl and cassettes a sign of things to come? Are we buying coffee to take it away - and, if not, would music and the ability to buy music make us stay longer and, in the process, tie together café culture and music appreciation? These are all questions that are worth raising, and none are easy to answer. Rather than simply dismiss the once-astonishing Noel Gallagher as the Grandpa Simpson of the musical world, you can look at this latest bit of what-the-f*ckery as a time to address spending habits, culture in general, and the ongoing importance of keeping physical music alive and bought. If physical music sales are not at their record highs all of the time, they are at least moving in the right direction – and they are staying there too. Fear not, Noel Gallagher, for physical music will live forever. People are also going to buy a lot of coffee. That, my dear friend, means you are going to have to…
ROLL with it.