Was the Oil Crisis to blame for poor LP Sales in the '70s?

And it spawned/inspired both Blondie's Rapture and the Tom Tom Club's various Club hits from 1981. Influential record, that one.

 

I thought the boring, post disco, post cocaine malaise evident in the recordings of the time were to blame. People were sick to death of the same old tired crap. Even Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson & The Eagles were putting out indistinct lps around this time (not to single them out but they're good examples of how low the energy was at this point). The whole UK punk/pop/new wave shakeup, combined with new marketing (cd's, MTV) made a difference for sure. The music was tighter and fresher. No need to spend 2 weeks getting a good drum sound anymore.

 

Not the ones I listened to.

You're right. They just made the records cheaper quality. People still bought 'em. Again, what hurt the record industry in the late 70s was the recession, and, the fact that the labels went overboard. They spent like no tomorrow, signed way too many artists, and over-pressed records that never had a chance of selling. They also made a lot of baaaaad deals. Anyone remember the sex Pistols deal? In other words, it became a victim of it's own excesses. That's why the companies cut cut cut budgets in the early 80s, and R&B music was one of it's biggest casualties, partly because radio treated it all like disco.

Home video didn't take off until around the same time the economy as a whole stared to mend, around late 1982.

Where I grew up, we had cable all the way back to 1969. The cable company started expanding it in 197 with independant channels from Los Angeles with a microwave tower, and we got HBO and Showtime in 1977. The Playboy Channel, and a whole lot of other syndicated channels came soon after.

I was in high school back then. I remember.

 

Add "Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll" by the Mason Vaughn and his Crew

But, the song that influenced "Rapper's Delight" and Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" is the grandaddy of them all: "Good Times" by Chic, which came out in the spring of 1979.

 

the weight was lighter... not the sales !

 

And people who lived near each other would share the music by "record-pooling".........and then the Japanese labels started making smaller, more efficient records.....

 

I lived in Oklahoma during the early 80's, a BIG cultural vacuum...and rap was still very underground except for a few minor hits like "The Breaks", "Rappin' Duke", "Jam On It", "Space Cowboy"... and the CHR stations in OKC and Tulsa were very reluctant to play them. There was a black-owned radio station in OKC at the time (KAEZ 107.7) but they mostly played R&B, Jazz and Gospel.

The only time I heard Rap on a regular basis in 1980-5 was in my college dorm, where they brought in basketball players from Chicago, Atlanta, Boston who brought their own records and also blasted them around campus on huge Ghetto Blasters.

True, when I hear the stories, I just shake my head at all the excess. It made the music great for a few years but at a big price. And also a lot of great alternative bands also lost their contracts when the record companies had their big bloodletting.

I agree, in the late 70's the only place that sold VHS/Beta decks were the TV dealers. It wasn't until about 82-3 when I started seeing decks (mostly the cheaper VHS) finally being sold at K-Mart, Sears and Wal-Mart.

197 Channels?! I thought getting 36 in 1982 was manna from heaven!

 

The Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. 1 came out in 1976, Rumours 1977, The Wall came out in 1979, Back in Black 1980...those are four of the Top-10 best selling albums of all time.

 

When, exactly, did the record industry slump in the 70s?

I recall forum member Stefan once posting that Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door saved the record industry from its slump in 1978. I would think that Some Girls, Who Are You, and the Saturday Night Fever and Grease soundtracks sold a few records in 1978.

 

I don't remember any poor sales. I remember whenever Elton John would put a new album they'd be lined up outside waiting to buy a copy.

 

I don't remember the oil crisis having a factor.

 

Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk," also released in 1979, was another album that was supposed to save the industry from the slump that was apparently happening at this time.

I imagine the industry would be thrilled to be doing 1978-era numbers today.

 

Mid-tier groups of the era like Foghat, Robin Trower, Heart, Rush (I could go a lot further with a list) were putting out LPs that weren't at the top of their game, yet even these sold well. LP sales slump ? no

 

Don't let these guys fool you - there was a slump in spending due to higher oil prices in '73 through '75.

 

I meant to say they expanded it in 1977. I missed that last digit.

 

Your point?

 

Hamburger Helper was invented around this time because of the high prices of beef.

 

40 posts and no one has mentioned how home taping was killing the record business? Riiiiiight.

 

That's because it didn't.

 

I've got a record sleeve from the early 70's and they were going on about tape piracy and how bootlegged 8-Tracks were killing the industry. I need to take that down off my wall, scan it and post it.

 

I don't remember poor sales. I kept on buying and still am.

 

No but it accounted for crappy quality vinyl.

 

oil crisis was in 73, in France at least...
it's true that we had not computers ( first "micro" at my job in 82, used as an "intelligent" terminal, a compaq) we had no tv channels ( we had only 3 as cable didnt exist, everything was(is) centralized). what we did was listening to music from UK, practising sports... and dancing in night clubs... ( i was 19 in 73)
in 73, music was still fantastic; it started to decay in 75, but nothing to do with oil crisis.
lps price was around 30 francs, roughly 5 bucks... not that expansive if we look at present prices

 

Another myth in my opinion. I never experienced it to any high degree. I bought a lot of vinyl then too.

 

Let me guess...Mercury Records?