When did stores in your area stop selling new vinyl singles?

[bandit957]

By vinyl singles, I mean the 45 RPM records (not albums).

I think our Kmart stores around here must have stopped in 1987 - even though vinyl singles were still clearly the leading music medium (from what I could tell). But they didn't have a huge selection, maybe just a top 30, which I think was their own ranking (not the Billboard Hot 100). But I don't know how a record would debut on this chart, considering the store had to sell some copies first, and they didn't sell singles that weren't on the chart.

I think Woolworth's and some other stores like that also had their own top 30 (maybe 40).

There was a small, independent record shop in my area that had a huge selection of oldies 45's (some very obscure), but it also had new 45's as late as 1989, probably later.

Around that time, my mom kept saying our relatives in Philadelphia couldn't get 45's anymore, because nobody there would sell them. Stores like Kmart probably didn't have 45's anymore, but I'm sure some stores did.

In the '90s, there was a local store around here with a couple locations that sold used 45's, and a few new 45's too. Probably the last new 45 that I ever buyed was probably in the late '90s, maybe 2000. But this store actually had only a very small section for 45's.

I don't know when big record stores in malls stopped selling 45's, because our part of town didn't have a mall.

When I was on my college radio station around 1993-94, one of the other DJ's would buy 45's of '80s hits from a record shop in her part of Cincinnati. She said this store was mostly geared towards jukebox operators.

[Takumi]

As far as I'm aware, the major independent record store in Richmond (Plan 9) never did. Certainly may have been at a trickle in the late 90s and early 00s when vinyl wasn't popular, but even then I recall them carrying some new vinyl, even if it was just imported electronic music 45s.

As far as more mainstream stores, by the time I started paying attention to music in the 90s, it was CD/tape only as far back as I can remember.

[Scott5114]

In all the stores I've been in, the singles were made out of "pasteurized process cheese food", which sounds like it could actually be vinyl.

[bandit957]

In all the stores I've been in, the singles were made out of "pasteurized process cheese food", which sounds like it could actually be vinyl.

A lot of the Columbia and A&M singles of the '80s played like they were made out of pasteurized cheese food.

[CtrlAltDel]

Remember when you could get 8 CDs for a penny from Columbia House?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVrxoD3Pby0

[bandit957]

Remember when you could get 8 CDs for a penny from Columbia House?

I think we figured out a way to work the system.

Also, I remember one time we ordered a Cheech & Chong vinyl LP from Columbia House that had a giant joint on the cover, and my mom thought it was a giant sub sandwich.

[1995hoo]

Sometime in the late 1980s. Had to be after 1987 because I have a copy of "Touch of Grey" on a grey vinyl 45 that I purchased in a record store (most likely Kemp Mill Records at Fair City Mall in Fairfax, Virginia, as it was across the street from my high school); the sleeve is a riff on the In the Dark album cover that uses the skeleton faces seen in the song's music video instead of the band members' faces. Both the grey vinyl and the sleeve are nice touches, but the single edit for that song omits the guitar solo and I find that kind of jarring.



The last 45 I remember buying was off eBay sometime in the past 10 or 12 years. I saw a copy of Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" 45 and bought it because at the time the B-side–the studio version of "Held Up Without a Gun"–had not yet appeared on any album.

[hbelkins]

Mid to late '80s is my recollection. I bought a handful of singles when I didn't want to buy the whole album -- Michael Jackson's "Beat It" (for the Eddie Van Halen solo) being one. I was not a Michael Jackson fan by any means, but I loved the solo. Also, the Jackson/Mick Jagger collaboration and "Easy Lover" by the two Phils -- Phil Collins and Phillip Bailey.

[bandit957]

There was a big box store in my area called Biggs that was a really big deal briefly. When it first opened, around 1984 or 1985, we went there and found the aisle with the 45's. I remember a guy buying a 45 of "Easy Lover" and talking about how he was replacing the one he had just purchased that someone stole.

It seems like their selection of 45's was maybe a little bigger than Kmart. I think they had some 45's that were minor hits that weren't played too much on the pop stations around here (maybe the Roger Hodgson solo hit). But I don't know when they stopped selling 45's, because we rarely ever went to Biggs after that, since it was way across town.

[ErmineNotyours]

The vinyl single was certainly dead by late 1992 when Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" started its 14 week stay at number one.  The death of the vinyl single was credited/blamed for that feat.  With consumers buying singles, there was some direct input to what people actually want to hear.  Without that check, the suits decide what to play on the radio, and usually it's more of the same.  Or least that's my biased opinion when I found myself more than two years out of college, when adults stop following pop music anyway.  I was increasingly turning off the radio when they played overplayed songs, and I think I was completely out by late 1992.

[bandit957]

The vinyl single was certainly dead by late 1992 when Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" started its 14 week stay at number one.  The death of the vinyl single was credited/blamed for that feat.  With consumers buying singles, there was some direct input to what people actually want to hear.  Without that check, the suits decide what to play on the radio, and usually it's more of the same.  Or least that's my biased opinion when I found myself more than two years out of college, when adults stop following pop music anyway.  I was increasingly turning off the radio when they played overplayed songs, and I think I was completely out by late 1992.

Also, in late 1991, Billboard changed its methodology for compiling the Hot 100. Instead of using playlists submitted by radio stations, they started monitoring each station to count each time a song was played. Instead of using rankings compiled by record retailers, they started scanning each purchase. This was the start of the SoundScan era.

Radio stations played a lot of "recurrents" that were no longer listed on their official playlist but they still kept playing all the time. This kept a lot of songs on the chart longer.