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Past vs. Present

Elvis Presley lived in the middle of the previous century and the things very vastly different compared to the present. There was no internet and if one wanted to listen to music other than from the radio one had to buy physical sound carriers made of vinyl. They were produced in large factories and sent to the local stores. Because of the politics of the labels, the limited space of the stores and the individual tastes and calculations of the owners not every track was available at every record shop. Besides that the procedure was quite expensive. Today a monthly flatrate enables you to listen to millions and millions of tracks, but in the old days this amount of money was barely enough for a single longplayer. For the artists it was great, because they were paid as soon as the album was sold and needn't have to care whether the buyer listened to it 24/7 or threw it in the trash bin right after leaving the shop. And because a track could be released on several records and in several formats it was a nice opportunity to cash in many times. So to an artist they were really the good ol' days!

Having sold more than a billion units Elvis Presley is regarded the most successful act in the music industry so far. To the younger ones that sounds like a joke, because today's stars are streamed two or three times as much with a single track. But one stream doesn't eqal the sale of a physical unit like a vinyl record or a compact disc of the old days. The physical sale of a track translates to 100 streams, so each sold vinyl single with two tracks corresponds to 200 streams. Billboard and Nielsen Sound Scan translate a physical album with 12 to 13 tracks to 1,250 streams. If you stream for free you even need 3,750 streams to equal a physical unit. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) translates a physical single to 150 paid streams and an album to 1,500 paid streams to calculate their awards. To sum it up: It's not easy to compare the old times to the present.

In my reviews I use the conversion factor of the RIAA to give you an impression of the success of the releases. I also mention the number of streams on Spotify (updated on 31.10.2024). Of course these figures change every second, but still they demonstrate how popular a release is in the present. Sometimes the current popularity of an album or a single track stands in stark contrast to the popularity of the physical release. It's quite interesting to see how the taste has changed over the decades. To calculate the total number of streams, you simply may double the figures since Spotify owns around 50% of the market.

Formats

Potential hits were released on singles, vinyl discs with a diameter of 17.5cm that were played at 45 rpm (rounds per minute). Each side of the disc contained one track, the great one was considered to be the a-side, the other was some kind of a bonus and was -that's the surprise-  on the b-side. Today the format is out of business, there are no singles anymore. The longplayers (lp) are still around and have a market share of ca. 10%. The vinyl discs are played at 33.3 rpm and have a diameter of 30cm. Because the younger audience had too much money for a single but to little to afford an album the industry served them with an extended player (ep). Just like the singles they were played at 45 rpm, but they were a little bigger and contained 4 to 6 tracks. In the 1950s the format was extremely popular, there was even a special chart for it. But all that fizzled out soon and by the mid-sixties the ep was as dead as the singer with the same initials would be a decade later.

As written before, these three formats of vinyl offered a great opportunity to cash in. Two songs were released on a single, one of them became a hit. Both tracks could be used again on an ep or a lp. The extended players and long players could also be filled with a string of popular songs and some turkeys as fillers. If a fan wanted to hear the few previously unreleased tracks, the whole album had to be bought. Besides that, the information on the vinyl discs were read out mechanically with a needle and the quality lowered each time the record was played. So the fans had to buy new discs from time to time and made the artists even more money. It was beautiful!

Charts

The charts were calculated in a completely different way, too. Now it's quite simple: The streams of each track are counted and assorted according to the number of streams. In the 1990s and 2000s the sold physical units were counted with scanners. But in the middle of the last century the owners of the usually small record shops had to count and report the sold units by hand. In most cases it was no more than pure guesswork. To make it worse, airplay was another major factor. If the radiostations played a song on a regular basis, it could chart higher than a song that sold much better, but was ignored by the djs. In the old days fraud was no problem. Radiostations were connected to record labels (and therefore favored certain tracks) and companies bought their own records. Today people are paid to stream certain tracks, so there are still some contradictions. But in total the charts are far more realistic now. Popular songs are keeping high positions for months and some old tracks suddenly return because of certain events like Christmas or the use in popular movies or shows.

Awards

Of course the awards are also not what they once used to be. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America) introduced the Gold Award in 1958 to honor the sales of a million units. In 1976 the Platinum Award took its place and a record just needed 500,000 sales to be awarded with Gold. For Elvis Presley this was pretty bad, because when the Gold Award was introduced, he already had sold 20 million records and when Platinum emerged he could not trade his many Gold Awards for Platinum. Shit happens!

But even by today's standards the outcome of Mr. Presley is impressive. In the US no less than 185 albums, singles and extended players are awarded with Gold, Platinum or Diamond. And there are a lot more awards from other countries, because 40% of the King's records were sold abroad.

Today

In 2016 the complete catalogue of Presley tracks was scanned with high resolution equipment, repaired and remastered. As a result all master recordings can be graced with the Hi-Res logo. Of course nothing can turn an analogue recording into true high resolution and even the good old compact disc of the 1980s with its 44.1 kHz/16 bit exceeds the human auditory sense by far. But hey, a little marketing scam is no crime and I am happy to have all the relevant tracks available on the streaming platforms in the best quality possible. The tracks certainly sound a lot better than they did when Elvis was alive.

Since 1999 there is also an official collector's label called Follow That Dream Records. It releases live recordings, outtakes and even complete recording sessions. The only letdown is, that they stick to the extincted cd format and refuse to distribute their releases through the streaming platforms. WTF!?!

But in general the Presley fan of the present is treated well. All master recordings are available in good quality and Sony Music Entertainment even cleaned up the catalogue. As written before, in the old days one or two unreleased tracks were used to get the fans to buy an album full of otherwise well known material. So the label scrapped releases like "Burning Love And Hits From His Movies" (1972) and added the important stuff to other albums of the period. The same was done with songs that were released exclusively on singles. So everything is available and there is not too much dublication.  Besides that Sony Music Entertainment uses their label RCA Legacy Records to issue sets of live recordings or newly created remixes. In total there is lots of interesting stuff available.