The numbers on a record label, 33⅓, 45, 78, are simply rotations per minute. But behind those three speeds is the whole history of recorded music, and a practical guide to what you are actually buying when you pick up a record.
78 rpm: the shellac era
Before vinyl there was shellac, a brittle resin compound spun at 78 rpm. A 10-inch 78 holds about three minutes a side, which is why the three-minute song became the unit of popular music. India loved the 78 and kept pressing them well after the West moved on, deep into the 1960s. Countless K.L. Saigal, Pankaj Mullick, and early film songs exist natively only as 78s.
Two warnings if you inherit a stack: shellac shatters like a plate if dropped, and it dissolves in alcohol, so never clean a 78 with the fluid you use on vinyl.
33⅓ rpm: the LP
Columbia introduced the 12-inch Long Player in 1948: microgroove vinyl, twenty-plus minutes a side. The LP made the album an artistic form. Film soundtracks could finally breathe, which is why Indian cinema embraced it so completely: a full score, dialogue highlights and all, on one disc.
Most of what we stock are LPs, and the format tells you how to judge weight and wear. A 1960s Indian EMI LP is a solid, heavy pressing; by the late 1970s vinyl everywhere got thinner as oil prices rose.
45 rpm: singles and EPs
RCA answered Columbia in 1949 with the 7-inch 45. One song a side, jukebox-ready, with a big centre hole. The EP, or extended play, squeezed four songs onto a 45 by cutting the groove finer. Indian EPs from the 1960s are a collecting field of their own: film scores condensed to their four best songs, in picture sleeves that survived far worse than the records did.
There are also 12-inch 45s: the disco-era "maxi single", cut louder and wider for DJs. Our Michael Jackson Earth Song single is this format, and the extra groove width is audible in the bass.
How to tell what you are holding
- 12 inch, small hole, several tracks a side: LP at 33⅓
- 7 inch, large hole: single or EP at 45
- 10 or 12 inch, heavy, thick, shiny like glass: probably a 78, check the label
- 12 inch but only one or two tracks a side: maxi single at 45
The one mistake to avoid is playing a record at the wrong speed with the wrong stylus. A 78 needs a wider stylus; a modern elliptical tip will sit at the bottom of a 78's groove and damage both itself and the record.
Double LPs deserve a footnote: two discs, gatefold sleeve, and in the case of concert recordings like Jagjit and Chitra Singh's Come Alive, the only way a full evening's performance could fit. When a listing says 2xLP, you are buying twice the vinyl and usually twice the playing time.
Speed is the first thing to check and the easiest to get right. Everything else about a record can be subtle; this part is just arithmetic.
