Arts & Life

Vinyl records spin their way back into popularity, relevance

Vinyl has seen a surge of popularity in recent years due to the warmth and lack of perfection in its sound, along with the novelty value.

For some people, music is purely an auditory experience, not a visual one. But when Cal State Long Beach film graduate student Sam Singer listens to music, images of a guitarist’s fingers sliding across the strings and the warmth of the vinyl playing are strong enough to paralyze him with joy.

No matter his mood, listening to a vinyl Long Play (LP) can change Singer’s day profoundly, often leaving him with a child-like smile when listening to his favorite vinyl LP.

Decades after its inception and to the shock of many, vinyl LP sales have continued to rise year after year, making them the fastest growing music format in the U.S. today, according to a 2012 Nielsen Company & Billboard Music Industry report.

LP sales increased by 700,000 units from 2011 to 2012, a 17.7 percent rise, according to the report.

Though it’s difficult to determine exactly why LP sales are increasing so rapidly, some point to events like Record Store Day, a yearly event in which independent record stores throughout the nation exclusively sell rare content every April to boost LP sales.

Vinyl enthusiast Kevin Diehm, also known as “Dyzzy,” is the owner of the “Dyzzy on Vynyl” record store in Long Beach and said he has noticed an influx in record sales.

He acknowledged that vinyl is more expensive to produce than CDs or MP3s; however, he said he feels that no other medium can recreate the “feel’ of a vinyl record.

“No one is going to listen to CDs 50 years from now,” Singer said.

To fulfill the niche LP market, many music artists release their new albums on vinyl in addition to CD and MP3 versions.

The price of a new top-ten vinyl LP at Amazon, Best Buy and Barnes & Noble, on average, is 103.3 percent higher than the cost for the same CD.

Even though the cost of a new LP tends to be higher than the cost of a new CD, Dyzzy said he thinks vinyl records are growing in popularity because two different generations are now interested in the music medium.

“My parents always had records, and it was always a novelty,” Greg Krish, a sophomore film and electronic arts student, said. “I buy a lot of vinyl just because it’s kind of like a document. I don’t think it is the best platform for music because it’s very easy to damage, but it has its own charm to it.”

Dyzzy said he noticed more young people, like Krish, purchasing vinyl albums around 2005, when he saw retro trends becoming popular again.

In addition to young people playing vinyl, radio stations like K-Jazz continue to use it, though not as much as MP3s.
 

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