I started buying vinyl records in 1999, when I was 17. There were a couple of cool independent record stores in the suburbs, and my mother didn’t seem to mind that I just commandeered her unused turntable. Back then, it was just an affectation. I stopped for a long time when I didn’t live in a house and didn’t have room for a proper stereo.
But vinyl records have gone on to have a massive revival. Streaming music is still king, but vinyl records have eclipsed CD sales. And continue to sell more each year to Gen X and Millennial customers. The sales of physical volumes really matter — when production issues delay a vinyl release date out from the normal record release date, it is often the sales of the vinyl record that put a new album onto the charts. The ongoing revival has strained the production capacities of the industry. A significant portion of the industry — several different companies — had to shift into making copies of Adele’s latest album last year.
Now a record-of-the-month club called Vinyl Me Please is investing in a massive new vinyl-record-production plant of its own.
There’s a paradox at the heart of this. Part of the vinyl revival comes down to the fact that the record business lost its reputation as a moneymaker, and so ambitious businessmen who wanted to make money from records left the trade. Now, enthusiasts, who only make money so they can keep making records, have taken it over. The product is often better — more-expansive liner notes, artwork, and better presentation. Not always (looking at you, Plain Recordings). But usually. And the CD revival seems like it isn’t far behind, either. Even the Super Audio CD, a format that never quite got the support it deserved, seems to be thriving in the hands of specialists, particularly in the classical-music space, which has embraced it.