Unwind and Remix: The Vinyl's Cultural Significance by Emily Counsil
Before digital streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music, people had to purchase physical methods to play and listen to music. Recently, collecting vinyl has become popular again. While some people have been building their collection for decades, many have only recently begun enjoying the old-school feeling of listening to vinyl on a Friday night. My first few finals were gifted to me or hand-me-downs, but I vividly remember my first time flipping through records for hours on my own. Through researching the vinyl's history and considering my personal experiences, I explore vinyl's resurgence in music and popular culture to understand its cultural significance.
The recent resurgence in vinyl has made it a hot commodity and cultural practice, especially as music artists release multiple album variants. Within record collection contexts, variants are ways the physical vinyl appears different from its counterparts; the tracklist remains the same and the physical, marketable, aesthetic changes. Most notably, Taylor Swift has released nine variants of folklore, six variants of Midnights, and five variants of 1989 (Taylor's Version). As I'm writing this essay, Swift has released over ten unique variants for her upcoming album, The Life of a Showgirl. While Swift's catalog is sold internationally, many indie artists only produce limited stock due to their own marketability. In the case of Chappell Roan, I spent over a year searching for The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess album at my local store, Love Garden Sounds in Lawrence, KS, before her song "Good Luck, Babe" topped the charts in Summer 2024. While I could've bought the album online, I am biased toward flipping through records-new and old-until finding the diamond in the rough. This satisfactoryfeeling may come from buying a long awaited album, finding a limited gem, or discovering a new groove from an old record.
When I first entered Love Garden, I had this innate feeling that anything was possible. They have the latest releases and familiar favorites, making it feel like a place that escapes time itself. On my first visit, I think I flipped through every album they had, spending a significant amount of time in the "used alternative" section looking for the perfect first addition to my collection that was mine. Not a gift or hand-me-down, not something that could be taken off streaming platforms, but really truly mine. Purchasing St. Vincent's Masseducation was the perfect marker for where I was in my life; starting college, finding my independence, and (re)establishing my style in a way that's uniquely mine. For me, vinyls aren't simply a method of listening to music, they're a freedom of expression and physical memory markers. While most of my friends will enter Love Garden with me, I quickly learned not all of them can spend hours in there like I can, despite vinyl's resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic.
First printed in 1930, the vinyl record has been around nearly 100 years. Today, though, printing records is in much higher demand than it once was. With many people staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic, record sales began to rise and gained a newfound popularity amongst younger generations. In fact, today records are the most popular form of purchasing physical music, surpassing its technologically advanced counterpart the CD. "Left for dead with the advent of CDs in the 1980s, vinyl records are now the music industry's most popular and highest-grossing physical format, with fans choosing it for collectibility, sound quality or simply the tactile experience of music in an age of digital ephemerality... LP sales exploded during the pandemic" (Sisario 2021). Notably, when people were searching for hobbies during the pandemic, they were looking for physical connections to the space we live in. With the only connection to people being digital, it seems importance lies within physically consuming media-book sales, for example, also rose during the pandemic. This desire for physicality may reveal that humans need a material connection to empathetic means of communication. Essentially, when we couldn't physically rely on our friends to support us during isolation, we began relying on physical mediums to emotionally support us in different ways.
People often feel personal connections to the media they're consuming-from connecting to a book's protagonist or feeling like a song lyric directly reflects current emotions, people find connections to others through artistic expression. Rather than a strictly digital connection to art, though, the pandemic encouraged people to materially connect with art and music. This emotional connection goes both ways, as the artists, producers, and LP printers all work hard to release a product they're proud of.
Music production is generally a lengthy task; every song must be mixed on a physical record before it can be "uploaded" to digital streaming services. In an article by Ben Sisario at The New York Times, he interviews the founder of Electric Recording Co., Pete Hutchison, in London to discuss the record printing process. He explains to Sisario that, "Mastering a vinyl record involves 'cutting' grooves into a lacquer disc, a dark art in which tiny adjustments can have a big effect. Unusually among engineers, Hutchison tends to master records at low volumes - sometimes even quieter than the originals - to bring out more of the natural feel of the instruments" (Sisario). Essentially, the sound is produced when the record player needle hits the disc grooves at the right, and Hustchison takes extra care to assure his vinyls sound smooth. Further, record collecting, owning a record player, and maintaining a proper sound system is an expensive, laborious, hobby. Additionally, the technology for printing records is expensive. Normally as technology advances previous technologies are left behind, so when vinyl became popular again, music engineers weren't prepared to continue printing vinyls.
Technological upkeep itself is expansive, and making new issues of old media is no easy feat, which is reflected in the vinyl production cost. As Sisario explains, Hutchison had to find old equipment to restore in order to continue producing records. "To a large degree, the vinyl resurgence of the last decade has been fueled by reissues... In 2009, Hutchison bought the two hulking, gunmetal-gray machines he uses to master records - a Lyrec tape deck and lathe, with Ortofon amplifiers, both from 1965 - and spent more than $150,000 restoring them over three years" (Sisario). When record collecting had a brief sale uptick in 2008, it's clear Hutchison had an inkling the technology would need to be maintained. Additionally, this provides insight into perhaps why record collecting is an expensive hobby; not only do these physical records take time to print, the machinery itself is an expensive upkeep. With that in mind, there are many reasons for the record business expansion.
Camoin Associates, an economic development consulting firm, attributes six reasons for the "vinyl record revival": Record Store Day, the pandemic, nostalgia, digital burnout, collectivity, and aesthetics. Initiated in 2008, Record Store Day (RSD) is a strategic way for record stores to generate excitement about records by asking artists to create limited-edition vinyls only available on that date. Collectors and average consumers alike will stand in lines outside like its Black Friday for these limited-edition records and mixtapes. Before Record Store Day in 2007 sales were $22.9 million, after the introduction of Record Store Days in 2008, sales quickly rose to $56.7 million. Sales increased by $33.9 million dollars in a single year and by 2022, sales reached $1.2 billion (Jordan). It seems there is a connection between a desire for nostalgia and physical mediums during times of strife-2008 market crash and COVID-19 to bring together human connection. Therefore, vinyl records are a physical medium that emotionally connects people across cultures. In this way, vinyls are an important reflection of art, culture, and human connection.
Vinyl records have experienced a significant resurgence in popularity, becoming a cultural phenomenon with deep connections to art, culture, and human interaction. This resurgence can be attributed to several factors and despite production difficulties, vinyl producers worked through the meticulous process in taking great care with mastering the sound. Similarly, I treat my vinyl with care-they're a physical memory marker, an emotional connection, and a form of self expression unique to my journey. The emotional connection music creates positions vinyls as a way to circulate physical culture that reflect current events, even if only for a brief moment in time. Overall, the vinyl resurgence reflects a desire for physical connection, emotional support, and a deeper engagement with music and culture. I give vinyl records four stars.
Works Cited
Jordan, Jilayne. "The Surprising Resurrection of the Vinyl Records Industry." Camoinassociates.com, 7 Feb. 2024, camoinassociates.com/resources/vinyl-records-resurrection/.
Sisario, Ben. "The Vinyl? It's Pricey. The Sound? Otherworldly." The New York Times, 28 Apr. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/arts/music/electric-recording-co-vinyl.html.
---. "Vinyl Is Selling so Well That It's Getting Hard to Sell Vinyl." The New York Times, 21 Oct. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/arts/music/vinyl-records-delays.html.
Stewart, Nick. "A Spinning Trend: Gen Z and Vinyl Records." KUNR Public Radio, KUNR, 21 Aug. 2024, www.kunr.org/local-stories/2024-08-21/gen-z-vinyl-record-sales.