Listening to music in the modern day is as simple as pulling out your phone and opening up Spotify or asking your Amazon Alexa to play a song. Between digital platforms and the Internet, music is nearly instantaneously accessible to everyone. Before this technology existed, though, listening to music required more setup time, more equipment, and most importantly, an analog medium.
One of the most popular mediums? Vinyl records.
A vinyl record, or phonograph record, is a physical audio format that is the shape of a flat, circular disk. As the primary analog format, records were widely used and dominated the music market until the 90s when digital technology made a breakthrough.
Now, records have made their comeback. For the past decade, record sales have been on the rise. In a report by the Recording Industry Association of America, the sales of physical formats in 2022 reached a total of $1.7 billion. Nearly three-quarters of those sales were accounted for by vinyl records.
What caused this resurgence? How are sales continuously increasing for a medium that died off decades ago? When digital forms exist and provide convenience, why do people still turn to analog formats?
US Recorded Music Revenue from LP/EP (1973-2022)
All are valid questions, but an even more interesting question? How are younger generations tied to vinyl records? The medium peaked long before any of Generation Z was born, so why are there young people today collecting vinyl?
Kyle Barnett, a media studies professor at Bellarmine University and the author of “Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U.S. Recording Industry,” first witnessed the younger generation interact with vinyl years ago.
Barnett is the faculty adviser for the student radio station where they playing digital files on the radio station, but years ago the students increasingly started to ask him if they could set up turntables.
“It’s been interesting to sort of see them getting used to not just playing vinyl, but also what analog technology needs,” Barnett said. “You know so you queue up a digital song differently than you queue up an analog song, you have to drop it on the turntable perfectly and all that.”
For Barnett, who loves listening to a vinyl record in the evening as a way to purposefully wind down at the end of the day, it’s a matter of physicality.
“The way I think about it is that sound recording has — for much of its history — been a very material thing. There’s something that’s really pleasing about the object as a piece of artwork, as a piece of personal history. ”
Many college students that collect vinyl resonated the same sentiment. Aubrie Cole, a sophomore in college, got into record collecting at the young age of 15. After including it in her Christmas wish list, Cole’s mother gifted her old vinyls and a record player for the holidays. That record player is now Cole’s baby, her most prized possession.
“I’ve always had this weird interest in how physical media is dying and how we listen to all of our music on like Spotify and iTunes, and we don’t actually own any of that music,” Cole said. “It’s kind of just like they’re in the cloud.”
Nick Virnich, a college freshman, also appreciates physical media. Virnich, who was also a former employee at Amoeba Records in Hollywood, loves older music. Even as a Gen Z young adult, he has always been fascinated by records and worked at record stores during high school and college.
“I just love the whole experience of owning a physical piece of like an album.”
As Virnich expressed, listening to a vinyl is an experience to many that is not comparable to streaming. Barnett feels as though the physicality specifics of a vinyl contribute to the experience.
“People like the liner notes and the sleeves. Some people talk about how they like the smell of the package or the record, or sometimes different colored vinyl,” Barnett said. “In your lifetime, I think sound recording went from being an object to being the sort of ephemeral experience.”
Barnett pointed out that younger generations seem to value the physical aspect more than others. He shared that, in his experience, younger people were attracted to the the material object; if they liked something, they would stream it, but if they loved it, they wanted a physical copy.
“As I started collecting more and more, I started acquiring all these albums that I knew I loved,” Cole said.
Independent record store owners that regularly interact with their customer bases noticed a shift in recent years too. Oren Pius, the owner of Cosmic Vinyl Cafe in Silverlake, has a lot of young folk come in to his store. He has noticed that the older generation who had close connections to vinyl, now have kids and are showing their teenagers vinyl.
“You are definitely getting the younger crowd buying records these days as opposed to just older record heads in their 40s and 50s,” Pius said. “These young kids know better and more about vinyl than me almost!”
Ownership is also a large contributing factor to collecting vinyl, which is related to the physical aspect. In a technological age where everything is on the Internet or on some drive, ownership is not a real concept.
Barnett described how streaming and owning an analog medium do not even come close in terms of owning something. He compared streaming to renting and collecting vinyl to buying.
“If Spotify or Netflix decides to take some music down or take some movies down, then I’m really at the mercy of what they choose to give me or not give me. But, if I buy an actual object, I own it at some level and I don’t have to worry about whatever streaming platform and how they’re feeling in a given month.”
The younger generation that grew up with modern technology, therefore, often lack this ownership in any form. Vinyl collecting allows them to retain some of that power that comes with saying the object is yours.
“I really wanted to start collecting vinyl because I want to actually own this music and have it,” Cole said. “It’s not going to happen, but if Spotify and iTunes went away, I wanted to be able to have something physical to keep for myself.”
It’s not going to happen, but if Spotify and iTunes went away, I wanted to be able to have something physical to keep for myself.”
Aubrie Cole
Rereleases in the vinyl world contribute to a hefty portion of sales today. By rereleasing albums with slight changes and rereleasing a mix of old and new albums, the younger crowds are drawn in.
“There’s a lot more sort of fancy or different iterations of the same release,” Barnett said.
Older albums such as those by the Beatles have dozens of rereleases and newer artists like Taylor Swift have album releases that sell fast.
Jonathan Hedvet, owns Nivessa Vinyl Record Store in Mid-Wilshire, and sees college kids always showing up to get these releases. He recalled the lines outside his store the morning of National Record Day last year.
“So many college students from UCLA were camping out outside looking for Olivia Rodrigo albums since 9 p.m. the night before,” Hedvet said.
So regardless of it is the physicality, the search for ownership, or simply loving Taylor Swift, the younger generation is clearly taking its part in involving themselves in the world of vinyl.