Increasingly, vinyl has music lovers spinning.
According to a July 2023 article in The Guardian, “vinyl sales in the US are up 21.7% for the first half of 2023 over the same period last year.” and 2022, the article says, “marked the 17th consecutive year that sales of vinyl records rose.” That first-half 2023 growth rate, it says, “has reassured experts that the vinyl market did not hit a natural plateau after surging during the pandemic, which caused a 108% increase in 2021.”
A March 2023 NPR article says that “vinyl albums outsold CDs last year for the first time since 1987, according to the Recording Industry Association of America’s year-end report … with 41 million albums sold, compared to 33 million CDs.”
Local record shop owners and managers said they, too, have seen interest rising for years.
“I just don’t think vinyl ever died,” Greg Evans, owner of Sounds Good Music House at 119 Main St., Andes, said. “It definitely went away and was not the main source of how people were purchasing or experiencing music, but I don’t think it ever totally went away.
“So, vinyl was already totally back way before the pandemic, but I would say it had some sort of multiplier added to it when people were locked in their homes and listening to records and wanted to get more or expand their collections,” Evans continued. “But vinyl is definitely at a different point now; back in 2011, Walmart and Urban Outfitters were not carrying records and you still had to seek them out through actual record stores or order them or go to a show. So, it’s definitely more common knowledge and more in the mainstream now than it was 15 years ago, but I don’t think this resurgence of vinyl is new right now.”
Sources said several factors have listeners finding their groove in vinyl.
“The CD is a terrible format; you’d hold the jewel case and the artwork is super tiny and you can barely read the lyrics, so it just wasn’t good,” Evans said. “You bought it and it got scratched and then you felt kind of duped. And the cassette was even worse, but that was fun because it was malleable and so cheap. Then we went to everything streaming, but I think people have started to feel like music is so visceral. It’s actually going to a show or holding this physical manifestation and being able to have friends come over and see what you have and flip through your box of records. It’s having that experience of being able to talk and share music again as a physical artifact that has become very important to people.
“Having things in the digital realm just doesn’t work,” Evans continued. “What I love about actual, physical analogue things — whether it’s film or records — is that you don’t need technology to experience this. Even if you don’t have a great record player, as long as you can drop a record on it and spin it, you can play; but if you don’t have a computer in 50 years that can play an mp3, you’re out of luck. You can always experience this medium, so I think we’re always going to have this feeling of wanting to experience vinyl. I have a 2-year-old son and … I hope someday he’ll dig through a pile of records and put a record on, but I don’t anticipate he’s going to log on to Spotify and go through one of my playlists. So, at least for me, it’s about the experience of sharing that medium of music with other people and I don’t think there’s a better way of doing that. I think people are just starting to get sick of everything being digital, and we want to start having things.”
“I always thought it was so much more interesting to own your own thing,” Darius Worley, manager of Basement Records, 156 Main St., Oneonta, echoed. “I’ve always wanted to have a physical copy of what I love. It’s just so much more rewarding to have something to look at while you hear the music you love, and it’s easier to share that way, too. For others, it could be a nostalgia factor. It could be that people got bored and it could also just be that time again; the same thing happened right after CDs crashed in the early 2000s and early 2010s (when vinyl) came back after people just stopped caring about CDs.”
A 2023 musicgateway.com article titled “The Rise, Fall and Rise of Vinyl Records” says: “(Vinyl) didn’t rely on being a quick fix for enjoying music. With its warm and imperfect analogue offerings, it was more of an experience. And in the face of the dominance of cold, digital streaming, vinyl gave consumers an option that CDs and cassettes didn’t. It’s been a slow road, but the last 15 years have seen a gradual increase in vinyl sales that few could have predicted at the turn of the millennium.”
And, sources said, records simply sound better.
“For some people, it’s about sound compression,” Worley said. “When you port music to a digital (device), there’s a much smaller range of sound that you can actually hear. And I know that vinyl is the best format for the least amount of sound compression; you’ll hear more of the lows in the music, the bass or the treble.”
“There’s always been a group that only listened to vinyl because of the sound quality, and no one has figured out how to replicate that in any other way,” Evans said.
Sources said artists, too, are influencing interest.
“A lot of it comes to the new artists themselves,” Worley said. “Taylor Swift, for instance, was one of the biggest-selling record names last year, like top three, so a lot is the artist and who that person is and sometime they’ll do a special release with different stuff and it’s honestly genius. And re-presses, too; there’s been a lot of re-presses of things you couldn’t get awhile ago, like Smashing Pumpkins, you couldn’t get their first album since the first time it was released. It’s the artists, the labels and there’s demand.”
“If an artist or record label decides to pull (their work) from Spotify, there’s no way of listening to it after,” Evans said. “So, if I don’t have it as a record, then I have no way of re-experiencing it; it’s the same as when Netflix pulls movies. It takes that love away, so having your own collection — books, records — is a natural expression of yourself and your tastes that allows you to revisit and go back to it, and I think that’s important to people.”
Evans said that he tries to champion emergent and independent artists, especially.
“I’ve never believed in genre being the thing; everything is just intrinsically so connected,” he said. “I’ve been very adamant that everything we have is something one of the (five) people involved in the shop really loves. So, we offer new stuff and we offer used records, but I very much try to give smaller record labels and artists, whether local or international or somewhere throughout the country, a platform, so their music is out in front of people. You’re not going to find Taylor Swift here, out of the fact that she doesn’t need more press, and there are so many artists making really wonderful things that need to get their music in front of faces.”
Evans said that Sounds Good has begun hosting live performances.
“Part of this is also engaging local artists and smaller national acts … to get music back up into the Catskills,” he said. “So, in addition to giving a platform on the shelves, we’re giving artists a platform to come play a live show.” Find show announcements on Sound Good Music House social media channels.
Such widespread consumption, sources said, is generating a diverse record-buying clientele.
“Theres definitely three different listeners: one is people buying records … and playing them on a record player, having that artwork and everything,” Evans said. “Another one is someone who really wants to create a record collection and loves sharing music and the sound of vinyl and has a total affinity for how it feels to sit in front of a record player and hear that beautiful, warm sound and have the experience with the album, but doesn’t get too precious with it. Then there’s your audiophiles that inspect every single record they’re buying, looking for dust and any scratches in the grooves and they take that home, put it in their ultra-sonic, soundproof room and have an immaculate moment of listening to music. I think it’s cool there’s multiple facets, and there’s not that with digital music. We put Post-Its on as many records as we can with our own funny or relatable comments to give people an introduction to what they might experience, and a lot of people have bought records without even hearing them just based on our notes. I would say what people can expect is maximum engagement. Everything we have, we really love, so we don’t try to get into people’s business, but we do try to engage all our customers and hear what they like or don’t like and introduce them to something new or point them in the right direction of things they already love.
“I have a number of people who come in constantly who’ve lived here their entire lives,” he continued. “And we have a lot of people who have obviously transplanted here pre- or post-pandemic who have a city mindset or people who split their time, and obviously tourists. I would say 40% of customers are regulars who come in all the time, which is pretty remarkable and something I would’ve never anticipated, but I underestimated the amount of people who, like myself, are up here permanently and enjoy the ritual of going to your record store to see what’s new.”
“It’s normally like 60/40, college kids in favor, and the rest would be locals,” Worley said. “The area brings us a lot of different people, due to baseball season in summer and spring, then college kids in the school season. I think it’s mostly college-age and late high school students, but I have seen a few elementary age (customers) and it’s honestly heartwarming to see younger people caring about it, and it’s not always new music; I’ll see young kids come in and ask for Johnny Cash 45s.”
For more information, follow @basementrecordsoneonta or @soundsgoodcatskills on Instagram. Also, visit soundsgoodcatskills.com or call 845-676-6233.