Is Vinyl Making a Comeback?

Last summer, I had the good fortune to peek into a garage sale while walking home and find a record player for the excellent price of $10.  When I brought it home, my dad asked why I was interested in playing records.  My answer was somewhere along the lines of, “Dunno… they’re cool.”

Later that summer, I was in Vancouver visiting relatives and I was able to score my father’s and aunt’s old record collections.  Returning to Calgary with 185 newly acquired LPs, my dad again asked me why I even wanted the records and why vinyl LPs seemed to be coming back into style.  Good question.

The vinyl LP (long-play) is indeed selling more now than it has in decades.  The Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) year end statistics report that the amount of vinyl records shipped in the year have more than doubled from 2007-2008; $56.7 million USD worth of vinyl LPs and EPs were shipped in 2008.  An enormous increase from 2007’s $22.9 million USD, 2008 boasts the highest dollar value in vinyl shipped in a long while.   Although in comparison with other mediums of distribution these numbers are minuscule, they definitely provide evidence of an alleged comeback.

The closest I can come to explaining this statistical increase and answering my father’s question is through speculation.  I believe it may have to do with the popularity of indie music and hipster culture movements.  Indie rockers and hipsters tend to have a certain nostalgia for music and fashions of the past.  Perhaps the rise of independent music and of hipster culture has helped sell more vinyl.

Another possible contributor is the generally accepted fact that vinyl has superior sound quality over CDs and MP3s, making it a favorite of audiophiles and devout fans.  In CDs and MP3 files, sound is recorded digitally, which means the recorded sound is sampled at intervals at a very high rate (usually 44,100 times per second) and little bits of the original sound wave are lost in the conversion process.  Vinyl LPs record sound in a loss-less analog format.  They have a groove carved into them which exactly mirrors the original sound wave.  No information is lost.  This results in a richer, fuller sound.
I cannot really verify the claim that records have better sound quality due to the fact that the speakers I received with my turntable badly need replacement (but for $10, how can you complain?).

In any case, the comeback vinyl is making is an interesting twist towards the technology of the past and something to watch as time passes.  Perhaps the trend will continue or perhaps in a year or two vinyl records will be forgotten again.  I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.