I remember the first vinyl that my father played to me on his pretty, wooden, nostalgic record player: It was the vinyl record from Aphrodite's child, the 666 album published via vertigo records. I was listening to songs like loud, loud loud or babylon. It had something very nostalgic to it and felt "real". Sounds cheezy...I know and I have not put the same effort in my own multimeda collection. I am a boring spotify user listening to my records over the phone. As far as I am concerned it's enough for my own expectations towards quality and experience on the medium of playback.
Paradoxically, I have not bought any physical music or movies for a long time now and as far as I know not a lot of my friends have done it as well. There are still quite different opinion on the quality of each medium. However, the tendency to my mind is that a hell of a lot people simply don't care about the difference in quality. MP3 has taken over the most mainstream minds and people like to listen to music via their phone on Spotify, Itunes and comparable services.
The following news news is therefore quite a surprise to my own mindset in terms of physical purchase of music. The Vinyl is apparently set for a comeback in 2017 and will most probably hit $1bn in sales within 2017. This number is outrageously high taken into consideration that least of the people I know even possess such an old fashioned record player any longer. It's paradox because I don't even know if this means that I am getting old or young? Or is it my generation? I was having the impression that virtually everyone is listening to music via streaming servies today or at least bought MP3 on his mobile phone. It is far beyond any expectations I would have had towards this medium.
In general the sales are expected to derive from the Millenial generation mostly who are constantly looking for nostalgic, original things today that is enriching their overall experience - or is it style? Just in the same fashion that the old camera manufacturer Leika experiences a renessaince in popularity and rocketed in sales lately - even the Huawei had a Leika camera on board of the newest flagship mobile phone - the music industry is now facing a similar trend.
The good thing about this trend is that people are naturally paying more money for nostalgic special editions and focused releases. This will be increasing margins considerably for artists and producers as well as publishers. Even the gaming industry could profit from it since special editions nowadays often include soundtracks and they could be strongly increasing interest when including true vinyl records as happened already with games like Halo in the past.
How is this topic being dealt with in your social environment? Is the vinyl something you are seeing on your day-to-day life more? Are people you know getting more involved in such things?
Thanks for reading.
Yours,
HubrisCubris