By: Redd Peterson
In an age of digital media, vinyl record sales have gone through the roof in the past decade.
In today’s world with the rise of Spotify, Apple Music, and plenty of other streaming services, the art of collecting vinyl records has surprisingly increased throughout the 2020’s. According to research, record sales have increased from 13.1 million in 2016, to 49.6 million in 2023. This has led to a “Vinyl Revival” and record collecting has skyrocketed throughout the 2020’s.
The average cost for a record today is around $20 while the average cost per month of a streaming service is $11. So why do people collect records when it costs significantly more than a streaming service where you can listen to more than just one album?
Blakeley Brian, a junior who has around 30 records in her collection, says it is easier to listen to the words and beats of a song on a record than listening to them digitally.
“It’s cool to hear each individual song on the album because I am not just picking a certain song on the album I listen to the whole album.”
Another cool part about collecting records is listening to them. When you listen to a record, you listen to an entire album instead of just one song on an album. It helps you find some “hidden gems” that you would never listen to normally because they aren’t the artist’s top songs.
Mr. Murphy, an English, communications, and psychology teacher at Fremont, is a seasoned veteran when it comes to record collecting. He has collected over 3,000 records and has collected them ever since he was a kid.
“If I’m just listening to music and its digital I’ll like listen to a song click, listen to another song and click, and pretty soon I’m listening to half a song and getting bored and clicking. I just never actually listen to the music I’m more concerned about listening to what’s next.”
Listening to music on a record isn’t really “easy”, but it can feel rewarding compared to listening to music on Spotify where it is much easier to jump around from song to song on a playlist.
Murphy also stated, “With a record, it’s what I would call ‘purposeful listening’, because playing a record is a pain, because you have to take it out, you have to handle it incredibly carefully, you have to put it on, and you have to go through this entire sequence in order to listen to the music. And so by doing that I’m gonna put on a record and I’m gonna commit to that record. And so for me it’s more about that listening experience of actually committing to listening versus just “click”, it’s a song in the background, who cares.”
When you put on a record it feels so much different than listening to music digitally because you “feel” the music instead of just listening to it. When you put the needle to the vinyl grooves, you can hear the pops and slight static from older records. You can feel the age of an older record that you stole from your grandma’s attic compared to the record that you just picked up from your local shop.
The growth of vinyl is also due to the collectibility of it. Things such as Funko Pops, baseball cards, and even stamps are hobbies because you can build a collection of them. Vinyl records have many different ways for them to mean something to the collector.
A record’s value is really up to the collector. A record could be significant to you because it’s your favorite album by your favorite artist or because your dad went through the trouble of getting a record for you on your birthday. Collecting records is all subjective and collectors decide why each record they collect has meaning.
