Although it seems like everyday music is being made to be as compact and portable as possible, the music trend right now is one of the past: record players and vinyl are back in style and are here to stay.
Unique selection
Urban Outfitters is a store that is mostly known for selling apparel and home décor; however, they’ve decided to venture into the world of records. What makes their vinyl collection stand out from other local shops is that they cater to a younger demographic.
Brittany Bruyea, a department manager at Urban Outfitters says, “[they] get the new artists, the new hot stuff, whereas to a lot of the record stores in London carry vintage vinyl, like The Beatles, Nirvana, and older stuff . . . [Urban Outfitters] carr[ies] some of that stuff too, but [they] also sell Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, and Drake.”
The power of tangibility
Owning a physical copy of an album establishes a special relationship between the owner and the artist that a digital copy could never accomplish.
“[With vinyl] it’s no longer I’ve listened to this song; now it’s my property . . . It’s mine and owning something tangible like a record makes a connection between me and the music,” says Kyle Morton, a local vinyl collector.
Authentic sound
Bruyea says that many young customers mistake their record players and vinyl as faulty because they sound “crackly and old,” but that is, in fact, the true sound of a vinyl record.
According to vinyl collectors, the sound of a record is very different than that of an mp3. Morton suggests that to him, “[vinyl] sounds warm and soothing a lot of the time . . . [It’s] not flat, but very open . . . and live . . . With vinyl, you get to live the instruments.”
The future of vinyl
Although many people enjoy music on-the-go, retailers are not afraid of continuing to invest in vinyl.
Bruyea says she doesn’t fear digital music completely taking over anytime soon.
“Record players are a hot thing . . . Recently we even got cassette players and people are buying them . . . Everything old is coming back around,” she adds.