You Spin Me Round: The Birth, Life, Death, Resurgance and Survival of Vinyl
I have been going through a bit of a dilemma recently regarding my records. Do I continue to expand on my collection, sell off most or even all of it, or keep it as it stands as a cultural snapshot of my own life. The reason I am asking myself these questions is because I feel like I am at a crossroads with vinyl. I have most of what I want and whatever I do not have, it is either not available or it is really expensive. While I was exploring my own possible demise of my love of vinyl records, I wondered how, in 2025, I got here in the first place. What started as a curiosity, turned into a fascination and then an obsession. Why has this particular medium come back in such a massive way to which there does not appear to be any end in sight. Today we are going to explore the history of vinyl records and try to explain why society has welcomed a seemingly dead format back into its fold. And for the record (sorry), it's vinyl not vinyls when talking about multiple vinyl records.
Before the Second World War, records were made in part of shellac, a natural resin by the lac insect and originating in India. During the war, it became increasingly difficult to get shellac and the United States government declared shellac a strategic material. (1) As a result, record companies needed to come up with new material to make records. At the time, the major record companies were RCA Victor, Columbia, Decca and Capitol. Columbia was the first out of the gate led by Peter Goldmark (1906-1977). In 1948, Goldberg and his team at Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) developed a material called vinylite (later shortened to vinyl). Vinyl was thinner than the older shellac albums and allowed for a finer, thinner groove, thus creating the ability to put more music on the disc. The reason it spinned at 33 ⅓ revolutions per minute (rpm) is because Goldman was a classical music buff. The speed allowed for a full movement of classical music to be played on one side. (2) Initially these records were developed for “serious music”, such as classical and Broadway musicals. The 12 inch long play or LP record had little effect on rock and roll when it first appeared in 1955. That area was covered by Columbia's competitor, RCA Victor. RCA Victor developed the 45 rpm record, and at 7 inches in diameter, it was large enough for one song on each side. RCA also developed a record player that would not only play 45 rpm but 33 ⅓ rpm and 78 rpm records. (3) This format and the record player that went with it was the perfect vehicle to carry rock and roll into the mainstream.
By the 1950s , the 45 as it was marketed and became known, was the dominant vinyl medium. Even though it had a slow start and was confusing to some, by the time 1955 arrived, rock and roll hit, and 45s had become extremely popular. (4) They were reasonably priced at 65 cents and the more expensive ones at 95 cents, a price even a teenager could afford. And that is exactly where RCA aimed their product at, the new demographic known as the teenager. Millions were sold. By the end of the 1950s and into the 1960s, the 45 was the primary medium for pop and rock music. Any albums (12 inch LP records) that appeared within these genres consisted of a few hits and cover songs acting as filler.However, this shifted on a serious level in 1965.
When the Beatles began in 1960, their songs were primarily released as singles on 45 rpm records. The albums in their early days were much like I mentioned earlier, as this was standard practice, even for a hugely popular band like the Beatles. By 1965, the Beatles had begun to think about stopping touring altogether so they could focus on being more creative within the studio. The ideas that were brewing were far beyond the simple love songs that made the group popular and could not be replicated on stage. When Rubber Soul was released in 1965, the album was different than anyone had seen before. Gone were the hit singles and cover songs as filler. This album was to be played front to back and was viewed as an artistic statement rather than an album with a few hit songs. Rubber Soul was a game changer. People took notice. For the first time, the 12 inch LP was now being listened to by those who wanted more from their music than a few hit singles. Interestingly enough, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys heard Rubber Soul and immediately responded with Pet Sounds (1966). Then in a twist, Pet Sounds inspired the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). This back and forth turned the record industry upside down and by the late 1960s, the LP, not the 45, became the creative force for rock and pop music.
The 1970s were an interesting time for vinyl records. The 1960s peace and love for all had been replaced with a me generation. Since the late 1960s, the album had been treated as something where an artist could express their true artistic statement and release something they could be happy with instead of a corporate release. However, the early 1970s were also almost the end for records. Society appeared to be in an upheaval as the Vietnam War continued to rage on with increasing resistance from the homefront. The economy was in tatters, the cost of the war had spiked inflation reaching 12 per cent and causing stagnant growth and inflation and creating a new term called stagflation. (5) The almost final nail in the coffin for albums came when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), dominated by Middle Eastern producers, decided to restrict oil supplies in 1973. Because of the ensuing oil crisis and shortage, many items that used petroleum were affected, including albums. Pressing plants began to cut costs. Albums were using less petroleum and were pressed thinner. As a result, the sound quality of these pressings suffered greatly. The sound was thinner and more nosy because old albums that had been played were also being melted down to make new ones. The dirt was still in the mixture resulting in more pops and crackles. If you compare an album from that time period with an album today, the difference is staggering. At the same time, the record had become somewhat of a cultural status symbol with the birth of concept albums like Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and The Who's Quadrophenia (1973). Publications like Rolling Stone Magazine had elevated the rock critic to mystic status and saw their articles and reviews published in established papers such as the New York Times. They added authority to articles that often treated an album review as literature or high art.
Technology also played an important role in the evolution of cultural status. Portable record players were being replaced with high end home stereo components. The 1960s saw the rise of the home stereo unit as part of the household becoming furniture as well as statement pieces. The home stereo unit evolved further in the 1970s with separate components and speakers. Album releases sparked listening parties where friends would gather in someone's living room, listen to one side of the new release, discuss what they just heard, flip the record over and then repeat the process for the second side. Albums were a serious part of some social circles. The first thing some did when moving into a new place was set up their stereo system, sometimes even before they bought any more furniture. Albums were listened to, analyzed, shared and listened to again. The playing of a new record was not something that the serious listener took lightly. For some records, it was a ceremony and it called for records that seemed worth having a ceremony about. (6)
Despite the pomp and circumstance that enthusiasts gave to their hobby, vinyl began a slow downward turn in the 1980s. Vinyl albums made up 59.8 per cent of sales in 1980. This declined to 35.7 per cent by 1984 and 8.5 per cent by 1988. (7) Technology played a key role in this decline. The introduction of the Sony Walkman in July 1979 gave the consumer a new way of listening to music. Headphones had been around since the late 1950s, but were attached to the home stereo. The headphones that came with the Walkman were light and portable, allowing the listener to go anywhere and still listen to their music. The Walkman allowed portable music to become a lifestyle and despite the popular notion that the CD killed vinyl, cassettes were the medium that put vinyl on life support. Cassettes were smaller, cheaper to produce, easier to carry around, but most importantly, you could record your own music on it. The mixed tape became an art form. To say the mixed tape was culturally important would be a massive understatement. People would spend hours cultivating the perfect mixture of songs that became calling cards for gifts, used as love letters, and signaled friendships. You could not do any of that with vinyl.
At the beginning of the decade, vinyl appeared to be a big contender for the top medium in which we listened to music. Less than 10 years later, it was practically obsolete. Although cassettes were a major factor in the demise of the vinyl record, another technology drove vinyl almost to extinction. The compact disc (CD) was introduced in 1982 and by the end of the decade, it was the wave of the future, surpassing both cassettes and vinyl. With its superior sound and ability to store more songs on a single 4.7 inch disc, the nearly indestructible CD became popular with pretty much everyone. The only people that appeared to hold on to their vinyl collections were DJs and vinyl enthusiasts. By the early 1990s, record stores had stopped carrying vinyl altogether in favour of the CD which was cheaper to produce, easier to store and had a higher profit range. Pressing plants closed or had converted to CD pressing plants. Vinyl was dead.
Or so everyone thought.
By the mid 1990s, a new digital wave was emerging. Computers were advancing at alarming rates, with new technology happening on a regular basis. CDs were the prevailing force in music but the industry was greedy. A lot of people were buying the CD single, containing a couple of songs, much like the 7 inch vinyl record in the 1950s. The music labels decided to change all of this by discontinuing the CD single. If you wanted to hear the hit single, you had to buy the whole CD. With prices reaching 20.00 (USD) for a popular CD, people rebelled and they used technology to do this. Computers came standard with CD players, replacing the floppy drive as its primary data storage media. People discovered that they could play CDs on this new device. Using a new thing called the Internet, enterprising young people shared downloaded music freely over the Internet and people quickly grabbed free songs or albums and stored them on their computers. It was not perfect. Songs took hours to download and albums took days, with corrupted files becoming a normal occurrence. However, people put up with this because it was free music. However, by the late 1990s, the music industry, more concerned with how much money it was losing, lobbied to make downloading music illegal, calling it music piracy. Legitimate services such as Apple's ITunes began to offer legal downloads for a fee and the first streaming services began to emerge. A digital war emerged in a three front battle between legitimate downloading, music piracy and CDs.
In the midst of this digital war, something interesting began to occur. As sometimes happens, if a dominant form becomes overwhelming or too ubiquitous, a grassroots movement will emerge to counter whatever is happening. As digital formats were battling for supremacy, the now outdated analog vinyl was quietly chugging along in an underground movement, bolstered by DJs and analog supporters who refused to let vinyl be relegated to the technology dustbin. This was helped along by a singular and much maligned sub-culture hell bent on thumbing their nose at technology every chance they had, and being quite pretentious while doing it. They were collectively known as hipsters. Stay with me on this.
Hipsters, for all their pretentiousness, embraced anything that was retro or at least non-digital. This included vintage clothing, Polaroid cameras, micro breweries, small batched coffee, and record payers. Reports and articles emerged of vintage wearing young people showing up at local coffee houses with portable record players . While this was mostly media hype and written as satire, this community did embrace vinyl as part of their aesthetic and collected vinyl records as a lifestyle branding. What this did do, for better or worse, was to bring vinyl records back to the daylight. With all the digital noise going on at the time, an analog world appeared to be what people wanted. Vinyl began to rise again. Slowly.
Another catalyst that would contribute to the resurgence of vinyl was Record Store Day. Initially conceived in 2007, a group of small independent record store owners borrowed the idea from comic book stores and came up with a plan to save their stores. Record Store Day (RSD) was first launched in 2008 and promoted special, limited-run vinyl releases as a way to draw people back to their stores and away from big box stores. Although it was a slow beginning, the first RSD was successful enough to continue and carries on today world-wide with limited runs of David Bowie releases and many, many, many live concert releases that nobody needs to hear. Still, it was part of the perfect storm that, along with digital fatigue, hipster nostalgia brought vinyl records back in a way that nobody ever thought was possible.
Today, vinyl is bigger than it has been in a long time. The latest statistics show that vinyl in Canada is up 18.8 per cent from last year. (8) Is it selling better than in its heyday? That depends on how you view it. During the 1970s and 1980s, vinyl was the dominant form for music listening. There was not much competition. Cassettes were close but if you compare vinyl sales today against streaming, there is absolutely no contest. Streaming today is the dominant force. Compared to this and numbers from the 1970s and 1980s, vinyl is doing well enough but still feels like a niche market. But, ironically, vinyl sales today are outpacing CD sales by a longshot. How is that for artistic justice?
The question we have to ask ourselves is not why vinyl records have returned. It has been almost 20 years now. History is about the study of change over time. So we need to look at why vinyl has remained popular and more importantly, what has changed over the last 20 years to justify this popularity. Let us look at some demographics. Baby boomers are buying albums strictly for nostalgic reasons. One should not dismiss this nostalgia as this act helps identify who they are as a group. Boomers use vinyl to connect with their past and their youth. Baby boomer boomers love the physical connection they have with their music, something that future generations do not have with streaming. We will see that this physical connection will help fuel the vinyl revival later on. Marketing to this demographic through vinyl reissues marked as legacy, classic or anniversary editions help push boomers to open their wallets. It also helps that boomers are the ones who usually can afford these expensive editions.
Generation X buys albums mostly because they remember albums as a teenager but were also exposed to cassettes and CDs. They liked albums but did not love them. Similar to boomers, Gen X grew up with physical collections but they were a mixture of vinyl, CDs and maybe a few cassettes thrown in from some small DIY bands they liked. It was during this generation that vinyl disappeared and the digital age was born. Gen X was that bridge between the two worlds and they did not care about either of them. But that did not stop them from buying into the cultures. When vinyl came back in 2007, Gen X was in line behind boomers buying up albums from their youth. The difference was the albums Gen X bought were ones they grew up with and not their parents albums. Albums were cool but not essential to their being or culture. They were just there.
It is the next two generations where we see something interesting occur. Millennials and Generation Z looked to the past to help identify themselves. This is important because up until 2000 or so, young people fought against the past and did everything within their power not to be associated with that past. This really marks the first time that a generation, in this case two generations, have looked to the past for their future.They did the opposite of whatever their parents did. Millennials helped revive the return of vinyl by embracing analog. Since the dawn of digital in the late 1980s, analog and digital have fought a sonic battle for dominance. Millennials were the first to embrace both and show they could live side by side.
Generation Z took this a step further and are now one of the main forces that continues to drive vinyl to new heights. Generation Z have embraced everything analog, or at least not wholly digital. This is fascinating, coming from a generation that has grown up digital. Like anything else, when the world becomes overly complicated, looking to the past, seeing it as simpler becomes appealing. Old technology, once seen as outdated, becomes retro and cool.
Part of the appeal of vinyl is the ritual of playing a record. It becomes interactive and tangible. In a world where the disconnect is present everyday, the intention is purposeful. Part of the appeal is nostalgia. As I stated earlier, nostalgia is extremely powerful. Many newer generations are discovering their parents' collection and like older generations are playing records to relive their youth. The reasons are not the same, but that does not matter. The music was their parents' music, not theirs but it was the music they heard growing up. That is what matters. This is what is important and this is what is driving vinyl sales today.
So what has changed over the last 20 years? Streaming has moved from novelty to ubiquitous. Spotify has cornered the market for streaming but still offers lower than CD quality downloads. The desire to own music has returned. This can be tied to social identity. Authenticity is important within any social construct and owning music, showing you put out real money, is a sign of being authentic. The urban landscape has changed as well. Coffee shops, micro breweries, and cafes began having a vinyl component where they have a large selection of records for patrons to choose to have played while drinking their lattes. Of course, like so many other things, COVID changed the way we listened to music. Home systems came back into vogue, introducing the sound vinyl can give instead of streaming.(9) Vinyl has also become a viable form of art. There are many who just buy records for their art aesthetic and do not even own a record player. It really is not just about the music anymore.
Sources:
1-Weinsteen, Deena, Rock n America: A Social and Cultural History, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 24.
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