Vinyl and Turntables Still Keep it Old School, Even Today

That loud, persistent drone that you've been hearing for the past few years was just the collective lament of music purists everywhere. As the CD age has given way to the MP3 era, people of generations past have been bemoaning what they perceived as the demise of vinyl, and its irreproducible sound experience. It turns out, though, that commercially, at least, vinyl is alive and well. It just may look a bit different.

As The New York Times reports, vinyl sales through November were the highest they've been since 1991, when such stats were first tracked, and were even up 35-percent from 2008. Though most believed the record resurgence to be no more than a passing hipster fad, many are now ready to anoint it as a legitimate, if somewhat curious, consumer trend. While CD sales have continued to plummet, vinyl keeps on keepin' on -- and so have turntables. It's gotten so mainstream, in fact, that Best Buy has already introduced a department committed solely to records, and a few locations in New York have created dedicated turntable departments.

What's most interesting about this revival, though, is the way it's combined new technology with old listening formats. Sure, there's still the collector demographic, trolling for rare, deep cuts from yesteryear. But many consumers are also buying contemporary albums on higher quality vinyl, and even pseudo-"turntables" that mix music streamed from iPods (also, most vinyl releases today come with an MP3 of the entire album in the sleeve, making room for portable and at-home ways of listening). Perhaps, then, it's not so much the popularity of games like DJ Hero that has spurred the resurrection in records and record-spinning culture, but an age-old aesthetic for adapting to new technology.

This flight to vintage is also probably something specific to popular music, and especially hip-hop, where sampling and reformulating old into new is done at a breakneck speed more than in any other mainstream forum (and which is maybe why vinyl breathes while print gasps on life support). Whatever the reason for the trend, we're glad to see it. No matter how cool carrying around an entire music library on an iPod can be, it's always nice to know that some cultural relics won't die away. [From: The New York Times]

Tags: cds, mp3, music, records, top, vinyl