The Vinyl Renaissance

When Crosley record players hit the scene in the mid-2010s, millennials had a heyday. Compact, colorful and cheap, these devices were riding the wave of 70's nostalgia while creating a new market for forgotten tech. Turns out these suitcase record players would convert a generation raised on Itunes and streaming services into vinyl aficionados. And for me, the Crosley turntable would reignite a love for music I thought I had lost in the frantic need to stay on trend with my peers.

Growing up, most of my musical exposure came from the twenty-minute car rides to and from school where my dad controlled the radio. What felt like a forced diet of classic rock, it was seriously lacking in anything I deemed relevant. So, when I entered high school, it felt like I was playing catch up. Songs I had never heard of were being played at dances, friends were listening to artists I only vaguely knew. I listened to music less for enjoyment than for a need to fit in. Fast forward a couple of decades and I have finally caught up with all the trends. I know all the top hits. And yet here I am, gravitating towards the same music I spurned for so many years. My father’s music has become my music.

The first vinyl record I ever received was by a 1960’s folk group called The Kimberleys. Listening to their cover of "What Now My Love" kickstarted an exploration into the melodic history of the sixties, seventies and eighties, where I rediscovered songs from those formative years riding in my dad’s truck and found new titles to feed my growing passion.

Since getting that Crosley in 2015, my record collection has grown to include over ninety-five albums, many of which I inherited from my father and some that I found on my own meanderings through record shops and antique stores.

Amazon has been a useful tool for finding specific albums or vinyl releases from current artists. In fact, for the first time since 1986 vinyl has surpassed CDs in sales, and while streaming remains king, vinyl is proving to be a force to be reckoned with once again.

But why choose vinyl at all? There’s a reason it went out of style in favor of smaller, more transportable alternatives. Ryan Raffaelli, a Marvin Bower Associate Professor at Harvard Business School sums up vinyl’s appeal perfectly in the 2021 article The Vinyl Renaissance: Take Those Old Records Off the Shelf.

“When you see re-emerging technologies re-enter the market, it’s largely because their value extends beyond the use value of the product itself. Meaning: There are other values the consumer attaches to the product or the experience of using the product that become core. There’s a cultural component to it: it can often be attached to art. There’s an emotional element to using the product. It can often be about reconnecting with one’s past or nostalgia.”

Music can define a generation as easily as it can connect people across time, and vinyl is the physical product that facilitates that connection.

Millennials often gets a bad rap for not being original, with current trends heavily influenced by the decades we didn’t actually live through and therefore romanticize. We cherry pick elements from the past to emulate while basking in the knowledge that we have modern styles and conveniences to fall back on. While there are many who think that the current preoccupation with vinyl is a fad for those who didn’t live through the struggle of life without Spotify, there are quite a few hold outs who see the vinyl renaissance as a chance to both celebrate and connect with the past.

I have loved that as I have gotten older, I have found new ways to connect with my father, including through music. When I became interested in vinyl, he did not hesitate to pass on his own collection, many of which had not been played since before I was born. But he wasn’t just giving me music, he was sharing a part of his history, giving me a glimpse into his own life when he was my age.

Vinyl has come to mean more to modern music lovers than just a passing trend or an ode to the past. It’s an emblem of intentionality. You might have heard this buzz word thrown around social media in recent years as an umbrella term that can cover anything from shopping and gifting to the way we go about our days. For many, the concept of intentional living is all about slowing down and being deliberate in our choices to derive the most meaning from life. Listening to vinyl is a practice in deliberation, from choosing the album to moving the needle and flipping the record. You are not mindlessly listening to music on shuffle mode. You are choosing the album that speaks to you in that moment and you are an active participant in the musical journey of that piece.

An ode to the past has become a relevant symbol for the modern music lover, and that is why the vinyl resurgence has staying power.