I was in the entertainment section of a Walmart and I saw something you never would have seen ten years ago: a section of vinyl record albums.
I remember vinyl record albums from back in my youth. And I remember how we stopped buying them in the nineties as we switched over to CD’s (and then stopped buying CD’s as we switched over online files).
I realize vinyl never completely disappeared. But there was a long stretch when they were rare exotic items you had to got to specialty stores for. Now they’re being sold once again in places like Walmart, Best Buy, and Target.
Are there any other examples like this of a media format that was generally abandoned but then had a significant resurge in popularity?
Probably not too many; the whole vinyl thing isn’t driven by any actual measurable performance difference, but rather some kind of weird nostalgia-like phenomenon by people too young to have really experienced vinyl records in any significant fashion. (hint: they weren’t that good, but they were the best we had)
I mean, I’m old enough to remember 8-tracks as a young child, cassette tapes as a boy, and CDs becoming popular roughly around the time I started high school. It was CDs that finally quashed vinyl- tapes of various kinds were popular more for their portability and price, but CDs actually sounded better and were physically smaller, making them beat vinyl and tapes on both portability, durability and quality. And this was especially true on lower-end audio systems- high end tape decks sounded pretty good, lower-end ones sounded like shit, high-end turntables sounded good, lower-end ones sounded ok to bad, but CD players ALL sounded as good as the sounds the speakers could produce. It was more of a function of there not being any analog conversion, noise reduction, etc… in there- once you’d decoded the music, it was out over the speakers, however good or bad they might have been.
Nobody older than about 40 is going to think “Yeah! I can get an LP again.” It’s going to be “Oh crap… now I have to have a component system again, and deal with scratched records, etc…”
Not only did vinyl never go away, today they outsell CDs (and of course are wildly more popular than they were 10-15 years ago). [US sales figures: “Vinyl records accounted for $232.1 million of music sales in the first half of the year, compared to CDs, which brought in only $129.9 million, according to a report from the Recording Industry Association of America.”] But I read an article not that long ago describing a supposed significant uptick in the small market of cassette sales.
Why the amazing popularity now, versus in 2005 or whatever?
As for other “retro” formats, I wonder a little about typewriter sales, fountain pens, etc. Not sure where to find reliable statistics though.
At one time prognosticators said that eBooks would kill paper books, but they are certainly still more popular than predicted. Paper wasn’t abandoned but is this a comeback like you were thinking?
My guess is that album sales are driven by younger people, and that since vinyl is cool, that’s why we’re seeing a surge right now. You could probably get an idea of who’s buying vinyl by looking at the artists being released on vinyl these days. I bet they coincide pretty closely with what twenty-somethings listen to, not people who are in their mid-30s now (who would have been listening in 2005).
Oh… I did think of something that has made something of a comeback, although I’m not sure how significant. Old-style double-edged razors and their accoutrements. Used to be that grocery and drug stores might have sold a puck of Williams soap, some cheap-ass brush, and 5 packs of no-name double-edged razor blades. More than likely all aimed at senior citizens who grew up shaving that way.
Now most have a couple kinds of soap, a few brands of blades, and a brush type or two, as well as razor handles. If you go online, there are likely dozens of NEW model razor handles, and dozens of brands of blades from around the world, as well as lots of soaps, creams, aftershaves, and brushes from all over. It’s a real thing- that was almost entirely dead in say… 1996.
That’s interesting. In 1996, though, your local chain drugstore would at least have pucks of shaving soap (+ bristle brush) and Gillette disposable razor blades and a safety-razor handle, even if it was only one brand. Is that still true everywhere today, or do people really have to order razor blades and stuff online? Anyway that’s a little bit retro but I thought for real old-school authenticity men needed a single-edged cut-throat razor
I’m not sure I’d call a typewriter or a fountain pen a “format” but I’ll open up the topic to the broader category of abandoned technologies.
That said, I don’t think they are good examples of what I’m looking for. They may still exist but the fact that they’re being sold as “retro” items means they have not regained any significant portion of their old popularity. They fail the Walmart test I used in my OP.
That’s what I’m saying- at least around here, my local Target has two brands of double-edged blades, a couple of types of handles and a slew of soaps and creams.
Oh… fountain pens are still a hobbyist thing, but there is a thriving community of people and stores that cater to that hobby.
I’m a good example of that. I’m certainly not averse to old formats. Looking around the room I’m currently sitting in, I can see printed books, magazines, DVD’s, blu ray discs, CD’s, audio cassettes, and even some VHS videotapes. But I don’t have any vinyl albums or eight-track tapes.
I think you have to go back a bit further than that, like 15-20 years ago. I’ve noticed sections in stores selling vinyl records for a long time now, at least 10 years.
Not sure that there can be other examples of this given how few media formats there actully are. There is, apparently some uptick in cassette sales, though, and even new models of walk-type-persons on the market. And even new “stunt” 8-track releases:
Tube amplifiers over transistors have made comeback.
Car speedometers was flirting with digital number readout as opposed to a gauge style with a pointer for many years till being called back to the gauge. Even though the trend is towards digital and more speedometers are digital many are gauge style instead of numeric.
You’re wrong about this. I’ve seen enough successful Kickstarter campaigns to know that there are some middle-aged guys who are really excited at the prospect of having their favorite albums from the 80s and 90s re-released on vinyl.
There’s a chain of used record stores in Phoenix metro area called Zia.
Back in the days of the dinosaurs, there was just one store, near ASU, and it was alll records. Slowly it started carrying VHS. Then CDs. Then DVDs.
Then CDs took over and vinyl was a small section over in the back, mostly for collectors. CDs and DVDs were the entire store.
Now there are many stores, all over the city, and you go into them and it’s 1988 all over again - vinyl has the most floor space, and CDs are stuck in the back.
And I laugh at the silly folk thinking vinyl is superior. If (pop) you like (crackle crackle) noisy records tha ~ t skip. You can get CDs real cheap now, though.
Hint about your hint: Vinyl records were “that good”, based on my WAG of what “that good” was supposed to mean. In the sense that the best of them, played with excellent equipment, were hard to distinguish from the final studio master.
I’m quite a bit older than 40 and I think “Yeah! I can get an LP again.”
The word “superior” is a very subjective judgment. But studio mixes intended for vinyl were often equalized differently than today’s CDs, which tend to have stronger high frequencies, often making them sound harsh. That harshness may be accentuated by the limitations of CD digital bandwidth and a potentially substandard digital-to-analog conversion process, leading to digital distortions. This is why SACD was developed, which uses much higher bandwidth. It’s also why high-bandwidth audio in movies sounds so much richer than a CD.
As for pops and crackles, you might find that this problem is much reduced if you don’t use your records as coasters for beer mugs, sit on them, use them as frisbees, etc. You will also find that skipping isn’t a problem if you have a half-decent turntable and cartridge.
I’m not a vinyl nut, but I do appreciate the subtle differences. The only thing clearly superior is very high bandwidth digital audio, which CDs certainly are not. Vinyl can be superior to CDs even in modern recordings which are digital at the source, because professional studio equipment uses much higher sampling rates than CDs and much higher quality D-A conversion than a POS $50 CD player.
Don’t give me a lecture on vinyl care. I bought aftermarked protective sleeves for each disc, and kept the record jackets in protective sleeves. I had a Empire EDR-9 cartridge in an Onkyo turntable. The turntanble was on isolation pads. I disc washed and zerostat-ed before each play. I handled the vinyl ony by the edges. And you know what - still noise, still pops, still skips. It’s the nature of the medium. Every time a record is played, it erodes slightly.
So your condescension is not only offensive, but wasted.
I wasn’t “condescending”, just a trifle sarcastic. And I think sarcasm is warranted as a response to a post that states “I laugh at the silly folk thinking vinyl is superior”. No one I know has made that claim as a universal truth; I said that it can be, in some circumstances.
I think we can agree that modern Dolby Digital and DTS technologies in movie soundtracks blow both CDs and vinyl out of the water. It follows, then, that CDs and vinyl are both imperfect, but they are so radically different that they are imperfect in different ways. I agree that CDs are more practical for everyday listening, but for those with a serious interest in audio, there is room for both. Both are pretty much niche media today anyway, where digital audio files are the predominant music format.
That’s the change of tide I’m surfing on, giddy. (Could not care less for the fussy, frail, deteriorate-no-matter-how-pampered LPs I used to listen up till the early 1990s) .
These days, I buy classic rock albums on CDs for 1 - 4 euros a piece, when I clearly remember having to pay up to 24 euros for many of the same titles in the past. At the present price, I can add to my music collection on a regular if not constant basis, with high quality, very durable, actually owned physical backups of my digital music collection. Win win for me!
Apparently a significant portion of the new vinyl purchases do not possess a turntable to play it on, which kind of indicates the significance of the appeal: the sleeve, a lot of artwork appreciation disappeared when you had a 4" x 4" CD inlaw: full lyrics, multiple covers to appreciate, gatefold sleeves plus the chance of picture discs and even the label on the physical record had as much space as a CD inlay.
It also brings into the weird position that second hand vinyl is very cheap and first hand very expensive. In the UK you still get the record fairs and second hand shops selling them as low as 2-3 pounds, but buy something new from an artist and its 25 pounds. But the limited runs makes the vinyl, by that nature, a collectible unlike the mass runs of discs. Also there’s a much higher chance the second hand disc has become damaged over the years.
It was a flawed a format though. I’ve really no idea if the 500 odd records I have sitting there will play at all, 30 years since the last one made it out of the sleeve. Warping might have happened over the long term. I think I’ve lost about 2 cds over that time, but I’m probably lucky with that (or have long since ripped the cd so perhaps more of them).
I’d be interested to find out if the significant technology improvements over the last thirty years makes vinyl any more durable, and resistant to scratches and pops though. I suspect the attention to fix those flaws isn’t there.
