I’ve been buying records for decades. With few exceptions, they were always black.
But now, often as not, they are different colors.
Red, green, yellow, clear, any color you can think of and sometimes several smooshed together - that was sort of a novelty once. But now it isn’t.
Records are black. We aren’t children.
I distinctly remember buying a blue vinyl Beatles LP back in the 70’s, and I’m pretty sure I had some colored vinyl 45s as well.
Well sure. But those were rare. Now it’s gotten way out of hand.
I suspect that black is simply the cheapest, but now that the only people who buy vinyl are hipsters who have more money than sense, they can easily recoup the cost of the different colors of vinyl by increasing prices.
They’re probably doing whatever it takes to attract the customers. What color is an MP3?
Very good. Get it all out of your system.
Records are cylindrical! What is it with these hipsters, insisting on their flat “records”?
Apparently there is some sort of dislike of “hipsters”.
Does anybody remember picture discs? Are those still around or have made a comeback, respectively?
ETA: to add something more on topic: I seem to remember that the audiophiles back in the days sneered at non-black records because allegedly their sound quality was inferior. I don’t know if there was any substance to this.
All the cool cats insist on cassette tapes, so that they can walk down the street with a boombox on their shoulder.
Bah! In my day, we had soot covered paper, and we liked it!
I still have The Who’s “Athena” on picture disk!
I may have others…still wading through the old collection.
Speaking as a (former) radio dj, I hate the colored vinyl albums. They are notoriously hard to cue.
You think it’s hard finding the start of a track on a black album? Try blue, white, or (God forbid) clear. Yes, clear. One of the artists we played all the time at my college station released his songs on see-through vinyl. Even better, the bastard put his 45’s on 12 inch discs instead of the usual 7 inch ones. You’d get the song all ready to go and then play it at the wrong speed because the damn thing was a 45, not a 331/3.
Fun times.
Records were black because it was the cheapest and simplest way to color the disks. Other colors were possible, but it meant you had to stop production to clean the equipment, which slowed output.
Dave Mason’s Alone Together (1970) was multicolored.
I have dozen or so “Trade Mark Of Quality” bootlegs on red, yellow, green and blue vinyl.
I was convinced. I had a picture disc of Who Are You? and the title song sounded lousy compared to the same recording on “The Kids Are Alright” soundtrack. I never bought a colored or picture disc after that.
Colored records aren’t a new thing. In the 1930s Columbia produced royal blue 78s as a marketing gimmick.
Wow. Heavy, man!
#000000. 
I picture MP3 as a pale blue, AAC is orange, WAV is bright white, OGG is a dirty gray, FLAC is green, and Apple’s AIFF is a rainbow of primary colors, like a beachball.