Everything we know today will one day become obsolete with the creation of new inventions and the advancement of technology. Writing on the slate was once the ordinary way of citing thoughts, but now we almost always use paper. Every so often, however, certain antiquated objects will come back into fashion. One such archaism is the phonograph record.
Though you may be most familiar with the term ‘vinyl records,’ phonograph records went through many different changes over the years. The first version of a record was made twenty years after the invention of the phonograph: in 1897. They were usually made of shellac, a resinous material. However, the commercial production of shellac records declined quickly after World War II and soon was replaced by aluminum and lacquer records. The most conversant of them all, vinyl records, began to be produced in the late 1940s and are still used today. This was around the time when phonograph records became popular, even though the phonograph records had been created years prior.
For about thirty years, these shiny, grooved discs were the main way of listening to music. While you could listen to music on the radio, one of the only ways to listen to your favorite kinds of music was on a then-revolutionary record. It was a great way to discover new albums since you can’t really skip to the beginning of a song. People have also discussed the sound quality of vinyl records, which is significantly better than streamed music.
However, there was no way they could remain the sole way of listening to music. They weren’t portable, so music on vinyl could only be listened to at certain places. They require special features like speakers and turntables. Worse yet, you need to flip around the record periodically because only so much music can be contained on one side.
These inconveniences in listening to the music of your choice would eventually result in the invention of cassette tapes, which overtook vinyl records as the most popular form of listening to music in 1984. They were more portable and durable, leading to their steady increase in popularity since their invention in the 1960s. The Walkman was created in 1979 and made the use of cassette tapes even easier. These were portable and could be listened to anywhere, which made them a much more accessible option. Only a few years later, vinyl records would reach an unsustainably low level of sales.
After Walkmans were created, many new ways of listening to music were made: portable CD players, iPods, and streaming services eventually became the norm, and vinyl records were nearly fully forgotten.
In 2008, however, some people began to ‘rediscover’ the vinyl record. The sales of LPs rose by 89%. Since that year, record sales have steadily increased. This growth seems to have grown even more when they began trending on social media again.
There’s not really a single, definite reason why vinyls made a resurgence. So many things have become obsolete and have never come back: phone books and even social media apps like ‘MySpace’ are no longer used. Most people blame their resurgence on their infinitely better sound quality. Maybe we, a generation of people addicted to electronics, crave entertainment without a screen. Perhaps some people are craving another way to showcase their individuality. Either way, the resurgence of this once-obsolete item can’t be a bad thing: record stores, which were often going out of business, have been seeing much more success as of late. Some new stores have even popped up: Almost Ready Records, a small business in Montclair, opened in 2022. If there’s a store near you, consider buying a few of your favorite albums to hear them in a different way; or, you can discover new albums and find new preferences.
