I did some research into vinyls and how they have been revived in the last 10 years. I first looked on wiki and found out that the vinyl revival is the renewed interest and increase in sales of vinyl records and that it has been taking place in the Western world since around 2007.
Vinyl records are in an anologue format and made of polyvinyl chloride. They were the main vehicle for the commercial distribution of pop music from the 1950s all the way until the 1980s-1990s when they were largely replaced by the Compact Disc (which were mainly in jewel cases - plastic casing). Since 2000, due to digitisation, CDs have been partially replaced by digital downloads. However, in 2007 vinyl sales made a sudden small increase. By early 2010 it was growing at a very fast rate. In some places, vinyl is now more popular than it has been since the late 1980s, though vinyl records still only make up a percentage of less than 6% of overall music sales.
Along with the steadily increasing vinyl sales, the vinyl revival is also clear in how there is a renewed interest in record shops (evident through how there has been the creation of the annual worldwide Record Store Day), how music charts have been created solely to vinyl and to an increased output of films dedicated to vinyl records and their culture.
Though many sales in vinyl are of modern artists with modern style or genres of music, the revival has also sometimes been considered to be part of a greater revival in retro style, since many vinyl buyers are too young to remember it being a primary music format. This can link into Simon Reynold's 'Retromania' theory.
In June 2017, Sony Music announced that by March 2018 it would be producing vinyl records for the first time ever since stopping the production of them in 1989. After reporting the decision, the BBC stated that "Sony's move comes a few months after it equipped it's Tokyo studio with cutting lathe, used to produce master discs needed for manufacturing vinyl records" but added that "Sony is even struggling to find older engineers who know how to make records".
No comments:
Post a Comment