Vinyl is making a comeback
How many of you have vinyl record albums? Do you still listen to them?

For most of us, music on vinyl is a thing of the distant
past.
I remember when I got my first CD player back in the early 1980s. The first CD I had was Fleetwood Mac's
"Tango in the Night" and I remember how
crystal clear the highs were, playing on my giant old AR4a speakers. And the lows, coming through those speakers,
shook the room.
Even as audiophiles debated the true clarity and
"warmth" of CDs vs vinyl LPs, I found CDs to be more convenient. You could program it to skip tracks you didn't
like as much, or you could scramble it so tracks would play in random order,
just for variety. And with a 5-disc
changer, you could sit back and relax for hours without having to get up to
flip a record over or put another on. And,
you could play them in the car.
The only problem was what about the hundreds of vinyl albums
I already had collected – especially a really good jazz collection. I still had my Dual turntable, so I could listen
to my vinyl albums.
As the years went by, my amp lost its punch, as did those
great speakers. But by then, I found
myself listening to music on CDs on the sound system we bought for the big
TV. The sound system has a CD/DVD
player built in, and the surround-sound speakers, small as they may be, somehow
pump out a pretty decent sound, buoyed by the sub-woofer sitting on the floor behind the
TV.
I gradually stopped listening to my LPs. In the cabinet are some fantastic albums – a lot of great rock and all that jazz… stuff by
Coltrane, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Oliver Nelson, Billy Taylor and lots
more. Most haven't been listened to in a
good ten years… maybe more.
Even as I and most of us ditched vinyl way back, the RIAA (Recording
Industry Association of America), which tracks music sales with Nielsen
SoundScan, says sales of vinyl records jumped by more than 33 percent through
the first half of this year, compared to a year ago. That's still only 2.9 million records, but it
represents the continuation of a steady growth trend since 2006.
Ironically, the CDs that knocked vinyl out 30 years ago are
being replaced by digital downloads.
People can now buy only the specific songs they want, rather than being
forced to pay for an entire album.
A story in Advertising Age notes that some big retailers
like Whole Foods are experimenting with vinyl record stores within its grocery
stores. And Amazon says vinyl is its
fastest-growing music medium, with sales up by 745 percent in the last five
years. That's from a tiny base, but it's
still real growth, even though vinyl now accounts for only 2 percent of total music
sales.
But for something that most had left for dead over the past
30 years, two percent and growing is still something.
Several months ago, I got lonely for some of the jazz I have
on vinyl. Many of the jazz LPs I have just
aren't available on CD. So I tried
hooking up the turntable to the TV sound system, but somehow it doesn't work.
Maybe the impedence doesn't match, and the best I get is very soft pickup of
what's on the album, barely audible even when you crank up the volume.
But I'll get it figured out one of these weekends. And once I do, who knows... maybe I'll buy an album on vinyl.
.