Greetings fellow audiophiles, vinyl enthusiasts, and collectors!
This site is dedicated to the wonderful world of vinyl and vinyl collecting, as well as reel-to-reel tape and other forms of audio media. With the market of vinyl growing, there are many possibilities for today’s record collector.
Before the invention of CDs in the 80’s, vinyl reigned supreme over the home audio entertainment market. Record stores were everywhere and music lovers flocked to them to get the latest and greatest LPs. Listening to music was much, much more than skipping to your favorite tune and making playlists. With vinyl, there is a certain sense of pleasure and enjoyment that goes along with the whole experience.
You go to the record store, the record store where everybody knows your name. You find that album that has that song you heard on the radio. That’s all it takes: one song and then you want to hear what other brilliant songs that artist has produced. You take it home and you open the album while admiring the artwork on the front cover. You carefully remove the sleeve to see photographs of the band and lyrics to all the songs on the record. You remove the 180 gram record and take a minute to look at the clean, black surface of the record. You lift up the lid on your turntable and you put the record on, careful to get that hole lined up just right with pin so as not to inflict damage to the label. You let the needle drop onto that first groove and hear that satisfying CRACK as the stylus makes contact. Then you sit back in front of your home stereo and enjoy song after song. When the side is over, you get up, turn the record over, CRACK and repeat.
Nowadays, if you hear a song you like on the radio, you aren’t required to buy the whole album. One only has to go to iTunes or the Google Play Store, find the song and download it onto their computer, tablet, .mp3 player, what have you, and they’re satisfied. Instead of sitting back and listening to the aesthetics of the piece, they have it playing in the background on their bookshelf stereo system, or they’re listening to it while the jog, cook, or work out. The culture of music enjoyment has greatly changed as the media has become more and more portable. Even iPods have given way to smart phones for that extra piece of convenience.
But is that really the case? Over the last few years, believe it or not, what was once thought to be an antiquated method of listening to music, has been brought back into the audiofile limelight. According to this chart
you can see the rise and fall of record sales but just around the mid 2000’s they start to come back. The market is growing. Slowly.
Why is this? I believe that there are some people that want to go back to that traditional aesthetic. The enjoyment of music for the shear pleasure of listening to albums from beginning to end. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go before we can actually start to say that vinyl is taking back its title as the reigning king of the audio home entertainment medium. For the time being, go to your local record stores, take in the atmosphere and have fun looking for the albums the generations before us listened to. Find those albums that are new and fresh, but are graciously put onto vinyl records just for those that want to enjoy listening to music in a more traditional environment.
Vinyl collecting and enjoyment is a passion. While most would see it as an interesting hobby, it yields so much satisfaction and joy in the whole experience. Welcome, my fellow collectors and enthusiasts!
*.gif Pie chart courtesy of Stereogum.com “See 40 Years of Music Change Via Animated Gif” http://www.stereogum.com/1314452/see-40-years-of-music-industry-change-via-animated-gif/news/
StL Needlehead 
You make a great point in describing the enjoyment of exploring the album cover of that vinyl just purchased. Indeed something was lost when vinyl albums gave way to CDs as obviously cover size alone gave the artist less creative space.
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