“In 2020, nearly 28 million vinyl records were sold, according to MRC Data’s most recent report—that’s 30 times more than in 2006 (when some analysts say this steady 15-year climb commenced) and counts for more than a quarter of all physical album sales (however dwindling those sales may be on the whole),” writes Michael Andor Brodeur in Sunday’s (7/11) Washington Post. “The rise of such services as Vinyl Me Please, VYNL and Amazon’s new Vinyl of the Month Club are banking on the future of vinyl as a marketable physical format…. The discovery of new-to-me music was certainly central to the quest when I started collecting vinyl, but I also found myself savoring the anachronistic features of the form: the comparably jumbo artwork, the overzealous flaunting of ‘high-fidelity’ and ‘stereophonic sound,’ the inscrutable inscriptions scratched into the innermost ring of the plate, the lingering traces of the lathe…. Sometimes the rough edges of a medium are what allows us to get a grip on it. When I hold a record in my hands, there’s no getting around its physicality…. Stamped into vinyl, The Music becomes a thing to behold and be held.”
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