Weaned on CDs, They’re Reaching for Vinyl
By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: June 9, 2013
Vinyl is growing out of its niche.
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Thomas Bernich, who founded Brooklyn Phono in 2000, at his factory, which he says now produces around 440,000 LPs a year.
A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.
There were always record collectors who disdained the compact disc, arguing that an LP’s grooves yielded warmth and depth that the CD’s digital code could not match.
But the market largely ignored them. Record labels shuttered their LP pressing plants, except for a few that pressed mostly dance music, since vinyl remained the medium of choice for D. J.s.
As it turned out, that early resistance was not futile, thanks largely to an audience of record collectors, many born after CDs were introduced in the 1980s.
These days, every major label and many smaller ones are releasing vinyl, and most major new releases have a vinyl version, leading to a spate of new pressing plants.
When the French electronica duo Daft Punk released “Random Access Memories” in mid-May, 6 percent of its first-week sales — 19,000 out of 339,000 — were on vinyl, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which measures music sales.
