Remember record players? If you were a kid in the 60s and 70s you had one. The 45s and LPs would spin around on the record player, and the records would sometimes get scratched.
In the 80s and 90s, came along cassette tapes, then CDs, then mp3 players and then of course smartphones with stored and streaming music.
But now a new report describes just how dramatic the resurgence of vinyl albums and record players has become.
In 2006, about one million new vinyl albums were sold in the United States. The number has grown every year since then, with nearly 50 million of them sold in 2023. And this report says about seven percent of all those vinyl albums were by Taylor Swift, whose fans are mostly not old enough to know much about record players, given the digital world in which they have grown up.
Talk to teenagers today and many of them have vinyl albums and record players.
Even old LPs once played by Baby Boomers are found now in today’s teenager’s bedrooms.
Sociologists and advertising specialists know what a draw the desire for nostalgia means. There are things that once were old and outdated that become new and popular again.
As that old saying puts it, what goes around comes around. In this case, spins around.
(Photo Getty Images)