You can’t find CD’s anymore, but nearly every store sells vinyl records now…
Back in my younger days (waaaay back in the 1990’s), I was a professional DJ for many years of my life. . There was no internet yet (gasp!), so when we wanted to search for new music we had to go actually out to a store. As a music lover, one of the joys of my life was going to the local music shop every week to look for the latest compact disc (CD) releases.
Whether it was a dedicated music store like Sam Goody or Music Land, or a “big box” store like Circuit City or Best Buy (both used to have HUGE music sections), I was like a kid in a candy store going through aisle after aisle of CDs looking for what I needed. Sometimes this meant driving to multiple stores to find one song or album if someone was sold out or didn’t have it. Those were crazy times, but it’s what we had to do.
Like most music lovers at the time, CDs were the go-to for our music needs. They were hyped as having better sound quality, which they did for the most part compared to cassette tapes (For the curious younger reader, Google what a cassette is or look at the photo below). CDs also held more songs, you didn’t have to rewind them or worry about your player “eating” the tape (if you were there, you know what this was like), and with a CD you could you jump right to your favorite song without waiting.
The photo above was a major crisis in the 1980’s and early 90’s. If this happened, your day was ruined. If you don’t know what it’s like to fix a cassette tape using a pencil or your finger, you haven’t truly lived (One of the many things kids today will never understand).
Back to CDs…
With the advent of CDs, cassettes disappeared from stores because CDs were so much better. Then came digital music (MP3s), which then caused CDs to disappear in stores (a tragic time for me) because you could instantly download any song or album you wanted online (this pretty much destroyed the music business due to piracy concerns). Where retailers used to have thousands of discs in stock, the supply dropped to hundreds, then tens, then pretty much none.
BUT going back even further than cassette tapes (and 8-tracks – Google that too), there was vinyl (records). It’s funny when I hear kids talking the this new thing called a turntable. Vinyl was the original music source going back to the 1890s, but it gained popularity in the 1930’s and 40’s before exploding in the 1950’s and reaching it’s peak in the 1970’s and early 80’s. When I was a club DJ in the 90’s I was playing vinyl still but as time went on it became harder and harder to find new music because of the advent of CD’s.
Vinyl eventually faced the same fate as tapes and CD’s. This was sad because anyone who grew up around records knew that vinyl had an amazing sound a tape or CD could never match. Yes, CDs had crisper sound, but vinyl was vinyl. You had to hear it to truly understand and appreciate it.
Still to this day, with all the high tech digital music out there nothing can compare to listening to classic rock on vinyl. The Beatles, Elvis, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, or for that matter, most of the music from the 1960’s through the early 80’s was just so much better on vinyl. Boston’s Third Stage album was always one of my favorites (Again, for the younger readers, Boston was a rock band).
It was just different.
As a DJ, I loved playing vinyl. In the DJ business it was not so much about the sound quality but rather the ability to manipulate the music in ways you couldn’t with CDs at the time (think mixing and scratching), but by the mid to late 1990’s, vinyl was getting hard to find and CD player technology had progressed to where anything you could do on vinyl you could also do with CDs.
Stores simply did not carry vinyl anymore because it wasn’t cool and they took up too much space. You could only buy records from specialized DJ supply outlets or you had to search places like thrift stores or very obscure expensive music shops to find anything. It was pretty inconvenient.
Fast forward to now.
Stores like Target, Walmart, Best Buy, and many others now have entire aisles dedicated to vinyl records, while there are no CDs in sight. With the magic of the internet, you can now find pretty much whatever you want on vinyl, new and old. It comes with a cost though. Back in their prime, records and CDs were $7.99 – $12.99 (US) for an album. Vinyl records are now $20 – $30 (and up) because they’re trendy.
Music artists are producing new stuff on vinyl because it’s the hot thing to do. Not only have CDs got booted out of stores, but CD players are becoming equally as obsolete. You can’t even get a new car with a CD player anymore (EVERY car had a CD player for a while, and before that most cars had at least tape players). Most Generation Z kids have never even owned a CD because everything has been digital all their lives. They probably would have no clue what to do with cassette tape.
An entire generation or two missed out on the joys of vinyl, but at least they get to experience it now. It’s just funny how everything seems to recycle itself. I may not have all my old records, but I still have my CD collection. I’m hanging on to the those because they’ll probably make a comeback.
They say history repeats itself. When it does, I’ll be ready.
~ Marty ~
What do you think ? Vinyl? CD’s or Digital (MP3s)?
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Wow. Yeah, I remember fixing cassettes and splicing the messed up parts. I agree with you on the sound of vinyl. It has a depth that can’t be duplicated. I buy records at thrift stores but you just have to have a little awareness to check that the record inside is the right one.
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