2025/04/15 by Tony Chackal · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Art History and Market Analysis #Diverse Musicological Studies #Music History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayaf016
openalex publication_date 2025/04/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Most of the people in the record [community] share an enthusiasm for vinyl, a passion for collecting, and a belief in the creative spirit. They look for a connection to the artistry and physical recordings to fill part of that need. The goods are tactile. They prompt visceral responses and in most cases, no other commercial object has the power to stimulate the mind or the soul. Calamar and Gallo (2009, XVI) Vinyl records and record collectors continue to be the subject of contentious debate (Sterne 2003; Katz 2004; Chackal 2019; Connolly 2021). Although music is widely available through digital formats and streaming platforms, there has been a vinyl resurgence over the past two decades (Caulfield 2024). Yet collecting records is a less convenient, more cumbersome, and more expensive way of listening to recorded music. This along with vinyl’s sound quality, preciousness, and space-consuming materiality leads some to regard it dubiously. Moreover, many find collectors to be obnoxious snobs. Social scepticism towards vinyl and record collectors can be seen as levelling three criticisms: (1) record collectors are hipster elitists who think their tastes are superior to those who listen to digital formats and streaming platforms, (2) they resist novel technology for its own sake, and (3) they are wrong in thinking that vinyl carries aesthetic advantages over digital because digital is the objectively superior sound technology (Connolly 2021). To be sure, collectors can be snobbish; see, for example, the archetypal characters in High Fidelity, a book, film, and TV series about record store clerks (Hornby 1995; Frears 2000; West & Kucserka 2020). But it would be erroneous to think that record collecting is a practice reducible to elitism, that vinyl offers no aesthetic or social advantages over digital, or that collectors thoughtlessly reject new technology. To reveal the aesthetic and social advantages of vinyl and record collecting, and the selective attitude towards technology of collectors, a framework that puts them into focus is needed.