Renaissance Records: The Communities and Material Culture Behind the Revival of Vinyl Records from the 1980s to 2010s

Abstract

The current revival of vinyl records in popular culture, specifically surrounding their commercial availability and popularity, is not a coincidence. This study focuses on factors such as the presence of listening communities and material culture responsible for the persistence and resurgence of vinyl record culture in the 2010s. Beginning with the formative years of Bronx hip-hop and Baltimore Club music in the 1980s, this study argues that the same factors which enabled vinyl to endure two music industry transformations designed to render records obsolete are the same factors responsible for its resurgence in the 2010s. In 1982, the Compact Disc (CD) became commercially available and served as the new mainstream medium for listening to music. Following the CD and later music-listening technologies such as MP3 files and online streaming services, vinyl records seemingly disappeared only to experience a contemporary revitalization in popular culture. This study contends that factors of materiality such as tangibility and nostalgia exhibited by the hip-hop and Club listening communities during the shift from analog to digital listening accurately explain vinyl's re-emergence as a popular listening medium in the modern age.