the death of vinyl

Okay, so vinyl has been dead for a long time. So you say! My vinyl collection has remained strong, though. At least until now. I have finally decided to bite the bullet and sell off my vinyl. Sure, I still have my record player, and I occasionally will pop a 12" on the platter, but I think our last move dealt the death blow to my vinyl collection.

Vinyl was a great medium for music. It was thin, and you could fit a bunch of them in a standard sized box. They give off an analog warmth to their embedded music that cannot be reproduced by tape or digital. it was fun to thumb through them at used record stores, even if you walked away with black fingertips. They stay in decent condition if you take care of them, too. However, they are a pain to move.

I've got hundreds of vinyl records...perhaps a few thousand. Moving them from one house to another each time we were relocated was no fun. The boxes take up a lot of room, and they are very heavy. I've also heard that you shouldn't stack them too high, too. So I decided to sell them off. A quick trip to eBay indicates that some records still sell for quite a bit because of their rarity. Deejay mixes like Razormaid!, Ultimix or Hot Tracks are always in hot demand. In fact, I've seen some rare remix releases sell for close to $100. Not bad for twenty year old vinyl.

Some of my releases are selling like that. Others are fetching a few bucks. All in all, I try to console myself that somebody is educating themselves in the music that I grew up listening to. But I will still miss some of it. On the bright side, they are releasing more and more old music on CD these days. I actually noticed that they pressed the Micro Chip League back-catalogue of singles onto CD recently. I'll have to pick that one up.