SCHOOL MUSIC TECHNOLOGY IS FINDING NEW APPRECIATION
by simon gonzalez
photography by allison potter
Joe Biden was roundly mocked in September for suggesting parents
should “have the record player on at night.” But maybe the septuage-narian
former vice president’s seemingly old-fashioned notion wasn’t
too far off.
Not so long ago, record players and vinyl records were virtually
extinct. They were archaic analog technology, surpassed by modern
digital equivalents. But they are making a comeback. Based on statis-tics
from the first half of 2019, vinyl records were on track to generate
more revenue than CDs for the first time since 1988.
“Records never really went away completely, but the market for it
kind of died out,” says Logan Maldonado, an employee at Yellow Dog
Discs, a Wilmington store selling new and used vinyl. “It is cool that
a lot more people are buying them now.”
Records and record players have been around since Thomas Edison
invented the phonograph in 1877. Edison’s device imprinted audio on
tinfoil wrapped around a cardboard cylinder. In 1887, German-born
American inventor Emile Berliner secured a patent for a gramophone,
a turntable that recorded sound onto flat discs rather than cylinders.
Early records were made from hard rubber and other indestructible
materials. Shellac became standard circa 1895. In 1930, RCA pressed
the first album onto vinyl. In 1948, Columbia Records introduced
what became the standard for LP (long-playing) albums, the 12-inch,
33 1/3 rpm microgroove record. Other formats waxed and waned in
popularity — reel-to-reel, 8-tracks, cassettes — but vinyl persisted as
the medium of choice for recorded music well into the 1980s.
Then came the digital revolution. Compact discs and players
debuted in the United States in 1983. The sound of an audio CD
was pristine, with none of the hisses and pops associated with records.
By 1988, CDs were outselling vinyl. Technology continued to evolve.
Digital MP3 files emerged in the late 1990s. They could be played on
devices like the iPod, which debuted in October 2001. The iTunes
store appeared in 2003, and digital downloads of music became
increasingly popular. Services like Napster, Last.fm, Pandora and
Spotify that could be played on smartphones made music more acces-sible
and portable. Today, streaming services are king, accounting for
80 percent of music industry revenue.
Listening to music the old-fashioned way, through a vinyl record,
a turntable and a stylus is making a comeback.