How many times have you happened to read about vinyl renaissance. Resurrected forcefully from its own ashes, it even surpassed CD sales in the United States in 2022 with 41 million copies sold against 33: it has not happened since 1987. Whoever gave him up for dead, in short, was very wrong.
A phenomenon that is repeated in Italy as well, where vinyl continues to grow exponentially in sales year-over-year. However, the doubt that this resurrection is driven more by a trend than by a newfound importance of dedicated listening, could be more than justified. An example: “Midnights” by Taylor Swift, released in four different colors – very useful – with an invitation to fans to collect them all. The race starts, the disc breaks every sales record of the last decades. And it doesn’t matter how many copies are actually listened to, or how. Try buying an amplifier hi-fiessential to be able to really listen to what you have purchased, and you will discover that it is like looking for the Holy Grail: a thousand times better stream of suitcases-turntables.
In Italy, record shops are dropping like fliescrushed by the competition of the giants of theonline, and with them the possibility of listening to the album and getting advice before buying disappears. No found poetry, then. It is as if vinyl and its rite, snatched from death similar to Shelley’s Creature, find themselves looking in the mirror without recognizing themselves, seeing reflected only another face of consumerism. Or the current fashion.
by Federico Arduino