When he was 12 years old, Nacho Blanch was given a record player for Christmas. He had been collecting music for as long as he could remember; In a corner of his room he already accumulated several vinyls of his favorite artist, Lady Gaga, although I had nowhere to reproduce them. “At the age of 10 I didn’t know anything about the sound quality of the format. I bought records simply because they were attractive, because they were cool.” Now 25, the young Catalan dedicates his free time to buy and sell vinyl by Wallapop and Vinted. His work at Amazon has also allowed him to save enough to replace his old suitcase record player with a professional team of 400 euros. He has also expanded his collection by half a thousand titles.
Blanch’s zeal for collecting is not something exceptional. Juan Carlos Rodríguez, from Tenerife, also received his first record player as a Christmas present a couple of years ago, although he had been buying CDs all his life. “We never had a working record player at home, but I’ve always been fascinated by the format.” Once he obtained the device in question, friends and family began to give him vinyl on every designated occasion. The first, he recalls, was Sunsets & Full Moons de The Script. The last two, the reissue of Dial al sol of Van Gogh’s Ear and Bellodrama by Ana Mena.
More and more young people, frustrated by the immateriality of the streaming, resort to the physical format to satisfy their appetite for music and their voracious consumerism. like clothes too the music returns in a more format vintage. “A lot of people buy physical records not just to play them, but for the pleasure of becoming collectors. It’s kind of a fad. A lot of the LPs I buy I already have as CDs, but then you see how nice the vinyl aesthetic is and you can feel like it”, acknowledges the man from Tenerife. The practice contains, therefore, a high dose of fetishism.
According to a recent report from Luminate -the main source of data on the state of the music industry internationally- members of Generation Z spend 18% more money spent on music than the average listener and they are 27% more likely to buy an LP, which explains the boost in vinyl sales in the last decade. The most curious thing, however, is that these purchases are not so much due to a desire to listen to music in that format, but to other issues: more than 50% of vinyl buyers do not own a record player.
“Whoever buys an LP shows a very high degree of commitment to the artist,” says Antonio Guisasola, president of the Association of Music Producers of Spain (Promusicae). “What the people who consume this format are looking for is something more than listening quality. There is a point of merchandising and a point of emotional attachment to the artist that is not found on YouTube or other platforms.”