The Guardian view on vinyl: getting its groove back | Editorial

Sainsbury’s has launched own-label records to capitalise on the revival of the format. That’s a good thing

Every so often, when hope is almost lost, an endangered species claws its way back from the brink. With loving care, a population flourishes and even re-establishes itself in the wild. Vinyl records, it appears, may be this kind of creature. A couple of decades ago they appeared on the verge of extinction, found only in dedicated collections. Then the numbers climbed again: a global revival had begun. Vinyl charts were reintroduced two years ago on the back of rising sales. Sony has announced that it will return to making vinyl, 30 years after it gave up. Sainsbury’s launch of own-label records this week highlights the surge of interest in a format once thought as enduring as phonograph cylinders or the eight-track cartridge.

Only some of this can be ascribed to middle-aged nostalgia. Young people have discovered vinyl too, and not always via their parents. You could still dismiss this as part of a “retromania” which flees the excitement and uncertainty of the present for a safer past; or as crass materialism, with buyers surrounding themselves with objects like so many entombed pharaohs. There are plenty of collectors whose sense of self is buttressed by the inches of vinyl they can muster (and how obscure those records are – no supermarket purchases there).

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