Vinyl Records and Analog Culture in the Digital Age

Pressing Matters

Paul E. Winters

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498510080
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Music Theory & Appreciation
• Index: Social Sciences

Vinyl Records and Analog Culture in the Digital Age: Pressing Matters examines the resurgence of vinyl record technologies in the twenty-first century and their place in the history of analog sound and the recording industry. It seeks to answer the questions: why has this supposedly outmoded format made a comeback in a digital culture into which it might appear to be unwelcome? Why, in an era of disembodied pleasures afforded to us in this age of cloud computing would listeners seek out this remnant of the late nineteenth century and bring it seemingly back from the grave? Why do many listeners believe vinyl, with its obvious drawbacks, to be a superior format for conveying music to the relatively noiseless CD or digital file? This book looks at the ways in which music technologies are both inflected by and inflect human interactions, creating discourses, practices, disciplines, and communities.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Cueing Up
• 1 “Dogs Don’t Listen to Phonographs”: Nipper, “His Master’s Voice,” and the Discourse of “Fidelity”
• 2 The Beatles on itunes and Vinyl Reissue: Aesthetic Discourse and the Listening Subject
• 3 Virtual Authenticity: The Reemergence of Vinyl in the Digital Age
• 4 Criminal Records: Record Collecting as Counter-Discourse
• 5 “Cabinets of Wonder” or “Coffins of Disuse?”: Reissues, Box Sets, and Commodity Fetishism
• 6 “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”: Analog Audiophilia as Disciplinary Mechanism
• 7 “The Vinyl Anachronist”: The Role of Social Media in the Formation of Communities of Vinyl
• The Run-Out Groove
• Bibliography
• About the Author