Abstract
After appearing to be on the verge of extinction, many music industry observers have noted a steady uptick in vinyl record sales for the past decade. In Vinyl, Dominik Bartmanski and Ian Woodward provide their explanation for the rebirth of analogue records during the digital age. Building on Bartmanski’s work with Jeffrey Alexander, this account emphasizes the status of vinyl as a cultural icon with widely recognized symbolic meaning and autonomous causal potency. Echoing the recent focus on materiality among cultural sociologists, this potency is largely attributed to the concrete and objective qualities of vinyl records in contrast to the less tactile character of digital music media such as the compact disc (CD) and MP3.
While vinyl’s recent comeback provides a timely hook for the opening chapter, the book is ultimately about a specific community of cosmopolitan music lovers (i.e., the electronic music scene in Berlin) that holds the analogue record sacrosanct. Thus, the preface transports the reader to record stores in trendsetting neighborhoods like Kreuzberg and Neukölln where devotees find refuge from cold Berlin nights amid stacks of vinyl. The reader is also introduced to thirteen key informants, most based in Berlin, who are involved in aspects of independent vinyl production or distribution as well as electronic-music DJs who use vinyl in their performances. Along with lengthy interviews and participant observation at record stores, clubs, and other sites in the electronic music scene, the authors describe their methods asa combination of “phenomenologically inclined observation and hermeneutic ‘thick description’ of both extant media texts and textual data generated through [their] own interviews” (p. 168).
From the outset, the authors and their passionate informants portray vinyl as the most tactile, sensual, aesthetically pleasing, and socially relevant music medium. Vinyl is esteemed as a holistic work of art that brings music, sculpture, visual art, and book into material form. The authors seem to target a broad audience interested in the resurgence of vinyl. Perhaps as a result, they quote David Byrne (the musician) where they could quote Howard Becker (the sociologist) to make the same point, and there is little engagement with sociologists who have written on relevant topics like music scenes, the coexistence of music formats, or the uses of music in everyday life. While music sociologists are likely to notice this absence, many readers will take pleasure in the reverent, at times poetic, language with which vinyl records are depicted throughout. In this account, DJs are “revolutionaries” who kept analogue records afloat in the tidal wave of digitalization and who remain at the cutting edge of vinyl’s rebirth.
Above all, the authors focus on the importance of materiality in the handling and hearing of vinyl records. Drawing on sociologist Terence McDonnell, the concept of “affordances” is used to articulate the relations and rituals enabled through interactions with vinyl. They employ the idea of “entanglements” to argue vinyl cannot be disconnected from its objective properties that one can touch, see, and smell. Devoted listeners characterize the sound of vinyl as warmer, richer, and more intimate than other formats. Even the imperfections of vinyl (e.g., sonic distortion, flaws created in the pressing process, susceptibility to dust) are framed as desirable idiosyncrasies that add character and uniqueness.
Whereas digitalization removed the “thingness and tactility” of music, the authors emphasize how vinyl records engage hands and much of the body in searching for records and in playing them. “Digging” in record stacks is portrayed as both archaeological practice and social activity. The attention and effort involved in digging, the warmth of the sound, and even the ritual need to flip the record halfway through an album all contribute to the “aura” of vinyl and facilitate a deep emotional connection. Some readers may wonder why searching CD stacks, listening to an MP3, or flipping a cassette tape cannot afford similar connections, but to the vinyl purists featured here, non-vinyl formats are inauthentic and unromantic by comparison. Interestingly, the complex array of physical properties that are thought to make vinyl special are routinely described in metaphysical terms (e.g., as “magical” or sacred”).
The authors also discuss vinyl as commodity and as totem. In terms of commodity, they link the value of an analogue record to its rarity, its need for greater supervision and expert knowledge during production, its packaging, and other special features (e.g.,unique color or shape). The music industry successfully commodifies vinyl by emphasizing its association with musical heritage and the legacy of the pop-rock canon. Contrary to the negative connotations typically associated with commodification, the authors argue that vinyl produces a “positive fetish” in that it “enables and encourages creative, devoted practices of sacrifice, effort, and love” rather than reducing music to a one-dimensional, economic product (p.133). The term “vinylscape” is introduced to describe urban contexts, like Berlin, where analogue records perform a symbolic and aesthetic role. Within vinylscapes, the club operates as a Durkheimian “sacred” space and analogue records are totem-like objects. The most privileged place in the vinylscape is reserved for record stores where expert “curators” make the totem available to devoted adherents. The stores act as archives where the important practice of digging occurs, and they offer other cultural products (e.g., clothing, posters) that become entangled with the meaning of analogue records within the urban vinylscape.
In the end, Bartmanski and Woodward have produced an eloquent ode to analogue records and established why some listeners revere vinyl above all music formats. As an explanation of the broader resurgence of vinyl, it is less convincing. For many of the electronic music enthusiasts in Berlin, vinyl never went away, so they may not help us understand why consumers are adopting or rediscovering vinyl today.
Although nicely written and clearly argued, there are a few ambiguities. When detailing the unique and objective features of vinyl records, it is sometimes unclear if the reference group is all other music formats or all digital formats or MP3s alone. At least implicitly, all non-vinyl formats are deemed “non-tactile” in some places, while in others this is applied specifically to MP3s.
Likewise, the reasons for including key informants from the electronic music scene are explained early on, but it is unclear how other texts were chosen for inclusion. As a result, excerpts from interviews with Berlin-based DJs and vinyl producers are accompanied by quotes from a hodgepodge of musicians that span generations and genres (from Keith Richards to Björk and Brian Eno to Jack White). To illustrate the concrete continuity of the “vinyl experience,” for example, a decades-old quote from Morrissey is placed alongside a contemporary one from a Swiss teenager without any explanation of how either made it into the book. This can sometimes obscure which aspects of the argument are truly unique to vinyl, to cosmopolitan centers like Berlin, or to the world of electronic dance music.
Nonetheless, Bartmanski and Woodward have written an impassioned book that will surely resonate with analogue enthusiasts and that may even inspire new vinyl diggers. For sociologists interested in the materiality of cultural objects, the status of vinyl in Berlin’s electronic music scene represents a compelling example.