So how can you enhance your record console with a suitable vinyl collection to match?

1 – Buy in person and rarely online

Only buy from reputable vinyl sellers and experts, in face-to-face transactions or authentic auctions. These people are knowledgeable and can give you the backstory or the reason why an LP is worth what it’s worth. Never buy from online sellers, where neither the real identity of the seller nor the condition of the record can be verified. We do recommend sites like discogs.com and popsike.com as a good places to evaluate an album’s worth before investing.

2 – Look for old, rare, and mint

Records of artists or bands that are $6 or $15, but they old, rare, and mint, are very good investments. The artists don’t even have to be popular, as long as the pressing is rare. However, it is no surprise that the most popular artists have the highest values, like The Beatles or The Police. Sometimes they don’t even have to be old, but as long as they are at least hard to find and are graded as being in mint condition, the value of that record will increase over the years. Even records graded as excellent in condition can be a good pick. You wouldn’t want to play this on your record console, but it would add a fine touch to your vinyl collection. And even if you do decide to play it several times, the condition will still be very good, and you can still get decent value out of the record should you choose to sell it later.

3 – Don’t forget the 1990s and early 2000s

In the 1990s, CDs where the dominant audio format. The majority of artists from that decade released albums on CDs. But sometimes artists from a wide variety of genres, still released vinyl versions of their CD albums. As people become nostalgic for the music of the 90s, the few LPs that were pressed during that decade will increase in value. LPs from the early 2000s should not be ignored for the same reason.

4 – Watch out for movies about artists

As soon as you learn about a film in the making about a specific artist from the past, that is a good time to buy that record when it is low. Once the movie is released, and the buzz grows, the demand for the LP will increase. When Straight Outta Compton was released in 2015, the LP of the same name could sell for $40. A year later, the same LP was selling for $200, because the demand was higher after the buzz of the movie.

5 – It’s morbid, but death pays

A lost life is always sad, but investing in the work of artists who passed away can be a blessing to their estate, and to you. Your investment is not so much profiting off of someone’s death (even though it kind of is), but the demand for their early music is great for the value of their estate. This is helpful to their relatives who are left behind, as well as your investment to your vinyl collection.

Want a place to store your valuable vinyl collection? Our Spektor Vinyl Storage Unit is what you’re looking for.

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This rare Pink Floyd red promo record was sold on Discogs, the growing crowdsourced website of vinyl records. Just last month, they launched Discogs Exclusives, a marketplace for rare and limited edition vinyl releases. You’ll be able to purchase promotional albums, test-pressings, albums with rare artwork on their sleeve, out-of-print stock, and other one-of-a-kind records. These are the sort of items that may have been stored in a warehouse decades ago, or were kept in the houses of music executives without many people knowing. Sometimes people pass away and pass on personal items to their descendants who are unaware of what they have. When rare albums like that surface, their value can be really high.

In 2018, the only other album sale on Discogs that was higher than the Ummagumma promo, was Prince’s The Black Album, which sold for $27,500 US. The rare 1987 LP is the most expensive record sold on Discogs to date. The album was one of 500,000 copies that Prince wanted to be destroyed back in the late 80s because he felt that it was too angry of a record and didn’t want it to be released.

Play your favorite albums on

one of our HiFi record consoles.

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The process began in early October at Making Vinyl, a B2B conference that’s only two years old dedicated to advancing the vinyl manufacturing process. Since vinyl has made a comeback in popularity, the RIAA and Making Vinyl are collaborating to update existing standards in order to help increase vinyl sales. This should modernize the manufacturing of records so that more can be sold to meet demand, with a higher quality, and better consumer experience. Hey, if this means that more of you will be buying record consoles from us next year, then that is nothing less than awesome!

Mumford & Sons. Delta

Arctic Monkeys. Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

The 1975. A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships

Even if you took the first six months of 2018, vinyl record sales from January to June increased 13% compared to 2017. Despite claims that vinyl sales are down because Best Buy sales have slowed, more people have been buying vinyl year after year. It is normal for sales at a big box retailer to slide since they do not have the wide selection of albums that independent record stores or a website like Discogs have. Using sales at Best Buy as any indicator for the wider vinyl market leads to inaccurate conclusions and misleading headlines. As we’ve shown you before, certain records can be worth quite a lot. This why Discogs still believe that vinyl is a great investment.

Enjoy the best vinyl listening experience in the world

on your very own record player console.

Order one now at iamluno.com.

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In the Netherlands, a group of eight companies known as Green Vinyl Records are using alternative vinyl compounds to make records. They use injection molding to speed up the manufacturing process before each record is stamped. Compared to the pressing of records with steam, injection molding saves on both time and energy. Part of the problem is that it is hard to get record manufacturers to change over to a more environmental product. After decades of making vinyl records a certain way, it’s hard to get companies to change their minds. Some are skeptical that the precious vinyl sound will be lost or changed. As Matt Earley, vice president of sales and marketing for Gotta Groove Records said in a recent article: “PVC is a very stable plastic with an extremely low flammability and low static charge, so it has always been the ideal material for records.”

In case you’re wondering why go through the trouble of creating a new form of vinyl records, when the existing albums can just be recycled, the answer has a lot to do with cost. Yes, vinyl is made of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and can be broken down and recycled. But creating a new product out of PVC can be as much as five times cheaper than creating a recycled PVC product.

Enjoy your favorite tunes on a modern record console.

Order that experience today, at iamluno.com.

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Now if you’re thinking Wait, I thought that Tower Records closed all of their stores and went bankrupt in 2006?  Yes, they did, but Tower Records Japan is a completed independent company. They operate over 80 stores in Japan.

In Japan, the desire for vinyl records is as strong as it is anywhere else. With a large collection of indie record stores in Tokyo, the local music industry is providing Japanese consumers with more places to buy vinyl. In 2014, HMV started opening vinyl-only locations in Tokyo. And in 2018, Sony Music opened a pressing plant, after they noticed that vinyl records were getting tens of millions of sales in Japan.

The Tower Records vinyl-only store is a specialty shop where customers will be able to discover albums while listening to the analog sounds of various records through a vintage speaker. The store will also be used as a space to hold events related to artists who produce music in vinyl (previously, the space was used for pop-up events).

In Tokyo, many of the best vinyl stores are in a popular neighborhood called Shibuya. Many of the stores cater to specific tastes, such as Balearic, Japanese indie, Album-oriented rock, techno, latin, R & B,  dance, nu jazz, hard bop, J-pop, K-pop, and hip hop. It is in this neighborhood that Tower Records new vinyl only shop exists.

Vinyl never dies.

Get a HiFi record console.

Order one today at iamluno.com.

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Although the 2018 U.K. sales of CDs still led the way in terms of physical music with £289.1 million ($380.7 million USD), sales of vinyl were £91.3 million ($120.3 million USD), which was good enough for second place. It is expected that 4.5 million LPs will be sold in the U.K. in 2019, compared to the 3.2 million which were sold in 2018, and the 3.2 million which were sold in 2017.

So what is the appeal of vinyl among younger people in the U.K.? As popular as streaming services are, they often are not great places to discover new music. Algorithms have biases, and are very good at suggesting music that you might like based on music that you have listened to. Algorithms are not great at helping you discover music that might be in the fringe of your interests that you may feel like you want to listen to. Young people in the U.K. seem to enjoy going to record stores, going through the albums with their creative covers, and finding music that appeals to them.

In an article earlier this month, the Commercial Director at Universal Music, Chris Shiels, noticed this love for vinyl among people in the U.K. between the ages of 18 to 24: “We remain very optimistic about the potential of vinyl. UK music fans clearly love owning music – and especially vinyl,” he says. “At Universal, we will continue to work to bring fans their favourite music with the very best possible presentation that we can, for years to come.”

If music executives are noticing that the love for vinyl is real, and are prepared to offer more vinyl options to consumers, then it’s safe to say that vinyl isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Vinyl records have longevity.

Why not get a HiFi record console?

Order one today at iamluno.com.

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It’s not just that people are nostalgic for vinyl, it’s that people still see it as a significant part of the music industry. Today’s artists are still fascinated by vinyl, even though many of them can put music out online for the whole world to hear much faster, and with no barriers to entry, compared to when vinyl was the principal format on the market.

Artists are still interested in vinyl because it gives them a specific type of personal satisfaction, according to Matt Fiedler, CEO of Vinyl Me, Please. “I think the imagery of a record is still relevant because it’s the idealistic format through which a body of work can be represented and appreciated. Not unlike a book, artists dream about releasing their debut record. It’s both a beginning and an end of a wildly personal process. It’s more than just releasing a record. It’s about sharing a piece of their soul with the world.”

For Grammy Award-winning engineer, mixer and producer Ryan Hewitt, vinyl records have endured for a variety of reasons. “The record’s place in history as the first mass-produced medium to get music into the hands of consumers makes it easy to obtain on the cheap. They’re relatively durable, so you can usually find descent copies of anything you’d want to hear. The longevity of the format makes records something of a nostalgic notion as well; people cherish the records that have been passed down through generations and get excited about scoring a rare find.”

Hewitt, who has worked with many top artists over the years, also understands that in an era of streaming, fans want a memento of their favorite artists. Something to point to as evidence of their fandom and their appreciation of the music.

“In today’s digital world, many people want a physical link to the music that they love, and I think this has been a big part of the recent resurgence of vinyl sales. The artwork is properly sized; you can actually hold the music in your hand and literally display your taste on a shelf. Plus, there’s the whole time-honored process of selecting a record, putting it on the turntable, cleaning it, and then dropping the needle to settle in for an experience — to appreciate the work of art that the musicians and their team spent loads of time and effort honing into its final form.”

Then there is the word record, used to refer to vinyl records. The word has stuck for decades, even though music formats have evolved over time.

“Artists probably refer to their work as “records” because of these historical and romantic notions of the medium itself. They’ve existed in one form or another since the 1930s, so records are deeply embedded in the making of music. No one involved in the music business has ever said, ‘I’m going into the studio to make a CD!’ (or worse, a tape or mp3 file!) mainly because the life spans of other formats have been quite short in comparison. Both the spirit and aesthetic of vinyl remain vital. Because regardless of where my work winds up, I always get to say that I spend my days making records.”

Vinyl records endure.

Your record player should too.

Order a HiFi record console today at iamluno.com.

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