Is the comeback of physical media like vinyl records and DVDs here to stay?

For vinyl record enthusiasts, Record Store Day is like Christmas. It's an opportunity to buy rare albums that are on sale for one day only. 

But the resurgence of vinyl record sales isn't limited to one day a year. Sales have been growing year-over-year since roughly the mid-'00s. In 2023, vinyl records outsold CDs for the second consecutive year. In the United States, 43 million records were sold last year, amounting to $1.4 billion in revenue. 

Here in Canada, nearly seven million records were sold, up from five million a couple years ago.

People are also returning to other older formats like DVDs to avoid the decision fatigue caused by services, such as Netflix, which have an endless selection of content. Cassette tapes are also making a comeback as they're cheap to produce and cheap to sell.

To explain the resurgence of vinyl records, DVDs and cassettes, The Verge's tech writer Emma Roth and music journalist Marc Masters join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud on Commotion.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus an explanation on why Ruth Patir is refusing to open her Israel exhibit at the 60th annual Venice Biennale, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin:  Marc, I'm going to start with you. As I mentioned, this interest in vinyl has been happening for over 15 years now, right back to the dawn of the streaming era. In 2023, 43 million vinyl records were sold in the U.S. That's about 1.4 billion in revenue here in Canada. Nearly seven million records were sold, up from five million just a couple years ago. What do you make of all this growth when so many people can just go to YouTube and Spotify and listen to their music there?

Marc: Fifteen years is a significant amount of time. When it first started happening, I think a lot of people thought this was just a fad. It got covered that way. But I mean, it's sustained for a while. And, of course, it's never going to be back to the levels it was before streaming, before CDs even. But I do think, for a lot of people, there's a nostalgia aspect to it. There's people who grew up with vinyl who still like it. But there's a lot of younger people who are interested, who I think are using it not only as a way to own something, because before streaming, the way you identified yourself as a music fan was what you owned as much as what you listened to. So I think that's an important thing. And I think a lot of people also are getting turned off by streaming. It's got a little bit less of a personal appeal to them, and a way to stand out against that and say, "I'm not interested in this," is to buy physical media.

Elamin: Emma, recently you wrote a piece for The Verge about another kind of physical media that you've had re-enter your life recently — and that's DVDs. What brought you back to DVDs?

Emma: You know, I didn't really expect to take this path either, but to be honest, I subscribed to so many streaming services and a lot of it is taking up a lot of my data on my monthly limit for my ISP. And I was like, "You know what? Let me go buy DVDs instead. So that way I don't have to spend extra money when I go over my data cap." 

And there's just something about how it takes the choice away when it comes to streaming. It's definitely not as overwhelming as looking at a bunch of different stuff to watch on Netflix. It's much less intimidating. 

Elamin: It's interesting to me that you arrived at this epiphany right around the time that Best Buy announced it's no longer going to be selling DVDs. How have you gone about building up your collection? Because the places you go to do that, they seem to be no longer interested in even carrying those types of media anymore. 

Emma: Yeah, it's definitely dwindling in terms of where you can get a lot of DVDs. But I've been going to thrift stores. You can find them at Goodwill or sometimes the flea market. But my most reliable has been Walmart, which has a $5 DVD bin that I just sift through and I don't have to deal with clicking through a bunch of different titles. I can just pick it up, read the back and decide if I want to watch it. I mean, it might just be a movie that was released 10 years ago, but it's something to watch. 

Elamin: Marc, it's interesting to hear Emma talk about how inexpensive DVDs are, because when you look at vinyl, you're spending 40 bucks for a regular new album, never mind fancy reissue sets. There have also been all these chronic supply chain issues, because the number of vinyl pressing plants in the world is limited. So what do you say to someone who looks at all of this and goes, "Why are people spending all that money on this form of media given they can get it for $10 a month on streaming services?" 

Marc: That's an interesting point, and I think that even some people who do buy vinyl think that it's gotten a little out of control in terms of how much it costs and how complicated it is to find and for labels to make. But, personally, my bias toward that is that it's opened up an opportunity for the other formats, particularly cassettes. 

Cassettes are cheaper to make now and faster. Small labels who want to have a physical product to sell at their shows or to their fans online are turning toward cassettes, because they can offer a cassette for five, 10 bucks, where the vinyl is going to cost maybe four times that. And people are more likely to buy it, even if they don't necessarily have a cassette player. It's a way to support the label and support the bands.   

Elamin: Emma, is there something about the experience of watching a movie on a DVD that feels substantially different to you in terms of how you approach the art that you consume when it's on DVD versus when you get it on streaming?

Emma: I feel like it's less intimidating when you're watching a movie on a DVD because you can have a movie night. You can set a date, chill out and watch a movie. You don't have to go through the process of picking anything. It's just much more relaxed, in my opinion. I feel like there is a stress that is associated with picking something out, and that's something I deal with on a daily basis. 

Elamin: When you consume music through a streaming service, you don't own it. You're borrowing it from their library as opposed to the idea of ownership. What do you make of our changing relationship to ownership?

Marc: Before streaming, how you identified yourself as a music fan, as I mentioned before, is by what you owned. And I do think that some of these streaming services have disconnected that so that you don't feel as close to the music. Putting out money for a piece of vinyl means that you've invested in it. I think that the personal, intimate connection with things only happens if you own a physical copy of something.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman