Fueled by interest in hard to find vinyl records, turntables are suddenly cool again according to the Consumer Electronics Association. Sales for turntables skyrocketed last quarter from 19,000 a month in 2007, to nearly twice as many a month as of April of this year. The increase stems from young people becoming interested in vinyl as an option to avoiding digital rights management as well as combing used record stores for deals on hard to find albums of classic bands they’ve come to enjoy.

But the bottom line is that young people can tell the difference in quality between a digital audio file like MP3 and the uncompressed vinyl signal. As such, they are going where the quality is and are starting to choose analog vinyl over compressed digital bits. Course, the cool factor doesn’t hurt either.

“We have always believed that an analog source is going to sound much warmer and more natural than any digital source,” said Josh Bizar, sales director for MusicDirect, an online supplier of turntables. “These younger users are really into the sound quality.”

Another barometer are LP sales, which are on the rise to the tune of 70%, while CD sales are on the decline by 15% due to an over litigious recording industry and the availability of digital downloads.
Aned the beauty of vinyl is that its real and comes with no DRM. With Vinyl, you can rip the LP with a turntable attached to your PC and use it just about anywhere. DRM prevents digital downloads from being transferred to other formats without stripping the copy protection first. And even then, there’s a slight loss in quality.

“An MP3 - sure, you can get it somewhere off the Internet, but all you’re getting is the file,” said DJ Hut manager and buyer John Johnson. “What we’re finding with young people is they’re just happy to see what they’re getting with their money.”

Hat Tip – The Washington Times