Vinyl Revival: Social and Technological Change in the Field of Music Retail

This work broadly considers how markets “between” products and consumers affect the way we value goods and services. As consumers are exposed in person and online to an increasing variety of choices and opinions regarding those choices, the multiple registers of assessment embedded in goods and services become more evident. Through a longitudinal, multimethod analysis of industry and media archives, I use the case of independent record stores to explore the relationship between a changing music industry, retailers working to survive, and consumers confronted with more choices that mean different things in a new market reality. In the three-paper dissertation that follows, I investigate how these specialist retailers have been able to act strategically despite drastic technological change, what actions mean for a public notion of a record store identity, and how the store actors negotiate the sometimes conflicting realities they are faced with on a day to day basis. The music retail industry has changed significantly over the past twenty years. But with major technological advancements has also come a contemporary thirst for authentic experiences. The relationship that independent record stores maintain with the vinyl record surge of the past ten years situates these stores as cultural authorities and locates a viable niche for survival in an otherwise depressed market.