Original subtitles

[car engines hum] [crowd murmurs]

- The very first year that we did this,

these people were walkin' by us

and we were right on the other corner

and they'd stumble out after having had some drinks

and having a good time and they would always be like,

"What are you guys doing, man?

Why are you campin' out?

This is weird, like what's goin' on?"

We're like, "Oh, you know, Record Store Day."

"Records, people still buy those?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do, they do."

"Oh, so which one are you looking for?"

- Traditionally, no one says what they want

because they're afraid

the people in front of 'em will get to it.

- [Crowd Member] Strawberry Shortcake.

[laughs] - [Crowd Member] Yeah.

- What are you here for? - Weezer.

- And she only likes the colorful albums,

so basically anything, Portugal. The Man.

- Record Store Day is my busiest day of the year.

It's bigger than my Christmas,

it's bigger than my Black Friday.

It's all of those days rolled together.

Well we're gonna see more people in one day

than we normally see in two months time.

Hey, hey, can you guys hear me?

We have three stations.

So the first station is A through G.

The second station is halfway through the G's through P.

The third is P to Z

and soundtracks are under the name of the movie.

I know you're really all here for "The Crow"

and it's under C. [laughs]

So it's one title per customer,

but as many titles as you want.

- One of my friends brought me here a couple years ago

and I saw a couple albums that I knew that I liked

and then bought a couple of those

and then it just kinda went from there.

I just love that it's kind of a big community

that involves a lot of people.

I really like that.

- These are actually all of my friends

that I only see on Record Store Days.

Like there's faces back here that I recognize

and all these guys, the same thing.

- I don't even know this guy's name,

but I see him every year.

- I'm world famous. - Yeah, yeah.

- [Judy] Okay so this is the fifth one

and this is gonna be the biggest one, right?

And what's the goal?

- [Crew] Quack.

- Quick- - Quality-

- Authentic connections. [laughs]

Let's make friends, let's do it.

[upbeat music]

- [Crew] Welcome, go this direction.

- Br through Gs.

Br 52.

♪ Rise up

♪ Don't be afraid

♪ Stand up for your sister

♪ Gotta drop this charade

[crowd murmurs]

- I'm really excited,

'cause they said it's going like hotcakes.

Right here we go. [laughs]

♪ Let your heart be your guide

♪ Your strength can push us through ♪

- It's really weird because

even my parents and stuff like that are just like

"Why are you getting that stuff?

You have all this stuff on your phone."

I said, "I don't know, it's really cool."

- We are a record family, absolutely.

A very musical household.

- I like this one because it has Minnie Mouse on it.

- It reminds me of when I was little,

like wakin' up in the morning,

hearing like the little scratch

and then some soulful music playing.

And so it kind of takes me back to that vibe.

- A pretty good haul today. - You think? [laughs]

- [Customer] It was a good Record Store Day today.

- I got Fleetwood Mac, Soccer Mommy and Courtney Barnett.

- [Customer] We got a Gorillaz album, Courtney Barnett

and a Weezer record she was after.

[bag crinkles]

- This was a used record.

I've seen these guys five or six times.

Roxy Music, Sublime.

There's another Tangerine Dream

and then the one I really wanted.

♪ Let's move toward a brighter day ♪

♪ Together we can find a better way ♪

♪ Rise up

[crowd applauds]

- [Crowd Member] All right.

- Vinyl,

it's the only way to make sound solid,

like a solid format, like to bring it into our dimension.

Otherwise it's just invisible vibrations in the air.

- Breaking the seal,

like opening the record for the first time

and putting it on your turntable for the first time

and dropping the needle on the record.

- I love opening the Jethro Tull "Stand Up" gatefold

which has the pop up.

That always makes me smile.

- I really like that you can display a vinyl record.

I like looking at the art.

I like being able to touch it and hug it

and hold it if I want to.

- You have this physical,

rather substantial thing you're holding

and that thing promises, you know,

a portal into a moment in time

where your favorite band played this song.

- Artists care about vinyl a lot.

Many artists will say, "That's the most important format

with which I present my art."

- We've always released our music on vinyl

and there is never any thought of doing it any differently

just because that's what we're into

and I think that's what the people

who buy our music are into.

- It elevates the totality of an album

in a way that I think is kind of beautiful

if you're in love with an album.

- Look at this, it's so pretty.

It's got massive artwork that's meant to be looked at,

it's meant to be touched and it [sniffs] smells good.

- When I was in high school I had a huge crush on a guy

and I boxed up some of my records

and I took a turntable over to his house

and I played him vinyl for the first time.

And that's pretty powerful, that worked really well.

- Every record can have its own unique sound

depending on who has owned it, who's touched it,

where it's been.

That's really important to me.

- Sometimes when I want to listen to vinyl just by myself,

I just go right here and just dance.

- You're listening to the whole album,

not just one song that you like.

You can't fast forward.

- Boggles the mind, it's just not the same experience.

I play records for people in here

and it's like the first time they've ever heard the record,

it could be their favorite record.

- I mean that's probably the first thing humans ever did

was to tell stories

and while the way

that we tell them has changed over millennia,

the desire to do it has not.

Personally, I like telling stories through records.

[lighthearted music]

[people murmuring]

- Before I met you, when I was living in Indianapolis,

I got my first record player on my own.

It was pretty cheap,

but I got it because I was just at a point in my life

where I was like, "I want to do what I want do

and I think I would like records,"

and I think I would like certain things

that I think I've been avoiding

because I didn't want to be seen a certain way

or looking like I was trying to hop onto some trend,

especially a white people trend.

Like I'm sorry, like it's not that there's anything wrong

with being white,

it's just that I'm not trying to be a black person

that hops onto white people's trends.

That's how you end up,

you know, being a black white supremacist, which I'm not.

So--

A lot of these are new

Like this Mavis Staples is new.

Kelly just got that, "Only for the Lonely."

My husband loves soul music, but please understand

that when he talks about loving soul music,

he's really talking about the music

of like a middle-aged, black divorcee in the late-'90's.

Like that's what he's listening to.

We were both in the English department and we were writers.

I think I kind of knew

that Kelly was into older music after that

because when we went on our first date

[laughs] and we went four wheeling on our first date,

he took me four wheeling in the mud.

- She didn't know it was a date.

- I didn't know it was a date, that is true.

And we got in his truck

and we were on our way back to campus

from like this place he had taken me out to

and "Brown-Eyed Girl" came on the radio.

You know he's lookin' at the road like nothin's happenin',

but he slips his hand over and puts it on top of my hand

and I was

both like rollin' my eyes and completely charmed.

'Cause I was like, I'm black, of course I have brown eyes,

but also like this is really cute and I love this song

and I really like that he's listening to the song

and like he's playin' the song right now.

- Rolling your eyes and charmed

is probably a common experience.

- It's a common experience,

[Kelly laughs] rolling my eyes

and being also completely charmed, yeah. [sighs]

- Listen, there's something sacred about the whole thing.

12 by 12,

33 rpm,

the visual idea of this thing spinning for 18 minutes.

The idea that a needle, first off, it's a diamond.

I mean it's kids, all the fuckin',

this is like some Zork shit, it's sacred,

you know what I mean?

Like there's a diamond

that's like bumping in between this canyon.

[recording crackles]

[frantic music]

- It's such a horrifying-complex point of consternation

to even think about a stupid little, you know,

stylus moving through this groove.

I mean I'm learning new things every day

and I've been doing this for 18 years.

It's actually happened that's someone has walked in before

and, because I'm getting to the point

where I'm old enough now and they're young enough now,

so that someone walks in and says,

"Oh, albums have music on them."

You're like, "This is a music format?

Wow."

He spent the entire time

staring at the needle touching the groove

and watching it move and looking at the speakers

and going back and forth like it was some kind of alchemy.

- This is like 100 years old, how is this possible?

- It's magical, it's mind-blowing

how the fuck it works.

♪ Covering my eyes from far away ♪

[waves crashing] [record lock groove repeats]

- So sound is vibration.

Frequency

is sound per second

and then music is a unique collection of frequencies.

And that's just moving air

and that's what's beautiful about vinyl is that

it's taking that movement

and making it a solid, tangible artifact.

The way it works is sound is gonna be sent

to these two magnets.

There's a sharp diamond stylus right here

and that's gonna take the mechanical vibrations of the music

and carve it into this blank disk.

When I was first in a band, like around 17,

and like you know really getting a grasp

of what it means to create things.

Just seeing an actual vinyl record and like holding it,

it just made it, like, if I really am proud of this thing

I just put my heart and soul in,

it only makes sense to put my money where my mouth is.

So I started scouring the internet

and was like how could I do this myself,

because I do everything myself,

and that's why the record lathe

became the most viable option for me.

We're ready to cut.

[muted music]

Now it's etching the sound.

It's magic, obviously.

[wondrous music]

- It's so temperamental and difficult

to get every step right.

To write the songs, to have a functional band,

to have a functional vision, to have a good engineer

and a good studio and then a good mastering engineer

and then a good like lacquer cutter

and then a good plater, you know, plating person,

like Gary Salstrom

is the really famous plating person at QRP.

He fuckin' wrote me an email, I was like almost fainted.

This guy's amazing.

[soothing music]

- Unlike compact discs

you're not opening a door and pushing a button

to start a series of events on a computer.

We have somebody handling the lacquers.

We make a duplicate of that through a series of cleaning

and sensitizing steps, silver it,

put that in the plating tank, make a master.

This is the mother made from that master.

I listen to that,

make sure it's the quality is what we want,

make any repairs that might need to be done

and then we make a stamper that's gonna press the records.

Stan here is unloading a stamper

that's just been made from a mother

and later on he'll separate those two parts

and the stamper'll go out to the press room

and press records.

If everything's done right,

that stamper is an exact mirror image of the mother.

On a job board at school I found a posting

and I started off just sanding stampers.

I realized this is pretty cool.

I can get free records and... [laughs]

This is the vinyl that's gonna press the records.

This is virgin vinyl that we get from a company, TPC,

that's made in Thailand.

The vinyl is heated up in stages, makes a puck.

That puck'll be moved in, onto the center pin of the press

and that's gonna compress into the biscuit.

[press hums]

Record's pressed between the dies, or stampers,

mounted on each side.

It's gonna cut off the excess vinyl

and it comes out the front end.

This is where they're allowed to cool

and everything's hand inspected.

Two people in our QC department,

one will be looking at the records

and the other will be listening,

identifying any potential problems.

This is where we do all the listening.

This is Jamie.

He can look at defects and he's checking centering.

[laughs]

We want the record to be as concentric as possible,

so it's really critical

and it's probably one of the toughest things

that we have here to get right.

Other than that,

he's listening to it to make sure it's free

of any non-fill, tics, pops,

stains, scratches, things like that.

I feel guilty sometimes

'cause I get really stressed out about makin' records

and one of my best friends said,

"There's no such thing as a vinyl emergency."

And I try to remember that,

but it's amazing how stressed out you can get.

[upbeat music]

- You know when we're talkin' about vinyl records,

the process that we use is incredibly similar

to the process that was used to make records in 1880.

- For the first what, maybe,

70-plus years of recorded music,

records, whether they're made vinyl or from shellac,

but the basic form, right, circular.

And that was pretty much the only format that existed.

- [Narrator] Every record is made with the same care

and to the same high-fidelity standards.

- The 12 inch format succeeded

because you can see it from across the street

in a record store window.

- When you talk about the LP era,

what you're talking about is consumer culture

welcoming in large groups of people

who previously were not affluent enough to be targeted.

It was very affordable, it sounded great

and you could have a sort of relatively cheap experience

of urban affluence across all these demographic lines.

- When people were moving into the suburbs,

often the records and the record players

were part of the culture

that they were able to bring into their house.

Records are a piece of art.

- [Announcer] You are going on a ride,

a ride on a diamond tip as it plunges down

through a canyon of sound where music is made.

[majestic orchestral music]

- It's probably really not until 1970s

that things like cassettes and then 8-tracks

and of course by the 1980s, the coming of the CD

now provide competition for vinyl.

[audience cheering] [thumping music]

- [Announcer] Phillips announce the next best thing

to live music: compact disc.

[audience roars] [explosive music]

- [Oliver] They were smaller,

in theory, they sounded better.

- [Announcer] Pure sound played by laser.

- Digital is arguably a more perfect format.

It has consistency.

It potentially has a lower noise floor,

a greater dynamic range.

- I think the record industry in some way was saying,

"You don't want your records anymore,"

to the general public.

"You have to have CDs."

- Record sales begin to fall off a cliff.

I mean the high point, the zenith,

is around probably "Thriller," right, around 1983

and then everything begins to precipitously drop off

from that point.

- The long-playing album will only be 41 years old this year

and already it's headed for early retirement.

Like drive-in movies and gas-guzzling cars,

it's another casualty of progress.

- Records, you know, huge pain in the ass.

[record crashes] [light guitar music]

- [laughs] It's heavy.

- My back is probably not in the best shape it could be

because of vinyl records.

- Every time I've moved I've amassed more records

than the previous time I moved.

So every time it's more and more of a pain in the ass.

[records clatter]

- I don't, you tear my shit.

- It drives me nuts how easy it is to damage,

how easy it is to warp, how easy it is to skip,

how easy it is to break the spine,

how easy it is as a cat owner

to have a shelf full of records

get wrecked in one fell swoop.

[cat meows]

- Ow, no, [sighs] too late.

- I had it in crates

and whenever it would get warm,

I would move them from room to room

because I was like, if they warp, I'm done.

[soothing music]

- Vinyl wasn't perceived to have much value in 1990.

People would bring in all their records

and on top of the pile would be their turntable.

You know it's like, "Here you go."

So we used go to different cities across the East

and we would basically stand in a hotel room

buying records for 10 days straight,

box 'em all up and ship 'em to California.

It was a formula that worked right off the bat.

- But there was this just glut of vinyl

that had been dumped.

Stores just full of records.

- You could be buying these records

that are worth so much now for $5 or less.

- The condition was always, you know, iffy,

but that was an especially good time to find records.

- I always had a fascination with records.

I've also played the drums since I was nine years old

and so I was always in bands, interested in music,

my parents loved music and I loved working in record stores.

It's all I've ever done my entire life

since I got out of high school.

We have three stores now

and each one of them would be considered

the largest record store on the planet.

We became a place for weirdo record geeks like myself

to have a good job and create a community.

It's a perfect job for me.

I get to sleep in late, I get to wear my hair long

and just be myself.

- The record shop in the pre-internet days,

it was where you would go to find your crowd of people,

it was where you would go to find out about music

and records and buy concert tickets

and maybe see a band play.

That's just where anyone who was interested

in all that kind of stuff was hanging out.

- Goin' to a record store was part of my life.

It was something I always did,

I never imagined I wouldn't be doing that.

[soft music]

So I was opening a record store in the '90s

and Dr. Dre was just about to drop Snoop.

It was an interesting time.

My musical experience was difference

than the older guys who'd opened record stores before me

and everybody's gonna put a little bit of themselves

into their space.

Well I think the typical Sound Garden employee is people

who truly love records and record stores.

This is where they'd want to hang out.

We don't care if you have a drink while you're working

or you're high on weed.

We don't really give a shit, you know?

It's not like we're school bus drivers here.

It's a community of people

who are very similar to their customers.

[soft music continues]

- I feel like if you walk into my store

and you can't find something you like,

then I have somehow failed in my mission

to be a record shop.

I want the kid who walks in,

if she's eight or nine years old,

to find her favorite record

and as she develops her own musical taste

over the next 10, 20 years,

she can find everything that she likes

here at the record shop.

- I'd never seen anything like it in my life

and there are people

standing in front of record bins going like this.

So I just kind of saddled up to one of the record bins

and I start flipping through and felt like, you know,

this is a world that I wanted to be in.

- You know you basically are gonna get turned on to things

just by looking this way or that way,

as opposed to having something fed to you

by some logarithm.

- There's a lot of records that only exist as records,

so going into like a dusty record store,

digging under the shelves into the other crates

and it's almost like being an archeologist

and digging out stuff.

- I love digging in the crates.

Unfortunately I always wear a really nice shirt

when I should be wearing a really grungy shirt

to go dig in the crates.

- I think fun is really the bottom line to it all.

It's fun to go to stores.

You bump into somebody you know,

you see what they're buying.

- I go up the block here to Record City,

maybe pop into my bar up there, Westbury Inn,

have a beer.

Yeah, after a beer I definitely get more records.

[couple laughs]

- My strategy is to just be comfortable

and touch all the records in the store.

- I'm a terrible browser.

I'm like anything could be in there.

He's like-

- [Couple] Anything could be in there. [laughs]

- And often anything is.

- For people who like to collect records,

the thrill of what might be behind the door

of that little shop, you know,

I've never been stunned to find an MP3.

- Finding something that,

the day before you didn't even previously know existed,

like finding a South African pressing

of the first Stooges album.

To most people that's going to seem

entirely inconsequential.

Like, "Oh, is it different music?"

"Oh no, it's the same master that was used

at the Columbia Pitman pressing plant in the United States."

"Oh is it a different cover?"

"No, it's the same picture."

"Well what's different about it?"

"Well they used a slightly different back cover orientation

and the center label's different."

"That's it?"

"Yeah, that's it."

That makes...

That's the highlight of a month.

That is really, really exciting.

- Who are the most passionate weirdos?

They're passionate weirdos is who they are

and by the way, I subscribe to that,

you know I am a member of the tribe.

[graceful music]

- Music had been a way of dealing with depression for me,

a way of being less lonely

as I kind of left my hometown very young

and was moving around

and very often didn't have anyone around me.

You know I'm like poor and 18 years old

and what ended up happening is somebody,

who was a little older than me,

took me into their big demo room, sat me down

and played me a live David Bowie recording

on this like $300,000 LYD Dynaudio system

and absolutely wrecked my frame of reference

for what good sound was.

It was like okay, well I can have this emotional experience,

this anti-depressant experience and I can have it be better?

Sign me up.

- I have a nice sound system at home.

I have a very nice turntable.

I keep my records clean

and when I'm listening to a record I have to pay attention.

- See, this is hi-fi,

okay?

High fidelity.

- Audiophiles are the worst.

They are the worst, come on.

They are passionate

about all the wrong things about vinyl records.

They prefer to complain than to just sit back

and ignore that .01% of imperfection here.

And I'm sure this will be used against me in a court of law

and I've just dug my own grave.

I get as much.

- I think the dominant image you see of record collectors

and the media tends to be some version

of "The Simpsons" comic store guy.

- Someone has mixed an "Amazing Spider-Man" in

with the "Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man" series.

This will not stand.

- I'm not saying that's completely false

because I've met people that certainly fit that profile.

But I think over the years,

I've met a very, very diverse array of people

who are into records.

You don't necessarily see that reflected, though,

in the depictions that we have for record collectors.

- Nah, that one's not so great.

This is the one I'd recommend.

It's a, I mean this track alone by Memphis Minnie

is worth about $500 if you own the original 78.

- [Enid] Wow.

[Rebecca snorts] [foot stomps]

- It always has been

kind of a boys club kind of thing historically.

- I think that's a stereotype and I would beg to differ

because I was buying vinyl when I was a teenager

and I'm not a young white male or a middle-aged white,

or I wasn't, yeah.

- The big struggle that the high-end audio industry

has identified for itself is this evolving discussion

that's about how to reach out to women, people of color,

you know all sorts of youth, minority,

all of those sort of sectors

that they've never touched on before.

And ironically, they continue to do the exact things

that are not helpful in that pursuit

and that is to treat women like children

and young people like they're idiots

and people of color like criminals.

If you want to change things, you have to just do it.

- The fact that then I thought that vinyl belonged,

in a certain sense, to that certain kind of white man,

was definitely encouraged by the images

whenever anybody was talking about vinyl.

- You guys are snobs.

- No, we're not.

- No, seriously, you're totally elitists.

You feel like the underappreciated scholars

so you shit on the people who know less than you.

- No. - Which is everybody.

- Yeah. - Yes.

- I think a lot of people think

that when you go to a record store,

the owner is gonna be grumpy

and he's gonna sort of judge you

and I've certainly felt that way.

- I've had more than one male cable technician walk in

and look at my records

and say, "Wow, whose records are these?"

If I had a penis, you would assume they were my records.

- Do I feel good when someone's like,

"Oh cool, the DJ is a woman.

That's cool, that's different."

Like, dude, I'm tryin' to just do my job here,

I don't need commentary.

I might be really colorful.

I might have weird records,

but I've been doing this for 10 years

and I know how to run a mixer,

I know how to run a turntable,

I know how to beat match.

Like I know these things

and I'm just ready for people to just assume that I do.

♪ The stuff that held back

♪ Do want somebody

[vibrant rap music]

- During the low point of vinyl sales,

the one community I think that still held onto it

was really DJs.

When everyone else decided to shift over to other formats,

those particular DJs were always

still gonna stay loyal to vinyl.

- The DJs, you know, they demanded it.

If the labels weren't gonna do it,

there were bootlegs coming out

and I think they were kinda forced into keeping it going

through like the '90s.

[playful scratching music]

It's a medium that lends itself to creativity.

Like there's endless,

like crazy things you can do with vinyl.

[audience cheering]

- With the DJs, we have hip-hop, we have punk,

but in between there there was a layer of kids

that were influenced by hip-hop,

but wanted to do something new,

placing samples together to make beats.

[light music]

- In the 2000s,

digital DJing in a particular vinyl emulation systems

or digital vinyl systems like Serato,

when these began to come online

a lot more DJs were happy to embrace that.

- Control signals come in all different colors,

whether they be vinyl, and sizes.

They also come in CD form

or you can put the file on a USB stick.

- So much to my surprise,

these people who had been DJs since the 1980s,

begin to just liquidate their entire collections.

- We've seen a decrease definitely,

definitely in hip-hop 12 inches

and dance 12 inches over the years.

And I think that DJs now don't spin vinyl as much.

- I had a tour in Japan a while back

and the promoter was like, "Hey, are you gonna bring vinyl?"

And I said, "Well, if I do are they paying more,

'cause I have more baggage fees," and stuff like that.

He goes, "No."

I was like, "Okay.

Well then why would I bring it, you know?" [laughs]

- Boom, that's iPod.

I happen to have one right here in my pocket in fact.

[audience laughing]

There it is right there.

[audience applauding]

[upbeat music]

- [Kurt] It all came crashing down in the Napster era.

- And I just was like, "No, why?

It's here, why change it?"

- It's the era of the MP3

that delivers the coup de grace, if you will.

- [Steve] To have your whole music library with you

at all times is a quantum leap in listening to music.

- I think that music fans took out their anger

or their

distress

with record labels on our shops.

We were the natural go-to for people to express their dismay

with pricing, with availability

and as a result, we were easy prey.

- [Reporter] There is a lot of history here

and it's gonna take a little while to liquidate it all

so you've probably got a couple of months left to come

and get a piece of this history for what it's worth.

- I think there was one year

where I didn't even release anything on vinyl as a label

and I was thinking like.

- And we didn't sell enough of it

to make it worth manufacturing,

you know, 500 of them in order to sell 50.

[car engines hum]

- [Kurt] A lot of record pressing plants

went out of business.

- Music was always really important to me,

but my career was in business.

In the mid-2000s, I kind of reached a point

where I decided that I wanted to find something

that was kind of a smaller, more niche-like business

where I could be more hands-on involved.

And this is where it all began.

That was my old desk.

[light switches click]

I wasn't looking for a vinyl record manufacturer.

It never occurred to me that I might find one of those,

but this business had existed since 1949.

[light switches click]

I knew enough about music and I had enough beliefs

that vinyl's not gonna go away.

I thought it could be something

where it would be a good, stable investment,

I could spend time on it

that would be emotionally meaningful

and I thought I could add value to the business.

Some of this is left.

There's our old break room.

So I bought the company in 2007

and thought it was gonna be stable

and require a little attention, but not a lot.

This is the Motown Suite.

This is where the Motown artists would celebrate

their new record releases.

And they needed a place to come

because they couldn't get space

in the segregated South back in the '60s.

And everything is completely intact

and

I'm sure if these walls could talk,

there'd be some great stories.

A large part of what the company did when I bought it

was they made 12 inch single records for DJs,

promotional records.

That's how the major labels would support a new artist.

Scattered throughout here we had three press rooms.

We had seven presses in this little room,

six presses going down there

and another eight presses going back there.

And we shoved an awful lot in this small little building.

Shortly after I bought the company,

the labels decided to discontinue that practice

of producing 12 inch single records.

That had a devastating impact

on this small, stable business that I thought I had bought.

Suddenly it became a very challenged business.

[light switches click]

There's nothing that said it's going to come back

and it got worse before it got better.

[somber music]

[crowds murmur]

- 2007 is sort of considered the bottom.

That year the market sold less than a million units.

I think my wife and I were married,

we were getting ready to move for the third or fourth time,

as you are when you're young and just married,

and it was like, I don't have the space, I'm done.

I got rid of all my records.

- Back then, we were on all in media stories

for actually going out of business

and our business is failing

and I was like, that's a horrible story to tell.

We're like telling people we're not cool anymore

and that's all we have is being cool.

So we held a conference for all the indie record stores

called Noise in the Basement and we were talkin' about

how we can perhaps change the perceptions,

just change the story.

I said, "Hey, maybe we could do something

called Record Store Day."

- Yes, we're gonna throw a party for ourselves.

That seems a little weird,

but let's try it and see what happens.

And if you throw a party,

it's will people show up to your party?

- Vinyl was our only hope

and we just hoped somebody else would give a shit.

♪ You've been, you've been

♪ Runnin' through my mind

♪ And I've been thinkin' that

We can get artists to contribute some tracks,

some 7 inches,

some things that are only exclusive to us.

- The idea is they're limited.

What format lends itself to that? Vinyl.

- Check this out,

this is Chuck D for Record Store Day.

- [Bryan] It was like all the biggies.

Metallica was our first Record Store Day ambassadors.

From there it just continued to grow.

- Of course I'm no stranger to the title ambassador.

- I now have the power to command you

to attend Record Store Day.

- I'm kind of blown away about what it is now.

We started it six years ago

and we only had 30 artists participate.

Now we have 350 artists participating, it's worldwide.

Record Store Day gave me and the employees who work here

an opportunity to continue to work

in an environment we love.

You know we're kinda cool again.

- You know, no accounting for the human heart,

it's a very strange machine.

- As you can see in the room we're sitting in,

I haven't

stopped

then rebuying the records I got rid of,

or just buying more records.

So I was on the wagon is what I'm saying

and now,

I'm drunk with vinyl.

[upbeat music]

- It was just this gradual change

and you all of a sudden realize

that there's more and more stores opening up,

there's more and more online retailers

that are carrying vinyl.

- All sorts of independent entities

continued to make records when the majors weren't.

- And if you have clout as an artist,

you're going to want to have this experience,

not this experience.

- I think that's when we started

to see a younger demographic.

- I think I was like 15 or 16 when my dad bought me

like one of those Crosleys,

not the powder blue one, it was a different color.

And he bought like The Postal Service "Give Up" record,

[laughs] which is kinda funny to me

that that's my first record

'cause it's like kinda ridiculous.

- More attention has been paid in recent years

to reaching an audience where the default setting

is not white dudes of a certain age.

- I definitely think this second generation of record fans

has maybe destigmatized the idea that everyone

that likes vinyl is this weird dude with a ponytail,

kinda hangin' out listening to only vinyl.

- When I first started

and I would go to other people's houses,

like their record player was something

that only they could touch

and now you're starting to see that kind of break down.

- And now that it's kind of everywhere

and really easy to order and really easy to come across,

I think more and more people are starting

to listen to vinyl.

- [Billy] And you walk into a record store

and you see families and little kids and men and women.

It's literally not a bunch of old white guys like me.

- People of all colors, all races,

there's absolutely no way to tell

when a person walks in the store what they're gonna buy.

- As a kid, my parents didn't have a record player.

I didn't have a turntable

until I was out of college, really

and that's when I started devotedly collecting records.

[soft celestial music]

So I started going out and seeing DJs playing vinyl

and I thought, "I want to do that."

I have really good records, I have good taste,

why am I not seeing girls up there?

Why do I not see myself up there?

I knew that there were girls out there

that wanted to learn how to DJ,

they just didn't know how to start.

So I wanted to create this platform

for girls to get together to talk about records,

to skill share and that's how Chulita Vinyl Club started.

[lively music]

- I'd never seen women DJ up there before,

so I was like if they could do, then I can do it, too.

- We started with a couple of girls,

two, three girls, including myself

and at the moment we have about 55 girls

in seven different cities.

It's more than just teaching each other how to DJ

or talking about records.

Girls that have never met each other

met at Chulita Vinyl Club

and they're, you know, the best of friends now.

- Everybody's got their own style and own flavor

and I think that's part of the club, you know?

- [Claudia] We have each other's backs.

It's an awesome sisterhood.

- Being able to hold the music

that you're about to put on is really cool.

I didn't have a ton of physical music

as a kid

and then I had none

as iTunes became a bigger part of my life.

- What happened in the late '90s, early 2000s,

is that music became very passive.

It became very easy to listen to it through your iPod,

through your device, through your computer,

through your laptop.

- There was this sense

that music was becoming evermore ephemeral

and evermore portable and evermore sort of on the wind.

But at the same time,

there were people who I think in reaction to that

were also interested in having music

that they could hold in their hands.

- I like the ritual of putting a record on and sitting down.

- I definitely like having the physical album

in front of me, putting it on the turntable

and really having that experience of doing nothing else

but listening to that record.

- And then having to kind of pay attention

and go back 20 minutes later and flip the side.

- There are people who are drawn to the inconvenience.

There are people who are drawn to inconvenience period

because you feel like you're working for your art

and

streaming strips that away

in the name of convenience and access.

- Now you just bark out a command to some box in the corner

and it plays music for you.

- Alexa, play rock music.

- [Alexa] Rock music.

[hard guitar music]

- I love walking down my hallway at home

and there's just a big wall of records

and I can look at them

and remember the memories associated with them,

like where I got this or this record came from my parents.

- If you catch the bug early on,

it sticks with you and it's a way to go back to a happier,

you know, more innocent time.

- It's like when you're young

and you're discovering things for the first time,

it's so great.

- It's kind of ironic because vinyl is a nostalgic thing,

but I also think it's novel to me

as someone who thinks of music as a digital item.

- When we are buying something we are defining ourselves,

especially younger people.

We're lookin' for ways to tell ourselves who we are.

- "I'm a guy who listens

to Faith No More's 'The Real Thing,'"

and if you're that guy,

every time you open your record cabinet

and you see "The Real Thing,"

it's like that's the reflection of the person

that you most idealize in yourself

and you get to take that out

and have this you know sacred event with it.

At the end of the day you're listening

to Faith No More's "The Real Thing,"

you're just going about it the long way.

[soothing music]

[wind rustling]

- My attraction to vinyl has been a combination

of good association from my childhood

and also I really like the art form of it,

that you can display a vinyl record.

This one

is special to me

because it's the very first album cover recreation

that I did, also it has A Tribe Called Quest break in it.

People ask me all the time

how I got started doing album cover recreations

and there's no real magical story to it.

It's just that I saw this at my parent's house,

my parents had at the time a huge orange tabby cat

and it just hit me like, "Oh, that'd be so funny

if I could put the cat in as the lion," and anyway.

It just started with that one

and I got such a huge reaction,

people thought it was so funny.

I was like, "Well if you like that, I'm gonna keep going.

I'll show you this and this and this."

I feel like I'm spreading knowledge

or spreading information about the record.

I really pride myself on trying to write in the caption

something about the circumstances

under which that album was made.

So who was the producer, who played bass, who played guitar,

the photographer, too.

Like before this,

I had no real way to demonstrate my enthusiasm for music

because I'm not a musician,

I tried to be a DJ for a couple of years there,

but I'm not good at it.

I'm just a goofball.

It's just a perfect way to showcase my collection.

See, pretty convincing, right?

[laughs]

[upbeat guitar music]

- We never really stopped doing vinyl record jackets.

Did it come close to going away?

It did and then we saw it comin' back,

I would say about 12 years ago and it's just slowly grown.

One of the things I think that has done that

is people started making them a little bit more special.

Direct to board jackets, old style jackets,

12 inch, 10 inch, 7 inch, box sets

and lots of specialty items as well.

What we're kind of known for is we do old style jackets.

And what the old style jackets are

is they're printed on paper,

which is a little bit nicer to print on,

and then they're mounted to a gatefold blank.

They automatically get glue put on the backside of them

and then these blanks are hand mounted onto the sheets

and the front actually gets turned over

to the backside.

Once that's done, you now have the front,

what we call the cover and the liner side of the gatefold,

and then now this is what we call the inside spread.

So this is our smaller press.

This is a 29-inch Heidelberg, six color with a coater.

It prints around 8,000 sheets an hour.

Things are looking really good in our industry.

Not only is there more work to be done,

there's more really high-quality packaging to be done.

This is a flat sheet now,

but when we die cut, fold and glue,

this'll be a gatefold jacket.

I think people started making 'em special

to get people to buy vinyl instead of downloading.

Before it was like a single record jacket,

four color process, single record jacket,

but now there's just so many special coatings

and foil stamping and embossing

and scented or textured coatings.

Just whatever you can think up, we'll make it on a jacket.

[lively music]

Customers will come to us with an idea

and 90% of the time we'll make it happen

no matter what it is.

- Anytime you look at the mass introduction of a format,

and it's always been this way,

as it gets more and more accepted,

then you start to say,

"Okay, well how can we squeeze more profit

out of these things we're selling?"

So in the last throes of, you know, the '90s and the 2000s,

the packaging gets pulled back, the record gets pulled back.

It's a wonder any of them survived

any length of time out in the wild

because they were so thin and the jackets were so light

- But eventually people have the great idea, like QRP,

you know we'll let's do this, but let's really do it.

Let's make sure

that the temperature of the biscuit is just right.

Let's make sure the labels are always dead center.

Let's make sure that we have remastered the hell

out of this album

and that's where I think the maturity happened.

The average audiophile who would come into our stereo shop

was not asking for a music server or a CD player anymore,

they were asking for a turntable.

- The records are 180 gram, they're beautiful.

The whole outlay of the jacket is gorgeous.

It is a full sensory experience

that is incredibly rewarding.

- We always start with the vinyl package

and then the CD design will be based off of that.

- Probably my favorite physical album cover is,

it's one by The Format, it was called "Dog Problems"

and as you open the album,

like different sections of dogs kind of pop out.

- Probably one of the bigger things

that we're known for is nice deluxe packaging.

And you sit there and you read the liner notes,

you look at all the great photos

and you kind of follow along the story of the music

with the story in the book.

- The more special you can make the vinyl,

the more likely it is that people are gonna buy it.

You want to do limited, special packaging or colored vinyl.

Don't tell anybody,

but colored vinyl doesn't sound as good. [laughs]

- We try to anticipate, is there a novelty aspect

that makes sense to bring into this?

There's these little tricks

and these little sneaks that you learn about

and so you can have the groove on the record

start on the inside and play outward.

- Liquid-filled records and split color records,

a lot of things that we have done,

we've done together with the artist.

Perhaps the strangest of all those requests

and one that we were willing to manufacture the components,

but actually not complete the assembly

was a blood-filled record

for Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips.

- In elementary school we used to do these balloon launches

where everyone in the school got a helium balloon

and attached to it was a postcard with your name on it

and you let 'em go.

I remember some turning up

in New Hampshire, New England area.

Like wow, that's hundreds of miles, that's so insane.

So how can we do that with records?

So it's with great excitement

that we release Jack White's "Freedom at 21" on a flexi-disc

only available via helium balloon launch.

And we got hundreds upon hundreds of helium balloons

and we just let 'em go.

I hope you can find one.

And they started showing up in people's yards,

people started putting 'em on Ebay,

people are paying $4,000 for a flexi-disc.

That, to us, was really, really cool.

[hopeful music]

- The toughest thing about opening a brand-new record store

is that there are already records at Walmart

and there are already records at Target

and there's loads of records at Amazon,

so you really have to offer something unique.

We try to have a very cool, sort of bohemian vibe

It sometimes feels like a temple

where somebody can come in and receive,

almost like a sacrament,

receive in the music that might be life-changing music

or might have extremely intimate relationships with them.

- [Kat] I will help you with that-

- [Customer] Do you know anything about this?

It's got all kinds of signatures all over it,

but was it anything?

- It's open? - Yeah, I mean-

- [Kat] Oh, this is a, oh, this is a Dwight record.

We bought it, well we got a collection from this guy-

- [Customer] Okay, I just love the inside with the pictures

and all that-

- He wrote, he wrote a lot of things on it.

We've been open for about six months.

We opened last October, so October 2018.

We're really picky about condition

and we try to source more unusual stuff,

usually European pressings.

Something that you would hear and you'd say, "What's this?

I need to have a copy of this."

We call ourselves a ma and pa store.

People come in, we tend to know people's names,

if we don't we'll ask you your name.

I've had mothers bring their daughters

and I feel like I'm sort of a safe shop for them to come to.

I try to be extremely nice and welcoming

to everybody who comes into the shop.

[bell jingles] Hello.

Don't mind us. - Okay.

- Hey there.

- In May of 2008,

I was left with a company that had a lot of issues

and we set out to reposition the company

to be in a place for the day when, lo and behold,

commercial vinyl started to grow again.

- All those independent labels

and independent artists continued

to make records in the dark ages,

but you would not have a comeback

without the majors being involved.

- I didn't know that this was gonna happen,

it didn't play out at all like I thought it would,

but fortunately it came together and worked out okay.

Building one is where it starts here,

we receive raw materials.

- [Billy] You need the records that millions of people want,

not tens of thousands of people want.

- So we've now entered building two,

which is where we actually manufacture the records.

- You'll have tens of thousands, possibly hundreds

of thousands of records pressed for that single title

and that makes a big difference at the manufacturing level.

It's just, it's a bigger deal.

- You've seen a generation that has discovered,

"Hey, this thing exists out there.

I love this artist," whether it's Taylor Swift

or whether it's The Allman Brothers.

Yes, I can stream it onto my phone, but this thing is real.

[bright music]

- "There's nothing new under the sun

and everything that's old will become new again."

I realized that's especially true about vinyl

when I started seeing like portable record players available

in places like Urban Outfitters

and they were in different colors,

I was like, "Oh, my God, it's become a trend."

♪ I think I like you

♪ I think you like me, too

- Urban Outfitters is not a record store,

we are a lifestyle store.

When we began in the vinyl business,

we were buying it more as a collectible piece,

or as a decorative piece.

And I'll never forget when a record came

and there was only one

and it was the weirdest thing being in the store

is getting one record because you were like,

"Well A, where is this supposed to go?

And B, who's gonna ever need vinyl?"

- I got this from Urban Outfitters

and I will have a full review

on the actual record player itself on my blog.

- [Becky] As the industry has grown,

we're seeing it also as a way to listen to your music

on top of also being a collectible.

One of our top-selling artists is Billie Eilish.

Just like her, I think what we service

is that 17-year-old girl that's like experiencing

and getting to know how amazing it is to own vinyl.

- Let's see what the pressing looks like.

Oh, my God it is like white.

- One of the coolest moments of me ever buying music

[laughs] was when we released Britney Spears on vinyl.

When that came out there was just so much press about it

and so many fans that were so excited

that they were finally able to really own that album

in a bigger way than just the CD format.

- So this what the babe looks like.

She's a big girl.

- Our consumer base is typically 18-26 years old,

so they don't have a lot of disposable income

and so we find it important to offer them

that entry-level turntable

and Crosley's always been a great product

for that price point.

[car engines hum]

- Crosley's provided more turntables

than anyone else has in the last 10 years.

[buoyant music]

When we first started,

we were mainly servicing people who grew up with vinyl

and they just wanted to experience it again.

We started selling Target in 2006, 2007, Urban Outfitters.

Then we decided to expand outside of just retro

and make it more fashion based.

- It introduced a whole new generation

to vinyl

and a large percentage of these new listeners are female.

- [Blogger] I was really debating

getting the blue or the pink,

but the blue, in the end, matched my room better.

- All of the finishes are this light blue color

and my record player happens to also be a light blue.

I wouldn't be surprised if the record player was kind of

in the back of my head going,

"I would look so good in the apartment." [laughs]

- People are using our products

as like an extension of their personality.

So when you

search #crosley on Instagram,

you're gonna see a lot of Crosley shrines.

There's the Crosley turntable, suitcase-style flipped open,

cool piece of like mid-century modern furniture.

There's twinkly lights and like there's always succulents,

you can't forget succulents.

So many succulents.

I don't know that like Gen Z necessarily

thinks of it as like an old medium.

My daughter doesn't even know what a CD is,

but she has a turntable.

She has a small vinyl collection of like 15 albums,

mostly Disney.

You know I had to teach her, "Here's the cueing lever,

and like drop it manually.

Like always use this to drop it slowly.

Always hold the record like this."

From a young age, she picked up on it super quick.

- That's pretty much everything, kids.

Have fun collecting records.

[sweet guitar music]

- She just thinks it's always been here

or it's like this new cool thing,

which it is a new cool thing.

- Vinyl can really help you with parenting

in that being able to talk about music,

hear music and tell a story about an album

or a period of time, it gives you really nice inroads.

And I think when you're physically connecting,

when you're touching something,

it forges more connection for you

because you pause and you're talking to each other

and you're listening to each other in a different way.

Sunday vinyl is a family tradition

so I get up in the morning

and I play whatever the week has been

and then at dinnertime I play a few records

that are gonna take us into our next week.

If it's a blues record, folk music or a jazz record,

I'm giving something to them.

[lively dance music]

We have this day together and we have this time together

and it's our version of church.

[brakes squeal]

- My dad and I, we collect records together

and it's kinda like a father-son activity that we do.

I think on this side is like opera,

maybe, I think, over here is like jazz

and maybe some early stuff, like '50s, like early '60s.

Then in the middle it's all this rock because we love rock.

It's a good thing to discover, like,

things that I didn't really live, but other people lived.

Vinyl's still around,

but like typewriters aren't around anymore.

Like dialing phones, where you dial stuff,

those kinda died out.

Like regular dancing, like ballroom dancing,

like that really died out.

This is usually where we put our new stuff,

like when we go to a record store or swap,

we put the things here, David Bowie.

Sometimes I'm in the middle of school

and like everybody singin' this new pop song

and I'm like, "Gosh, I feel old."

Most of the time I'm like this is the right kind of music.

[frenzied glam rock]

♪ So where were the spiders

♪ While the flies tried to break our balls ♪

At the record swap,

a lot of the people there were like to my dad,

"Wow, you did a really good job raising this kid.

Like he likes what we like, not this new modern pop."

- In the past, I would have probably been too self-conscious

to even say what I'm into

because, oh, you're just gonna get ripped on

for what you're looking for.

"Oh, you're just lookin' for garage records?

Okay whatever, little kid," you know.

"Tell me when you start liking psychedelic,"

or something like that.

That would be my impression of the old record show,

but now it's way more inviting and convivial

and very, very warming I would say.

[car engines hum] [upbeat music]

There are still people who are exclusive about it,

but they had to realize at some point

it was either you be inclusive

or you don't have anyone to sell to.

- It's been really fun to grow up with the show.

When I was five years old, I was running around here

under the tables reading comic books.

My dad started it in 1981

and I've sort of been helping out more

and more the older I got.

- I'm 45, so I've been doing this for 30 years basically.

So I've seen every permutation of every job you can have

in the Austin Record Convention.

Once I graduated high school,

I started working at convention headquarters

and you know we basically run it now.

- Attention, we're about 15 minutes

from general admission starting.

As you can see, there's a lot of people still in a line

and we've been open for five or six hours,

so it's pretty incredible.

- This is one of the biggest shows we've had in a long time.

We have more dealers than we've had in a lot of years.

I think it's gonna be a great show for everybody.

- I want the dealers to be able to make money

and have a successful show

and I want the customers to come and be able to spend money

and be happy with sort of what they're spending

and what they got for it.

Like do you want to buy 10-$5 records or one-$50 record?

- [Meagan] Yes.

- [Customer] And it's sealed.

- [Meagan] And it's sealed.

Thank you very much.

And it is a DJ promo copy.

Thanks so much. - Thank you.

- That's how you sell a $400 record.

- We were told that this biggest record fair in the world.

Big stuff, good prices, nice people, nice city.

- Nice city, yeah, beautiful city.

- [Nathan] You know hardcore record collectors

are still a core demographic, you know,

and no matter what corner of the world they come from

or what their background is,

they have a lot in common with each other.

- I spent enough time in Vietnam

that I've earned the right to do

just about what the heck I want to do.

I paid like three grand for one just the other day,

for one record.

- I have been coming to the Austin Record Convention

since 1985.

- I'm a veteran, 30 years, plus.

Love it here, love it.

- I see a lot of old faces every year

at the Austin Record Convention,

but we see a lot of new younger kids,

we see a lot of people in their 20s,

we see a lot of parents bringing their little kids,

which is awesome.

- Andrea's first record was the new Kacey Musgraves album.

I'm hoping that she'll have some stuff to like look back on

and like you know cherish,

like collector's items and things like that.

- It's a generational thing now.

There's more women involved

and they're bringing their children and their moms,

which is great.

I wholeheartedly endorse that. [laughs]

- I have a big time soft spot for younger people

who are into it, especially kids, you know,

and if somebody's a newbie.

We absolutely love that.

- We are new record people,

we've been doin' this for six months

and it has been absolutely phenomenal.

- I didn't believe until I heard the difference, so.

- Well I think it's about how much fun vinyl is,

how much fun it is to shop for,

how much fun it it to like meet people

who are into the things you're into.

- I started collectin' records

when I was about eight years old.

Needless to say, 20,000 records later, it's a disease.

- There is an endless world of records

and that's what's like so appealing to me.

It's cool to be like accepted by that community

and to be like, you know, a younger girl who sells records.

- My daughter's here and Nathan's daughter's here

and she could have gone to a sleepover

and she was like, "No, I don't miss the record convention."

And I'm like, "Okay, well great, you're here with us."

- You know I don't always take the time

to kind of ponder how beautiful it is,

but it feels like a reunion in many ways.

We have people

who are actually all from different areas of life,

different ages, different backgrounds,

but when it comes to this thing,

we're kind of mostly on the same page already.

- This is a good one? - Yeah.

- Let's see. - That's where I would go.

I'll play it for you.

- Oh, yeah, if you don't mind.

- This is the beauty of it for me,

to talk to people and to do what we're doin' now.

Just talk about records, talk about music.

[light jazz music]

Just take a few minutes.

It's like wine, you get the bouquet,

you sip, you listen, the next thing you know...

Ho! What was that?

Surprise.

- For me vinyl's like something that has been in my life

since I was really small and like,

[laughs] it's weird,

I don't really think about this too much,

but it's just been something that I've had around me

and it's connected people forever.

- You put that back in the sleeve, that's your album.

- Awesome, thank you so much.

Have a good one. - You, too, man.

[customers murmuring]

- I am worried that the music industry,

the people at the big labels,

are gonna make a huge mistake again

the same way they did with CDs.

They've got kids excited about it

and you go to buy a reissue record that,

10 years ago, was $11 or $12, it's now $30

to buy a new copy of a Beatles record or whatever.

- Now when I'm a college student I have more expenses

than just coffee on the weekends.

If it gets up to the $30 price point,

I definitely think more about it.

- I do try to budget with each paycheck.

I always go over budget, but I have good intentions.

- What you have to look at is

by selling this piece of music,

is the artist being compensated correctly,

are we actually making the margin that we need as a company

to keep all of our lights on and keep the people employed,

and is there enough margin leftover for a record store

or a retailer of any sort

to be able to derive the margin they need?

As long as you're accounting for those three things

then what you price it at is appropriate.

- There's so many costs that go into these things

'cause it is sort of a bespoke artisan-type thing

that I think people might get angry about something

or "Why is it so expensive?"

And you know it's because it costs a lot of money

to make these things this way.

[fans murmuring]

- People take for granted that you must have paid nothin'

and you're charging too much for things

and that's just sort of a general view

that a lot of customers have.

- When you put in foil stamping and individual numbering

and it's 180 gram vinyl

and you actually did full analog mastering,

like all of these things add cost

into every single record that you make

and the margins have to stay the same,

that means all the pricing has to go up.

- In 1977, a $10 record would be $35 today.

We are not charging more for records now.

- But are the majors, though, horrible, evil people?

Yeah, sure, yeah, oh yeah we're terrible, we're mean.

♪ You make me feel like

- As more and more people started making vinyl again,

including the major labels,

you know, reissuing Beatles records,

our timelines had to get way longer.

When it comes to you know a punk band in Berkeley

that's trying to get their 7 inch out

and they're you know a year out of being able to do that

because you have like a million "Lego Movie" LPs

that are like, whatever.

No shade.

♪ Everything is awesome

But whatever.

- There's always going to be a backlog at the plants

that make the best records

that take the longest time to make.

A lot of times I'll get into conversations

with people about, "Well can you make this faster?"

I was like, "Well, no,

because then you're outside the space-time continuum."

It was like this is physics,

like it takes a certain number of seconds to make a record.

[soft music] [car engines hum]

- I was in the studio and I was like really busy

'cause I was doing tech work before the band started

and I was like, "Okay, I gotta call QRP

and set up the order for my record coming out."

So I Googled on my phone, QRP

and I just hit the button, called them

and I was like, "Hey, my name is John Vanderslice,

I've had a few orders with you in the past.

I just wanted to see about lag time

and maybe setting up an order."

And so they're like, "Okay, let me put you on hold."

So they put me on hold, they came back and they said,

"Yeah, we see a few orders for you."

"Well do you see my quantity

for the last record, 'Dagger Beach,' I think it was 2,000?"

"Hold on, let me put you on hold."

It was like, man, they don't seem to know anything

about vinyl production.

I'm asking them basic questions about like scheduling

and minimums and who does the plating and et cetera.

And then I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna call you back,"

it just got confusing.

And then I hung up and maybe a minute later,

someone called me and it was a different person

and it was a guy

who sounded like kinda car salesman-y.

Scammy.

And he's like, "Hey, so I just wanted to clear up,

so did you want to place an order?"

And I was like, "Who is this?"

They're like, "You just called us."

And I was like, "Why are you calling me?"

He's like, "Well I was listening in to the phone call."

No shit. And that's when it hit me, I was like oh, my God.

I looked at my phone, I was calling a scam company

and they were pretending to be QRP.

They knew what I was doing.

They're lying to me and saying that they saw my orders.

It was fucking crazy, it was amazing.

This is in vinyl production.

Think about this,

most of these motherfuckers don't even own a turntable,

so scammers everywhere.

This is like so typical.

- The record boom definitely has messed up,

at some points, the quality.

For example off center, meaning that the grooves,

instead of the record needle playing

and just kind of tracking like this,

it goes woo, woo, [laughs] you know.

[sound wavering]

You know a lot of people, I guess,

really aren't playing or opening 'em

or they're not that picky.

- I despise buying a brand new record,

putting it on the turntable and having it be warped,

defective or otherwise made in a way

that is not up to standards that I would expect.

I'm not suggesting

that somehow we're immune from that problem,

but that's the thing that most upsets me.

Sometimes even all the people

that do the best work have problems.

- It's hard to make a record.

It's a manual process and it relies on a lot of technology

that's 100 years old or more.

[light music]

- In my previous role,

I was the head of music partnerships at Google

and simultaneously was managing bands with my sister

and one of the things I was seeing

in my role as a band manager was how many young fans

were asking for vinyl at the merch tables.

So the more that this was happening,

I was starting to order vinyl for my bands

and it was taking a quoted four to six months to get product

when you need it quickly.

So just as a thought experiment

I put together a business pitch deck.

I'm just curious if someone would finance this

and I walked into the bank and I said,

"I'm looking for loan financing,"

and I walked out with a half a million dollar commitment

to start a factory. [laughs]

How we built the factory is meant to be different

than what you can find at other plants.

We came in as a new plant, said we're gonna do it better

and faster than any other plant.

Well it's almost sacrilegious to some people,

but we think, what if we brought some more innovation

to a space that really had seen any in so long?

You know it's plastic, it's not great for the environment

and what I asked my team to do with me

to say hey, these are the inefficiencies we're seeing,

how can we employ you know a different way of thinking

that's not, "Oh, that's the way it's always been done"?

What it's resulted in our records come off so clean.

I've heard from other pressing plants

that they'll throw up to 30% of records away.

We're down to, on a good day, .5%.

[machines hum]

[vinyl clatters]

- The production of records,

it's not the best thing for the environment at all.

I think on the flip side, we're simply not producing vinyl

in the same amounts that we used to.

So whatever the environmental impact

would have been a generation ago,

we are now at a fraction of that.

- You know vinyl is recyclable,

you can recycle it and put it into future pressings.

That is great.

- So this is our vinyl recycling room.

When you manufacture a record you have excess vinyl.

We regrind that and use that, mix it in with virgin

in subsequent generations of records.

We have devoted quite a bit of time to our energy systems

to allow us to recapture and recycle

what would be essentially exhaust,

to be more efficient and less wasteful.

- It's, yeah, as someone who is concerned

about the environment and tries to take strides

to be not a litter bug, to recycle, to buy less plastic,

to do stuff like that,

here's a wall of stuff

that's gonna take 40,000 years to degrade.

We all like to think that these are gonna be very important

to generations after generations.

You know this Shangri-Las record,

somebody's gonna want this in 2075, right?

- The idea that records can last 70 years is fucking crazy.

I mean that's crazy.

My goal is to make a record that sounds good enough

that someone will listen to it for 20 years.

- I have records that I've had since I was, you know, 13.

Do I have most other things that I've had since I was 13?

No.

- Lots of things I would happily not have.

I'll turn off a lot more lights,

I'll take way shorter showers,

I'll take way fewer showers to keep my records.

- You know you deal with these questions

and the best thing to do is put a record on really loud

and just try to drown those thoughts out.

[frantic guitar music]

- Detroit is known for making things

and that's what we're doing here at Third Man Pressing.

A vinyl record pressing plant

where people can come in the front door, look at vinyl,

but then go in the back and see records being made

only really helps, you know, the music industry

and Detroit really connect.

- Part of the design

and the vision from Jack was the heavy, bulky,

ugly machinery that just kind of sits there

has all been put behind walls, soundproofed

and just visually eliminated to create an uncluttered look.

This is kind of a whole different approach

to making a product.

So what Sam is doing is operating two machines right now.

She's kind of working in tandem here.

In an eight hour shift,

she can get anywhere from 1,100 to 1,300 records.

[machine snaps]

- Our first year we were around 250,000 pieces,

the second year around 700

and this year we're gonna probably come in

at a million plus.

- Behind us is the board that has what is on press.

We are here to press for everybody.

- It's very important that we support local bands.

Even though their orders might be smaller,

but it's extremely important

that they're able to take, you know, 7-inch records

or even a 12 inch to their shows.

- We do recycle as much of the product as possible

and grind it all down

and then you can make more records from it.

Definitely don't want any of it goin' in a landfill.

- My hope is that kids that visit here,

you know, dive in and they tell their friends about it

and then they go and visit their local record stores.

- A lot of times we get people in on tours

who have not experienced what vinyl sounds like.

It can be an eye,

or let's say ear-opening experience for them

to be able to experience that for the first time.

♪ Write it all the way down

- You know a record will give you goosebumps.

If it's a good pressing, good quality,

the sound of it can really do something to you physically.

[upbeat dance music]

- Do I think vinyl sounds better?

- Better than what?

- People are like, "Oh yeah, vinyl just sounds better."

But they don't say it sounds better than.

- In comparison to streaming,

in comparison to 8-tracks, in comparison to tapes.

- I think the whole analog sound

is more pleasing to the ear.

- There's something natural

about like a needle vibrating in a groove

and creating the sound

versus the zeroes and ones and everything.

- If all you've ever done is listen to streaming

through your AirPods,

you're not going to have a frame of reference

to understand, like, "Wow, that's your favorite record?"

Ooh, let's play your favorite record for you

on a record player.

- Like obviously it sounds better

than listening to something on your laptop's speakers

'cause your laptop's speakers probably sound like shit,

but does it sound better than listening to a CD in the car?

- I just don't get that warmth

out of CD that I get out of vinyl.

- I mean they're better than tapes,

but are they better than the digital streaming? [laughs]

Um.

- The idea that a mass-produced cassette sounds worse

than like a bullshit record,

it's actually so offensive to me

because cassettes are hella cheap to make

and they can sound better than shitty records.

I find it worth pushing back on.

- The way everything sounds varies

depending on a lot of different variables.

- How you're standing in relation to the speakers,

what's on the walls, what's on the floor.

- How well it was recorded, how well it was mastered.

- Honestly, it depends on the music.

I would never really think to listen

to the new Ariana Grande on vinyl.

- The idea that analog is a superior format to digital

or that digital is superior to analog

is basically horseshit.

- If it doesn't actually sound better,

I could really give a shit

[Ashley laughs]

because I like to touch 'em and hold 'em and flip 'em

and look at 'em and go through the liner notes and-

- Sliding it out of the sleeve

and getting it out of the plastic

and putting it in the MoFi sleeve

and then putting it on the deck.

- Lifting up the tone arm and putting it on

and like trying to put it right on-

- That experience is far

and above scrolling through your playlist on your phone.

- Does it sound great because that was a time in my life

that it brings me back to or does it really sound that good?

- I don't necessarily think that vinyl sounds better.

I think it sounds better for me.

- There are a lot of different ways

that I could listen to a song.

I keep listening to them on vinyl

because of how it feels, not just how it sounds.

- But to each their own.

- This is the burning question in my life

because now you can free service,

you can get streaming service.

[soft music]

- The reason vinyl sales increases

and streaming popularity kind of coincide

is because streaming allows discovery.

- You literally can sample everything that is out there

and then make your buying decisions based on that sampling.

- If I really enjoy a band

and I listen to their whole albums on streaming services,

I will definitely make a point to buy the record

because I do feel passionately enough about them

that I want to support them in some other way.

- [Caren] 'Cause you can get the music elsewhere,

but you can't get the liner notes,

you can't get the photo booklet.

- You have gotta have it.

- This is a different experience

that is weirdly complete harmony with streaming

and also the complete opposite of streaming.

- I think it's cool to be able

to access so much different music

and listen to such a diverse kind of array of sounds,

but I don't know, I really like the sequencing of a record.

- I kinda go back and forth.

You know if I'm on the subway

I'm obviously gonna listen [laughs] to the Spotify version,

but if I'm settled in my house for the night,

I would probably reach for the vinyl.

[water rushing]

- I just moved to the place where we're here right now

and we live on top of a mountain here

and there's two switchbacks that make it,

so you can only have a certain size moving truck.

I had to take out all of the records myself

and we had to be out of the house

that we were in on moving day

and you know it's about 13,000 records.

So what you're talking about is boxes and boxes

and boxes of dead weight.

[sighs] [lock rattles]

Every box that I was moving,

I was coming face to face with my, you know,

habitual collecting demons in a way

that no psychologist could have ever helped me out with

and I vowed to myself

that like it was time to stop. [laughs]

So I have this whole thing now

where if I get a record, I've gotta get rid of three.

You know you want your collection to be easily accessible.

You want every record you pull out

to something that brings you total joy.

A good night for me is when I wake up

and there's a stack of records that are out of their sleeves

and strewn around and I realize that, man,

last night I had a really good time, you know?

And you can't do that if you're gonna treat them

like some bizarre objects that are in museums

and things like that.

When you have a dog, you pet the dog.

Look, when I have this dog I pet this dog

and I love this dog like this,

I don't just put her on a shelf and not worry about her.

And you know I feel the same way about my records.

[dog huffs] Yeah.

[soft music]

- My mom used to say, "Do you have enough records?

Don't you have enough?

When are you gonna have enough?"

And I said, "Mom, you know you don't get it, Mom.

There's never enough records."

And I think 20 years later, you know,

I think she was right. [laughs]

We use these like IKEA shelves that fit records perfectly,

like every record collector knows 'em.

Like a five-by-five of those, 25 cubes all together,

that's like the ideal amount of records, right?

It's enough for you to like have enough to listen to

and go a little deep, but you don't have too much.

And that way if you get more records

you can always like make sure you get rid of 'em after,

it always fits in there, right?

It's kinda hard to do.

I have so much personal history tied up

in every single record and so I don't know,

that's something I need to actually practice.

I haven't got there yet, but one day.

- My wife, Bev, when she and I found this place

we had a conversation.

We loved the place, we knew it was the place for us,

you know it had a fireplace,

we're like, "That's really cool,"

and I said, "You know I'm glad

there's a storage space downstairs

that comes with the apartment

because that way I'll have a place to put the vinyl."

And she's like, "We would never buy a place

unless you could have your vinyl out.

You're not gonna put the vinyl in storage."

And so it was like that just made, you know,

like she's good peeps.

- When my future wife first came to my place

and she saw what was probably

at least 4 to 5, 6, 7,000 records all packed in this place

she was like, "Wow." [laughs]

But you know the cool thing was when we finally got a place

she was like, "Oh, see this wall right here,

you could put all your records right here."

And I was like, man, I really lucked out.

- When you really love music

but you can't go buy the music you love and own it,

learning how to perform it well

is sort of the replacement for it.

You know my siblings and I,

it was never just like, "Oh, come listen to this song

and let's talk about it.

Let's talk about why we like this song

and you know what we're hearing in the song."

It was like, "No, I'm Beyoncé, you're Michelle,

you're Kelly, let's go."

You know what I mean?

And you know all the words to the song

and you know all the moves to the song.

Like I grew up with music

being mostly in the idea of performance,

so I need to be able to have my space

to do my performance [laughs] and enjoy my music.

- But those big performances

have really been beneficial to me, too,

because it's kind of brought back this sense of play.

It's not just another thing that I know,

it's a thing I'm experiencing.

- That's in the teaching each other thing.

He taught me how to like be curious enough about music

to not just think about how it makes me feel,

but also think about where it came from

and what's the history of this sound.

But I get him to play.

- She taught me how to dance again.

[Ashley laughs]

She was like Kevin Bacon, I was like that whole town.

[couple laughs]

- Basically.

[crickets chirping] [airplane flying over]

[faint guitar music]

- [Kevin] Tell us what you think

would be a happy next phase of life

for your records after your gone.

- [sighs] I'm not gonna cry, Kevin.

I am 34 years old, so I don't think too hard about wills

and things like where do my books go,

where does my, you know, duvet cover go,

but [laughs] I do have this letter,

like it's in a Google Doc,

that my parents are aware of and my boyfriend's aware of.

So in the letter it says to my parents that

just when I pass let my boyfriend decide where my records go

'cause I trust that he'll make sure

that they're not going to Goodwill,

they're not going to a place where they won't be

touched

or enjoyed.

[heartfelt music]

I hope that my records will continue to be played.

It's a funny thing to cry about [laughs] objects

and not people or creatures,

but it is really sad to think

of my collection being separated from each other

and that conversation

that they all have together being broken.

[sniffs] And so, yeah, I wish for my records

just go to a place where someone is gonna go,

"Wow, that's a cool record.

That's a cool cover, I want to see what that's about."

I hope that someone will discover them

and have their own stories with them.

- [Kevin] Love you, old friend.

- It's so silly, they're records. [sniffs]

It's so silly. [laughs]

- No, no, I'd say the same thing. Are you kidding?

I'm just the one who gets to ask the questions.

[Ashleyanne laughs]

- You and I have this in common, that we love vinyl.

Were it not for music

we wouldn't be havin' this conversation, right?

And so I really feel that it is somethin'

that can be passed on.

Don't be intimidated

and don't let the music snobs or collectors

make you feel like this isn't approachable 'cause it is.

Even if it's "Best of the '80s,"

go on and get that "Best of the '80s."

That might change your life.

[happy music]

- [Caren] I think we're seeing this pendulum

swing back toward analog

because we're gathering around together

in a much more human way

and one of the things

that I hope we learn from vinyl's resurgence

is this want for human connection.

- [Stephen] I want to share the things I love

with people who will love them,

that's really all that matters to me.

- [Ashleyanne] When I'm looking through my records

when I'm gonna play,

I'm like, "That one reminds me of Paul,

that one reminds me of Daniel, that one reminds me of Amy."

I have so many stories of friends

because we have similar records.

- [Kat] I want them all to be loved and enjoyed

and played 'til they're so scratchy

you can't play them anymore.

- [Roz] I mean my records,

all my music is what I have absolute faith in.

I only have faith in a couple of things to that degree,

music is one of them, love is the other.

[vibrant horn music]

♪ I'm getting closer to thinking that there's a way out ♪

- Oh no, I had never thought about this.

I'm actually getting like teary-eyed.

What do I want to happen to my records?

Oh.

- If it's my own children, that's great,

maybe they'll listen to it

and they'll have memories of their mom.

But if they don't like it,

if they're not gonna listen to it,

if they're just gonna sit in a box

then I'd rather they sell them to a record store

and then have the records just sort of disperse out.

Spread out sort of like ashes to other people to listen to.

- Can I say, can I be buried with them?

I don't know.

- You know he asks me a lot

what I'm gonna do with the records if he dies.

That's a question that comes up about once a quarter.

And my answer changes,

but essentially is always like

Mick gets some special records,

your dad gets some special records

and I keep everything else.

- Having been someone

who listen to my parents' vinyl collection,

it would be really cool

to be able to pass the Fessler family love for music

down to the next generation.

- As long as it goes somewhere where it'll be loved,

that's all that matters.

- When I'm not here anymore,

my daughter has to have the records

and I want her to listen to them

and know that I am always there, I am always with her.

- No, I did think of that once and I thought,

you know what, I'm not gonna give 'em to my son.

The reason why is because I want him

to have his own experience with records and music.

- Well a famous book collector said,

something along the lines of,

"When I die, my collection should be broken up."

And people were like, "What are you talking,

that's amazing."

He's like, "The only way my collection was able to exist

was by other great collections also being split up."

- You gotta pay it forward,

so I hope that they end up in the used bins

or the new arrivals bins

at a high-quality record store near you

immediately after my demise.

♪ I'm gettin' closer to thinking that there's a way out ♪

[vibrant horn music continues]

♪ I'm gettin' closer to thinking there's a way out. ♪

[upbeat music]