Vinyl harks back to the day when great musician / artists made great records, concerts did not cost a weeks salary, FM radio was a good place to hear new music, and your local Hi-Fi Shop was a cool place to hang out. Most of that is gone now, and spining a platter on some vintage gear is a fun way to remember it all. For the young kids, vinyl may be a way to reconnect to the history of the music. Kinda like when my kid busts out his wooden baseball bat and pretends he's Babe Ruth!

To the iPod generation, who are used to hearing 1/12 of the recorded sound, CD (which is still compressed) is a revelation, and vinyl is a jaw-dropping experience. If the industry focused on education and exposure, sales would follow.

>>> If the industry focused on education and exposure, sales would follow.

I don't think so (and I still have 1000 LPs and a working turntable in my living room.)

Consumers have long opted for convenience over quality (compressed audio on an MP3 player over anything else.) Also, despite the hype, vinyl only exceeds the quality of CD (and sometimes not even then) with an LP in virgin condition played on audiophile equipment. In the real world, CD and frequently even MP3, beat vinyl. In a double-blind test, consumers will pick the digital medium every time and that's not even considering the convenience.

Every time I play a catalog CD of an LP I have or had and think that the LP sounded much better, I go back to the LP and A-B it with the CD and I'm always shocked how much worse the LP sounds. Our memory of that LP experience is far different than the reality. Part of it is that if you're old enough to remember LPs, your ears are probably not hearing today what they heard then.

In addition, all attempts at high-resolution audio formats for commercial releases have failed.

Furthermore, partially because the industry produced so much crap and partially because of the nature of digital downloading, the single has once again become dominant as it was for rock music before 1967 or so. And the problem for the industry is that the current economics are geared towards selling albums, since we're long past the day when an artist would go into the studio and record a track in a few hours.

What I am surprised at is that in an age when every trivial aspect of a star's life seems so important to so many young people, they don't seem to care about album jacket and liner notes. I used to obsess over every writer and studio musician that played on every track and in an MP3 world, you don't get that anymore. But no one seems to care.

So I don't see LPs as ever being more than the tiniest niche market. In fact, the latest AV receivers have dropped their phono inputs, even on the high end. An increase in LP sales doesn't mean much because the market so incredibly small.

Records were good for their day, but if they were better then CDs then guess what? People would buy them. As mentioned above vynle's quality is barely better then CD and only when played in perfect conditions.

Forget the statistics, they don't account for the sale of used vinyl, which I can attest has been on a major upswing in the last five years. The independent retailers that sold CD's exclusively have all but disappeared, but the ones that carry vinyl have survived and many even flourished. Make no mistake, Best Buy has paid attention to this trend. Vinyl doesn't always sound better than CD, but you do not have to own high end gear or have perfect listening conditions in order to hear the difference. 90% or better of the time, vinyl is obviously warmer and more realistic sounding. CD's are much more convenient, and mp3's even more so, and most people are willing to settle for lesser sound quality (due to compression)in order to have that convenience, as the lesser sound quality is still decent sound (for the non-audiophiles, at least). The funny thing is that vinyl will most likely outlive CD's, as music files are rapidly replacing CD's.

Vinyl is the only thing, the artwork, the back cover notes, and yes the sound. Most of all I miss the music, it ain’t there.