the.com/vinyl
a fragile spinning fossil that outsold the medium that buried it.
means A synthetic plastic (polyvinyl chloride and its relatives), most famously the material of phonograph records — and, by extension, the records themselves.
from A chemist's clip-job from the early 1860s: 'vinyl' was coined by snipping the Latin 'vinum' (wine) and adding the chemical suffix '-yl,' because the underlying compound was linked to ethyl alcohol — the stuff of wine and spirits. So a word born from grapes ended up naming the slick polymer of raincoats, flooring, and spinning records. The musical sense — calling an LP a 'vinyl' — is a much later, 20th-century shorthand for the material it's pressed in.
- groove width
- narrower than a human hair, holding entire symphonies
- comeback
- outsold CDs for the first time since 1987
- physical sound
- the needle literally rides music carved in plastic
- warning
- sunlight and heat warp records into modern art
- speed code
- 33, 45, 78 rpm each tell a story
the beatles white album — 1968 self-titled double album, over 30 million copies sold on vinyl
michael jackson thriller — 1982 album, best-selling vinyl record of all time with 33+ million copies