Bob Collins
It’s entirely possible the alleged resurgence of vinyl has been overstated.
Perfect Duluth Day reported today that The Vinyl Cave in Superior, Wis., is closing at the end of the year.
“It costs me money to be part of this now,” owner Tom Johnson, who opened the store after retiring from the railroad a few years ago, tells PDD. “Let’s face it, we’re selling old records to people in Duluth and Superior. It’s not like we’re in New York or L.A. or Chicago or even Minneapolis where there’s a lot of people and a lot of money. There’s just not enough people here to keep it going anymore.”
If there were a market for vinyl records, Johnson and his business partner wouldn’t be sitting on 10,000 albums and 300,000 singles hoping a single fan wouldn’t write a check for the lot of them.
Co-owner Tom Unterberger will move some of them to a store he owns next door. The vinyl record section will replace a greeting cards display. You think fans of vinyl are hard to find, the greeting card business isn’t exactly booming either, apparently.
What’s the problem? There are people who want vinyl albums; there just aren’t the vinyl albums they want in circulation.
“It’s Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac and CCR,” Johnson said. “It’s the heavy metal and hair bands from the ’80s. That’s what people are looking for now and it’s harder to find. We’re not able to restock like we used to.”
In other words: It’s what’s sitting in a box under the stairs of nearly every Baby Boomer right now.
(h/t: Paul Tosto)
