Vinyl Revival: Reach into your pocket. It’s likely your hand is now in contact with a music player or audio storage device. Whether it is an MP3 player, a multimedia phone or a flash drive, music is incredibly compact and portable in the 21st century. However, in the age of digital sound there are still those who opt for the smooth, black disc that has charmed audiophiles for decades — the vinyl record.

While CD sales and digital downloads constitute the majority of music purchases today, vinyl has made its way back from relative obscurity to be the chosed medium of a significant portion of listeners. National vinyl record sales reached 2.8 million in 2010, more than tripling from the 858,000 sold in 2006, according to Nielsen Soundscan, a sales tracking system that has been tabulating music sales since 1991. While the company does not track some small music vendors, the sales leap reported by 14,000 participating businesses indicates a changing music culture. Daniel Munoz, a Ph.D. student in cross-cultural musicology at UC Santa Cruz, is currently doing field work for his dissertation on noise music in Los Angeles. He said in an email that vinyl has a special connection to the human condition, which makes it attractive. “To make a vinyl record [is to] put a physical object back in the hands of the consumers,” Munoz said. “It also says tacitly that this music is going to die over the years. It will not live forever, just like we won’t live forever. Vinyl and magnetic tape (cassettes, 8-tracks, etc.) deteriorate over time, while digital technologies don’t.” In their recent history, vinyl records have been subject to a cycle of popularity that is influenced by new audio technologies and the subcultures that react to them.

Vinyl made a comeback in the 1980s when DJs sampled records to rap over or to combine into a new song. CDs gained popularity in the 1990s, but critics claimed their compressed audio files produced a different, more metallic sound. Munoz said some youth embraced vinyl records as an alternative to CDs that flooded the music market. “Some kids rebelled against CD distribution on the grounds that records were cheaper, cooler, sounded better, and that the cover art on vinyl records was superior since there was a larger space for the art,” Most vinyl records were cheap in the 1990s. Often you could find vinyl records at flea markets or at Goodwill being sold for change. Vinyl record stores were stagnant, and the music world prepared for a digital overload. The illegal music pirating boom beginning in the late 1990s produced a generation with access to a multitude of MP3s. Many old vinyl singles never made it to MP3 format, and some music buyers scoured newly reemerging record stores and eBay to collect them.

KZSC music director Tyler Wardwell said the unavailability of some recordings in digital format has led UCSC’s radio station to covet vinyl copies accumulated over the years. “A lot of the material that we have was acquired or sent to the station in the ’70s and ’80s,” he said. “A fair amount of it is hard to find digitally. It wouldn’t make sense for us to get rid of this vinyl because a lot of it isn’t being pressed anymore.” By 2006, music giant Tower Records filed for bankruptcy and was forced to close its doors after more than 45 years at the forefront of music distribution, though it still maintains an online presence. The early 2000s saw a rise of British and American indie rock, which has been marketed by labels that press vinyl. Recently, a whole youth culture has sprung from the “indie movement” that has commercialized the novelty of vinyl records. Munoz said the recent vinyl revival is reminiscent of the youth CD resistance two decades prior. “Fast-forward to contemporary hipsters pressing vinyl,” Munoz said. “This is much the same phenomenon that started in the 1990s, with a twist of course. Digital technologies that are shared using a computer take the object-hood out of the process of listening to music. In other words, there is no longer a physical object to hold in the hands.”

Nostalgia for a medium that provides a tangible representation of music has enchanted young music buyers. For a sample of commercialized “indie” culture, go to Urban Outfitters on Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz. You’ll find a small display of vinyl records on the left side of the store. Roughly 125 vinyl records, the vast majority of them still in cellophane, sit in the store. “Urban” has framed “Pet Sounds” by The Beach Boys and put it on display above the rest, indicating that the aesthetic value of older vinyl record covers fascinates some consumers. Other artists represented in the store include She & Him, Belle and Sebastian, the MC5 and re-pressings of Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan and Jefferson Airplane albums.

This new generation of record collectors is not generally looking for the authenticity of an original pressing. Most of these albums can be easily found digitally so access isn’t the draw either; it is the novelty of the vinyl record that entices them. Of course, there is a market for vinyl beyond the trendy “Urban” consumer. It is one that marks up older albums that once lived in the 10-cent bin at De Anza Flea Market in Cupertino, Calif. just over a decade ago. It produces indie rock, metal and pop, among other genres.