Many people may think vinyl records dead. Well, that's not true. Read this article and you will find out why.

Vinyl fans gather at Touch Vinyl on National Records Day. Touch Vinyl releases a few limited edition of records.

A sign of vinyl records' resurgence, with views of Rainbo Records Pressing and interviews with the general manager Steve Sheldon.

Vinyl records and turntable have revived among the young generation.

By Jianyu (David)Zhao

Technological developments have undoubtedly changed human being's lives in different ways, ranging from working to entertainment. From telegram to smart phone, humans use resource and their creativity to improve working environment. On the other hand, human beings have come up with countless ways for amusement. Vinyl records once were the main method for the public recreate in the history.

Invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, the phonograph is the prototype of vinyl records. Vinyl record was the primary medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century.

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Magnetic tape then replaced vinyl record’s position, and became the mainstream. By the late 1980s, digital media, known as Compact Disc (CD), had gained a larger market share, and the magnetic tape disappeared from public notice as well as vinyl records.

The Apple Inc. designed and began marketing a portable media player—iPod in 2001. Combined with iTunes, such a little device took over as king in the media players market.

Compared to old-fashioned formats like vinyl record, digital media have exceeding advantages. For example, they have much larger storage, and can be easily searched. Given the merits, music industry specialists predict that vinyl records will soon be extinct. The foresight is partially true because record companies stopped producing in early 1990. In the era where digital downloads dominate, the flat, black circles with only two songs seemed less appealing.

However, that’s not the truth. In the midst of the growing adoption of music-streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora, vinyl records have made an unlikely comeback. Vinyl sales grew 32 percent from $ 4.5 million units sold in 2012 to $ 6 million sold in 2013, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Even digital media products have taken a hit, as streaming becomes more popular; overall album sales fell 8.4 percent last year.

Graphic below shows the rise of vinyl LP sales in the U.S. between 1993 and 2013.

(Read More on Nielsen)

There remains a breed of fans staying loyal to the back disc, the tangible hands-on feel, and the format that makes the artwork on the cover almost as important as the music within it. Vinyl records stores have not faded away. Sebastian Mathews, owner of Touch Vinyl ( & ), opened his records store in 2012. Mathews is enthusiastic about the current market.

“Certainly collecting vinyl is more expensive than collecting CD, or collecting digital. And we reached a point of time in this day and age when you can get anything for free. Any records I have on the wall, you could legally download from the Internet,” said Mathews. “But then the question is how are you listening to it, when are you listening to it and in what quality are you listening to it.”

The price of records in Touch Vinyl ranges from one dollar to $300 dollars, which depends on how limited version the record is and how much other people want it. Mathews always invites some bands and DJs to give performance at Touch Vinyl, and promotes the events via social media.

Randall Cooley has been collecting turntable and vinyl records for more than forty years. And Cooley decided to open his own stereo shop roughly thirty years ago. Cooley wants to offer an environment where people can “compare several of the highest quality hi-fi components in a meaningful way.”

“Vinyl record is not just that it has more information. It’s not just that it sounds cleaner and clearer. It’s the way it feels when people are listening to it,” said Cooley. “It’s a different experience. It’s the same tone, though; people get different feelings about it.”

Because Cooley has got into the vinyl for a long time, he also “entices” many young people to be addicted to vinyl. As a matter of fact, Mathews gets his first turntable from Cooley.

Given that a growing number of vinyl fans, records pressing companies begin to revive as well. As the company that invented the flexi-disc and the first talking toy (an Easter Egg that played Humpty Dumpty ), Rainbo Records has evolved from producing multicolored cardboard discs and records-on-a-box since 1939. Rainbo Records once suffered from the expanding of digital music. But now, on a typical day, Rainbo Records turn out 20, 000 vinyl records and 16, 000 CDs.

Steven Sheldon, manager of Rainbo Records, believes that the company “will grow and keep pressing vinyl records.”

“We don’t control who goes out and buys the music. The majors pretty much control this whole industry; they forced vinyl out early to make way for CDs, and they’ll bring in and push new formats,” said Sheldon. “While they’re exerting that type of control we’ll just contract and expand based upon the needs of the industry. That’s what we’ve always done and it’s been a good formula for us.”