ABSTRACT
Digitalization seems to have altered everything in its path. It has destroyed some traditional ways of doing things too, in some respect to the point that what we have once learned is certainly no longer enough. One of the biases in existing research on vinyl records is that it tends to focus somewhat obsessively on collectorship. The visible establishment of authenticity in these independent and underground cultural milieus facilitates the maintenance of vinyl’s symbolic power within particular music cultures. The continued relevance of vinyl relates also to its capacities as a commodity. There is probably no single concept or formula that could perfectly encapsulate the phenomenon as complex as vinyl. As Regis Debray succinctly states, ‘a monocausal explanation is no explanation at all’. The hard discs with digital data make music invisible as they make it perfectly transferable. The hard ‘wax’ with analogue data brings music to the tangible visible surface.
