I spoke this week at the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) Industry Forum in Las Vegas — on behalf of its unit PARA, the Professional Audio/Video Retailers Association. In going through the five genres of authenticity, I pointed out how analog is natural, while digital is original. And then I told a little anecdote about when Jim and I were first sharing our outline of the book with Kirsten Sandberg, our editor at Harvard Business Press.
During a teleconference, we made the assertion that stick shifts would become more popular in automobiles, as standard transmission is real driving, while automatic transmission is intermediated by technology, and thus inauthentic to a degree. Kirsten was rather skeptical, but the very next day there was an article in The Wall Street Journal about how stick shifts were making a comeback!
So here at CEA I made the analogous point (pun intended) about analog music, that vinyl LPs would make a comeback. And lo and behold, when I get back to my room and check my e-mail, in my in-box is the latest Experience Monitor e-mail newsletter from Steve Dragoo (Certified Experience Economy Expert #001) with this piece from the USA Today as his lead story: Some retailers give vinyl records a spin.
Amazing!
Loading ...
We just put a record player in the office for Vinyl Fridays… there’s something about selecting a record, pulling it out of the sleeve, putting it on the turntable, and dropping the needle. It’s a totally different feel than downloading mp3s from iTunes. And classic rock sounds much better on vinyl.
Joe, thanks for the mention. Interestingly, this past week while conducting a workshop in the San Francisco area, I spotted a man on Fisherman’s Wharf “grooving” to some tunes on an “anti-pod” - a turntable with attached headphones–a true vinyl aficionado on the move! -SD-