Results: Vinyl Dreams, Modern Style

Vinyl records are hot right now, fueled not only by millennial nostalgia but by high-tech turntables. As CD and digital music sales continue to decline due to online streaming services like Spotify, vinyl LP sales increased. But this isn't your dad's vinyl (or your vinyl of yesterday)...the vinyl of today is state of the art, and getting even more so. In 2019, an Austrian start-up named Rebeat Innovations is hoping to give the venerable medium itself a high-tech boost with an innovation it's calling "high-definition vinyl." They filed the patent in 2016, and plan to have the HD vinyls in stores by summer 2019. And no worries, with backward compatibility built in they can be played on any current turntable. Do you currently collect vinyl, or do you have a collection from your younger years (or your parents')?

Here's some interesting trivia about vinyl. How many of these did you know?

An east-end neighborhood in Toronto has a novel idea, thanks to an avid vinyl fan. Matt Durant says he started the "Vinyl Swap Box" — a place where anyone can take or leave a record — as a community outreach project, because he wants to to help out his community, and also help people expand their musical horizons. Durant says the idea was born out of his love of vinyl and fueled by a collection inherited from his father after he passed away. He also wants to keep the momentum of the vinyl revival going. Durant also hopes local artists will submit their work so that people can hear it. Do you think this is a good idea?

To a record collector, nothing can beat going through the record racks, looking for that great find. In fact, true collectors never stopped buying vinyl, although usually in second hand stores. Just ask Zero Freitas, a 62-year-old wealthy Brazilian businessman who has spent most of life amassing a collection of "several million" vinyl records. He has a collection that any vinyl collector would envy, including the entire collection of the late Murray Gershenz, one of the most celebrated collectors on the West Coast and owner of the Music Man Murray record store in Los Angeles, who himself owned over 200,000 records. Freitas also has many albums with very personal messages written on them, from greats such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Leonard Bernstein, and Dave Brubeck. Do you know anyone who has a huge collection (probably not this big!) of albums?

How many of these movies have you ever seen -- all focusing on record collecting, taking place or featuring, you guessed it, the record store?