Vinyl Revival: Processes of Qualification and Change in Intermediary Markets

• In Event: 355 - Section on Economic Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. From Niche to Market

Abstract

Internet technology has forever changed the way we experience society. As our interactions with retailers, bankers, doctors, and others become increasingly digitally mediated, social science plays an integral role in understanding the fusion of physical and digital worlds. For example, our ability to locate and consume a great deal of music via the internet has irrevocably altered the relationships between producers, retailers, artists and consumers. New technologies have actively challenged the necessity for a physical product as well as the once vital role played by brick-and-mortar music retailers. Interestingly, a revival in vinyl record sales, primarily through independently owned, brick-and-mortar record stores, has coincided with this digital shift. Organizations that occupy this role as a facilitator of exchange between producers and consumers are often described by economists as intermediary firms (Spulber 1996, 1999). In the statement that follows, I offer the independent record store as a case of an intermediary firm operating in a rapidly changing market. By asking how new technological developments in listening to and owning music have changed the composition and understandings of the music retail industry, I aim to offer a sociological analysis that illustrates how in changing markets, certain actors can collectively alter the meaning of goods and services to enable survival.

Author

• Jerome M Hendricks, University of Illinois-Chicago