Walk into Torn Light Records, on Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago’s hipster corridor, and you may feel like you have stepped back in time. Jazz wafts through the speakers. On prominent display is a copy of “Remain in Light”, a cult album released by Talking Heads in 1980. Yet the shop opened last year, having relocated from Cincinnati. It is one of half a dozen record stores on the street, but competition is not a problem: sales have been brisk. “Having people being really interested in physical media again has been great,” says Daniel Buckley, the co-owner.
The vinyl revival has been under way for almost two decades. Sales of LPs and EPs are as high today as they were in the late 1980s, according to data from the Recording Industry Association of America. Last year sales in America rose by 7%, to $1.4bn, or 44m records. “The Tortured Poets Department”, an album by Taylor Swift, sold 2.2m copies in the format. Much has been written about how vinyl records have become collectors’ items and, particularly for Gen Z, proof of a fan’s commitment to an artist. Yet the vinyl boom is only one part of a broader resurgence of analogue media.
Cassette tapes—admittedly a niche format compared with vinyl—are turning up the volume, too. In Britain in the first quarter of this year, sales of cassettes were up by more than 200% on the same period in 2024. (Perhaps buyers have forgotten, or are too young to remember, the frustrating experience of painstakingly winding the tape back to the beginning with a pencil.)
Walk round the corner from Torn Light to Bellows Film Lab, a film shop and processing lab which opened in 2022, and you will find that film photography is also hip again. Demand for film has doubled in the past five years, an executive from Kodak revealed last year, even though the price of film has risen by 50% since 2019.
Cinephiles, like photographers, are seeking out celluloid. Though multiplex cinemas may be struggling to compete with streaming services, arty venues that show 35mm movies using vintage projectors are thriving. Screenings at the Music Box in Chicago or the Metrograph in New York can sell out weeks in advance.
What is driving this resurgence of old-fashioned media? Nostalgia undeniably plays a part. Many find the gentle crackle of a vinyl record or the soft glow of 35mm film to be alluring. And, in a world where everything is instantly available on a screen, tangible items become luxurious.
But the main reason is rage against the algorithm. The analogue trend is a celebration of the old ways of making things amid the artificial-intelligence revolution: consider, for instance, that the vinyl revival coincided with the launch of Spotify.
Jack Savoretti, an Anglo-Italian musician who has had two chart-topping albums in Britain, is a proponent of many analogue methods. One problem with modern technology, he reckons, is the way in which it encourages people to consume music. He draws a comparison with the Slow Food movement, which started in Italy in the 1980s in opposition to fast food: “I enjoy the occasional Big Mac, but it’s not the reason I learned how to cook.” Spotify’s algorithm may be very convenient, but it leads people to listen lazily to unmemorable music. Picking up an LP means making an intentional choice.
The other problem is the produce itself, which often takes people out of the equation. Spotify has been accused of sneaking “ghost artists” onto its playlists: that is, music made by anonymous musicians that it owns the rights to, so as to reduce the share of its revenue it has to pay to record labels. There is a lot of ai-generated music about, too. One AI band called The Velvet Sundown is described by its creator as “an ongoing artistic provocation” and has already racked up millions of streams after being featured on several Spotify playlists this year. According to Deezer, around 20,000 ai-generated tracks are uploaded to its platform every day. To the ears of many, this is not music.
As for photography, most phone cameras already use AI to merge a burst of photos into one. New features offered by Apple and Google now allow users to delete unwanted people or features from a picture—rather like a Soviet propagandist, only for ex-boyfriends or blemishes. Film, by contrast, feels authentic. At the cinema, films on 35mm prints rarely have clunky visual effects or hideous colour grading.
Turning the tables
How far will the backlash go? Analogue culture, for all its trendiness, remains a small market. Vinyl records account for just 8% of American music revenues. Kodak is selling more film, but it is far from recapturing its heyday. However, analogue aficionados are trendsetters: they are forcing the digital market to adapt. Fuji now sells digital cameras with “film simulation” modes. Qobuz, a French rival to Spotify, gets employees to write recommendations.
In a world of intelligent robots, the human touch is a selling point. Foodstuffs have long advertised the fact they contain “no artificial ingredients”—perhaps artworks will soon, too. ■
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