Digital music sales have taken a dive, and meanwhile, vinyl is in the midst of a huge swell that probably won’t let up anytime soon. So what has 2015’s vinyl surge wrought? VYNL, or Netflix for records.
The service is pretty straightforward, although rather than picking particular albums you want to rent, a la Netflix, you select from VNYL’s categories—which are called #vibes. This is where it goes slightly adrift, but we’ll focus on the service because it’s a cool idea. Say you want #work or #danceparty or #betweenthesheets. You pick one of those and each month you get a pack of LPs to play. You can keep what you want for as low as 12 bucks a record, and send back what you’re not feeling at the end of the month.
It’s worth noting, though, that there are other similar services cropping up, such as Vinyl Me, Please, which costs $23-$27 a month. We haven’t tried either service, but the idea behind them seems like a good way to bulk up on vinyl if you’re just getting started And it’s a good thing to get into—probably the most worthwhile way to own music in a world of immediate but downgraded music downloads.
