Connecticutisjoining the physical media movement with CDs, Walkmans and 'lost' 'B movies'

Jul. 25—There's more to this trend than numbers, according to Josh Wright, the owner of Vinyl Street Cafe in Fairfield.

"It's a personal relationship with your music," he said. "It's the way it's meant to be heard. That's why I love it. You get to sit with it, look at it, look at the liner notes and all of that stuff. It's like looking at a painting for a while and trying to understand it."

Shoppers share in an "experience" by going to a brick-and-mortar music store, Brian Gerosa, the owner of Gerosa Records in Brookfield, told a Hearst Connecticut Media reporter earlier this year.

"People are always happy in a record store, they're in a good mood, they're looking for music and they're sharing that experience," Gerosa said in March.

CDs in particular have been experiencing a renaissance lately at his store, Wright said.

"When vinyl overtook the sales of CDs a couple of years ago, we thought the media was dead," he said. "But it's starting to trend back upward."

Wright's store also carries boomboxes and Walkmans. He said he sells more Walkmans than boomboxes, but sales of both account for a small portion of his sales. He attributes that to interest in the novelty of cassettes. Despite musicians releasing new music on cassette, cassettes only comprise .5 percent of all physical media sales in 2023, according to the Luminate Midyear Music Report.

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There's one pop star who Wright believes is at the center of bringing younger audiences to physical media in the Spotify era: Taylor Swift.

Swift has claimed nearly 4 percent of physical and digital album sales in 2023, according to Billboard. From releasing re-recorded versions of her past albums to creating collectable variants of her albums (such as having an image that forms by putting together four versions of the "Midnights" album), Swift has found success in the sale of physical media.

Last year, Swift broke the three-day record she set with "Midnights" for the fastest vinyl record to reach one million copies sold. In the first week after "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" went on sale on July 7, Swift sold 268,000 copies on vinyl, 134,000 on CD and 8,000 on cassette, according to Billboard. On Sunday, Billboard declared that Swift has the most No. 1 best-selling albums of all time for a female artist, beating out a record held by Barbra Streisand.

"Taylor Swift is a beast. She can do what she wants," Wright said. "Whatever the Beatles did back in the early 60s, she's one-upped them."

Why are younger music fans gravitating to physical media over streaming?

For 18-year-old Gabe Sopko of New Milford, the sound and the novelty of cover art draw him to vinyl.

"I've always gravitated to the next thing I'm going to listen to based on the cover art," Sopko said during a visit to Gerosa Records in March. "Honestly I'm a sucker for the crackles and pops. It's a physical piece of media, and I can hear everything that went into pressing that record."

CD sales are up in large part to sales at merchandise tables at concerts, according to a Billboard report published in April.

With delays in vinyl record production, many artists have resorted to stocking up on CDs for the road, which bands find easier to bring than bulkier records, according to Billboard. Bigger artists like Swift and K-pop group BLACKPINK have noticed this trend and have begun to produce limited-edition CDs that are sold exclusively at their shows and on their websites.

The physical media trend isn't just happening in the music world. The physical home box office market is growing as well.

A February report from the Digital Entertainment Group, which tracks the distribution of physical media, showed that the home box office market grew by almost 12 percent in 2022, with sales of 4K Ultra High Definition titles up 20 percent last year.

Though DVD and Blu-ray sales have slumped, the Digital Entertainment Group report noted that movies like "Top Gun: Maverick" and "The Batman" led to an increase in sales for 4K UHD discs, which are the newest disc technology available.

Streaming is holding its own against sales of physical movies and television, though the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes have drawn attention to the unfair distribution of residuals given to actors and writers for shows and movies on streaming.

Boutique home box office labels are carving out their path in the market. Labels like Criterion and Arrow Films restore movies that never received modern restoration work or had a proper physical release, and sell Blu-ray and 4K UHD disc copies of different films every month.

Connecticut's own Vinegar Syndrome specializes in restoring "lost" and cult films from the 20th century. The label also operates The Archive, a Bridgeport shop that sells Vinegar Syndrome releases and films restored by other boutique film labels, plus new and used DVDs, VHS cassettes, records and cassette tapes.

"Cult horror, and other exploitation films along this line, are very under-restored because of the market," James Neurath, Vinegar Syndrome's retail and streaming manager and The Archive co-owner, told Hearst Connecticut in 2020. "Lower budget films were never taken care of when it came to 35mm and 16mm film preservation and restoration. That's why a lot of it was dumped onto lower grade media."

Almost all Vinegar Syndrome movies come with slipcover sleeves for the discs that feature custom artwork. Discs with slipcovers always sell the fastest: Recent titles like "From Beyond," the Patrick Swayze-led "Road House" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" sold out of their slipcover versions.

Thanks to steady sales, Vinegar Syndrome has been able to branch out to publish its own comic books, VHS tapes, apparel and posters. The company announced last week that it is debuting its first "fully original theatrical feature film." "Eight Eyes," which is a homage to '70s Euro-horror movies, will premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal on Friday, Aug. 4.

"When it comes to the modern age, you're trying to fight the idea that this stuff is totally free," Neurath said. "A byproduct of that is when people don't invest in this product, you're not going to be able to afford the business model of restoring them."

"We use the physical media sales to preserve film," he added. "One hand washes the other and without that, we couldn't do what we are doing."