In 1984, I took my babysitting money to the Sam Goody store at the Short Hills Mall and purchased a copy of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., on LP. It was the best-selling album of the year and, for a kid growing up in New Jersey, not owning it was unthinkable. It wound up being one of the last records I bought before switching to cassette tapes. Then like everyone else, my music migrated to CDs and eventually streaming services. By then it sure looked like the digital convenience of being able to conjure any album, or any artist, within a few clicks would kill vinyl. Except it didn’t.

Last year, consumers purchased 44 million records. (Most of them were Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, which pushed vinyl revenues to $1.4 billion.) The last time vinyl hit that high-water mark was during Bruce’s reign, in 1984. Record sales have actually been on the rise for the last 18 straight years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. And sure, the figures pale in comparison to streaming, which accounts for 84 percent of recorded music revenues, but vinyl isn’t just hanging on. It’s having an analog moment.

Caren Kelleher (MBA 2010) has been at the center of it since opening her record-pressing plant, Gold Rush Vinyl, in 2018. When the pandemic arrived shortly thereafter and music tours were called off, she worried that the industry would collapse. “Instead the complete opposite happened,” she says. Stuck at home and searching for new hobbies, people rediscovered analog music—and the sensory satisfaction of dropping a needle on a record and leaning back to listen.

“For the Records” tells the story of Kelleher, Gold Rush Vinyl, and Waterloo Records, the iconic music store in Austin, Texas, that she and her business partner recently acquired. At the heart of Kelleher’s work is the idea that, even in the shadows of streaming, there’s plenty to love about vinyl. Let’s hear it for the glory days.

Did you keep your record collection or start a new one? Tell us about it at magazine@hbs.edu.

Jen McFarland Flint
senior editor
magazine@hbs.edu

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