Sony Wants To Cash In On $1B Nostalgia Craze With New Vinyl Records

It seems the excitement of retro items and nostalgic products is still going strong, and Sony wants in on the action. The company just announced plans to start making Vinyl records again due to the resurging demand for the audio mediums. This will mark the first time that the company is manufacturing the records since 1989.

Sony is planning on resuming production of vinyl through its Japanese factory near Tokyo on March 2018, BBC reports. After the advent of the compact disc, the world largely expected vinyl to go away. However, even after the CD was replaced by the DVD and then by the Blu-ray Disc, demand for vinyl is still actually going strong.

In fact, interest in the huge, plastic music storage units has been on the rise along with the enthusiasm for other retro products like Nokia phones and Nintendo classic consoles. For this year alone, analysts are expecting revenue for vinyl to surpass $1 billion. This rise in sales is largely attributed to supporters swearing that the sound quality from records is vastly superior to other mediums.

As of now, the only details that Sony has chosen to release about the manufacturing plans regarding the records is how soon customers can expect the products to start rolling out. The records’ genre, album, artist, and style remain a mystery. Reports simply state that the initial records will contain classic Japanese songs, The Verge reports.

On the other hand, while interest in vinyl has certainly convinced companies to start making investments in them, it would seem that there is another problem from a technical standpoint. Apparently, it has become a bit difficult to find engineers who still know how to make vinyl records. This makes sense since it has been near on 30 years since the last ones were made by Sony.