By Jen Snyder
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Sound advice and the name of the game for Eric Mueller, 27, who founded Pirates Press, a San Francisco vinyl record brokerage company, in 2005. Coasting on the rise – and fall – of the CD and the renewed popularity of vinyl, Pirates Press has brought in more than $5 million in sales this year.
The walls of Pirates Press’ SOMA office are coated with candy-colored singles and full-lengths – some with pictures, others with etchings. Some of these albums are as much visual art as they are musical art.
“Jocks collect baseball cards and nerds collect records,” explains Mueller, trying to make sense of the variety. “A lot of people collect something. For those people vinyl is great.”
It’s amazing to me that in a world where an album is just one click away, record manufacturing is doing so well. I love records for the way they look on my shelf, the smell of the jacket, and the pop and hiss of the needle, but in an iPod world is that enough to keep a so-called dead product alive?
