Sophomore Ryan Pettersen has had a hobby of collecting numerous different vinyls of all types and is an extreme music lover. His collection of Vinyls spans a long myriad of time and of all different types of music tastes and ages.
“I’ve been collecting [vinyls] for only about a year,” Pettersen said. “I started last May of 2022.”
He started to pursue this trend last year because of his friends, who also had a love for vinyl collecting and music. This hobby of his has been an ongoing trend that’s been on the down low for some time now, but it’s slowly been gaining popularity due to the aesthetic vibe that Petterson feels it gives off. The variety ranges from different Billie Eilish albums to Tyler the Creator, Taylor Swift, SZA, and Clairo.
“I just saw that some of my friends had [vinyls] and I thought I should just get a couple,”
Petterson said. “Then a couple turned into a dozen and a dozen turned into way more and I was like okay this is a thing now so,”
Through a long time of buying Vinyls from a lot of different sources and different places, some of Petterson’s vinyls that he buys or finds have about a 50/50 chance of sounding better or worse than the original copy. And the quality of the vinyl is a gamble, depending on where he gets it from. Despite this, he still enjoys having the vinyls for decoration in his room.
“The whole sound quality in itself is different cause it’s, like, more precise,” Petterson said. “Some records sound better on vinyl some sound worse, just the way that they’re made.”
Petterson also has quite a number of limited-edition vinyls, ranging in price and quality, and from differing artists and albums. He also buys special edition vinyls of older albums, which could be worth a lot someday, and newly released albums, such as from Olivia Rodrigo and Laufey.
“I have quite a few, but the most expensive one I have is Diary 001 by Clairo, and that’s going for 60 bucks which isn’t too much. The original price was 20.”