The crackle of the needle as he places it on a favorite album sends Cory Damgaard down memory lane. Classic artists - Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Guy and Pink Floyd among them- are best remembered on vinyl, he said. A fan of the classic sounds emanating from speakers with older vinyl, Damgaard enjoys the experience.

“Being 50 years old, I forgot what it was like to experience listening to a vinyl record,” he said. “And for the last three, four years. It's nice just, you know, put a record on it, and sit back and relax and listen to really, really good music.” His love of vinyl transcends genres and eras, Damgaard said.

“I redecorated my man cave to accommodate the old retro music,” he said. “I'm now even into the reel-to-reel. I restored an old1968 jukebox, to where it's playing beautiful 45s and, being an eclectic music fan, I listen to everything from Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong – I’m into the blues - Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, all the way up to modern rock.

“I'm a very, very big Pink Floyd fan. Very, very, very, very big. Love their music. I'm an artist. So being an oil painter, so whether it's playing five CDs of Pink Floyd or listening to “Dark Side of the Moon” on wax, it's just it's an experience in itself.”

Damgaard is one of millions of Americans who embrace a resurgence in the popularity of vinyl albums. More than 43 million albums were purchased in 2023, a 300% increase from 2016, when about 13.1 million were sold, according to luminatedata.com. Nearly 225 million albums were bought by music enthusiasts during that period.

Mike Fratt credits National Record Store Day with the resurgence. Fratt is the general manager at Homer's Records, an Old Market institution since 1971. Record Store Day began in 2008 to celebrate the culture of independently owned record stores and takes place twice a year, usually the third Saturday in April and Black Friday (Day after Thanksgiving).

When Fratt started working at Homer's in 1978, albums and cassettes were the popular options for music, he said. As corporations started moving away from the media to compact discs, the cost savings made sense to drastically reduce, almost eliminate, the market for vinyl albums, he said. Vinyl albums disappeared from the market from 1986 until 1990, Fratt said.

But Homer’s held on during the lean years, he said.

“We carried it until we couldn't get it anymore,” Fratt said. “And so our selection continued to dwindle and dwindle and dwindle and get smaller and smaller, to the point where for a decade it was maybe one (stand) full of product. Now it’s the dominant format in our store.”

Nothing musically tops listening to a song on vinyl, Fratt said. It embraces several of a person’s senses, he said.

“It's an active listening experience where you have to physically put on the record a place for 20 minutes,” Fratt said. “You have to flip it after 20 minutes. You sit and hold the 12x12 jacket and read the information off of it while you're experiencing the record.”

“Or you play it with friends, and everybody talks about the record as it's playing, compared to streaming music, which everybody pipes into their earbuds while they're grocery shopping or washing the car. That's more background music, whereas listening to vinyl is the active experience.”

Vinyl sounds more authentic, Fratt said.

“A lot of people talk about how it has a different sound than CDs,” he said. “They claim the CDs are too sterile sounding, and there's a warmth in vinyl that doesn't occur in CDs. That's true for everything that was recorded analog prior to like 1995. Everything's recorded digital from that point on and then transferred to vinyl. It's still digital, essentially.”

Corporate greed likely drove the recording industry away from vinyl in the mid-80s and its resurrection, Fratt said.

“You often hear that there was a peak sales period in 2000 with CDs, and that was due to the boy bands and stuff,” he said. “It was really due more to everybody buying their collections on CD. So, in essence, rebuying their entire collection. That's what fueled that growth. And so that was going to eventually be a bell curve where it was going to taper off because everybody's bought everything that they need.”

At 402 Vinyl in Bellevue’s Southroads Mall, vintage vinyl is a big seller. Mike Franck transitioned from operating an estate sales business, turning to classic record sales because of its popularity.

With a variety of vintage vinyl albums – along with a few new albums – customers can find almost any genre in which they’re interested, Franck said.

For Franck, it’s truly a trip down memory lane.

“I'm a child of the 60s, but I got married young, and so I had no money to buy this stuff,” Franck said. “You get to be a little older, and then it started coming back, so now you got a little money in your pocket. And to me, it's like you're reliving your youth.”

Classic rock tops 402 Vinyl’s album sales, Franck said. Not all genres are available, he said.

“There's definitely people that's just searched for (heavy) metal,” Franck said. “But the hard part about metal is that guys who were into jazz and who were into metal usually kept their records in really good shape, and they will not part with them, so they're a lot harder to come by.”

Antique music buffs can find more than just music at 402 Vinyl. Autographed concert posters from acts that once performed at the old Civic Auditorium in downtown Omaha adorn the store’s walls. Memorabilia from bobbleheads to neon signs are popular with people who have music rooms, Franck said.

While the recording industry seems to change every decade, Fratt doesn’t see vinyl going away for a long time, if ever. And Record Day will likely remain a reason, he said.

“We've had a line that's three or four blocks long,” Fratt said. “It's the biggest day of the year for independent retailers. Much bigger than Christmas.”

Tim Trudell is a freelance writer and online content creator. His work has appeared in Flatwater Free Press, Next Avenue, Indian Country Today, Nebraska Life, Nebraska Magazine, Council Bluffs Daily Non-Pareil and Douglas County Post Gazette, among others. He is a citizen of the Santee Dakota Nation.