This past spring, after decades of procrastination, I decided to catalog my modest vinyl record collection, though I did dread the thought of untold hours of mindless data entry. Happily, it didn’t come to that – yes, there was a fair bit of typing, and scanning, and typing, and scanning, and, typing, and, well, you get the idea – but honestly, I do like Discogs, really, I do!

This cataloging exercise rekindled an interest in all/most/some things analog. I soon discovered deadformat.com, (essentially a Discogs variant), and thanks to its robust import mechanism, had a copy of my collection up on the Dead Format website in under an hour. …oh, right, and with the added benefit of being able to upload the correct cover art, (an obsession of mine)!

OK, so why am I prattling on about cataloging vinyl records? Let’s start with that name that’s firmly tongue in cheek – deadformat.com. According to the RIAA year-end revenue report for 2025, vinyl sales topped $1B – so, no, I don’t think it’s a dead format at all, quite the contrary. In fact, I’m willing to join the chorus of online voices making the bold claim physical media is experiencing a resurgence, (and arguably has been for some time).

If I reflect on my own vinyl purchasing pattern dating back some forty years, it parallels the broader consumer trend, (relative to vinyl record sales), resembling a shallow “V”, gradually dipping to near zero roughly a quarter century ago, then increasing – albeit erratically – but increasing nonetheless, ever since. No, not dead.

I’ve seen those same online voices breathlessly reporting compact disc sales are on the rebound as well, with the growth rate during the first half of 2026 apparently outpacing the growth rate of vinyl record sales during the same period. Oh dear! Have we reached a plateau, or dare I say, the plateau, for vinyl? …for CDs? Doubtful on both counts – color me ‘cautiously optimistic’!

Indulge me for a moment while we work our way through a brief thought experiment. Does the proverbial pie chart depicting recorded music sales just keep getting cut into different sized slices depending on the whims of the all-too-fickle consumer in any given year? If your answer is “yes”, then you must subscribe to the ‘zero sum’ theory for how recorded music is consumed in all its forms – that is, for vinyl to grow, another format has to shrink. Hmmmm, I’m not entirely sure I’m a believer…

Or rather, should we visualize consumer behavior – at least when it comes to recorded music – using a Venn diagram instead – one where vinyl, streaming subscriptions, compact discs, and magnetic tape-based media overlap with one another?

Again, if I reflect on my own purchasing pattern, the Venn diagram strikes me as a more accurate depiction than the pie chart simply because it allows for “…yes, and…” choices to be made vs. limiting the range of options to just “…either, or…” choices.

Avoid using these words and phrases…

N.B. Other than cleaning up errant HTML tags, correcting misspellings, refreshing stale links, and addressing truly egregious grammatical errors, these two posts are presented here in their original form.

Originally posted elsewhere on Tuesday, January 24, 2017

OK, time to offer a little unsolicited advice to journalists, bloggers, investigative reporters, and your typical social media junkie/sh*t-poster…

Let’s start with a list of terms to be stricken immediately from newspaper/magazine articles, online news sites, (to be clear, I’m referring to legitimate online news sites), and, of course, blogs of every shape and size: “post-truth”, “alternative facts”, “dog whistle”, “echo chamber”, “alt-right”, (so wrong), “silent majority”, “birther movement”, “American carnage”, “flyover zone”, and, of course, “Make America Great Again”.

To use any of these rather ridiculous phrases, while cloaking them as acceptable jargon, (or, God forbid, defending their usage as legitimately-descriptive terms), is to normalize them, (as well as the band of reprobates these terms relate to). And so-called ‘normalization’ is precisely what needs to be guarded against right now! There is nothing – absolutely nothing – normal about the idiot brigade governing our nation after the inauguration, so let’s not treat any of them as normal, by adopting their silly phrases, OK?

Heck, while I’m sitting here offering unsolicited advice, hey, Millennials, stop trying to be oh-so-trendy – when I see these terms used by what are supposed to be today’s crop of college-educated, professionally-trained journalists, I cringe, and everyone else with an IQ above 100 should cringe too! No, Hudson, (or Heidi), you don’t score points with digerati by mindlessly regurgitating whatever perceived “code” you’ve just stumbled upon after spending maybe twenty frantic seconds with your search engine of choice to find out what it actually means… No, you don’t gain credibility – in fact, you lose it. Rather, that cleverly-obfuscated “code” you’re oh-so-excited about is just some bit of random mental flotsam surfacing during a Tea Party supporter’s fever dream. That’s all it is, nothing more. Disregard. Purge from memory. Resist the urge to use. Got it?

It’s time to revert to poly-syllabic terms that are, in fact, truly descriptive; it’s also time to stop cutting/pasting social media screen captures into your screeds thinking you’ve dutifully quoted “…the source…”. How lazy. How disappointing.

Finally, it’s time for some honest-to-goodness long-form investigative reporting based on honest-to-goodness gumshoe-style legwork. Brevity is not always an indication of brilliance – sometimes it’s indicative of a lack of effort, (or ability), on the part of the writer. You decide.

P.S. My ever-growing list of stricken [ridiculous] terms has grown – these were not included in my original post (above): “dumpster fire”, “sh*t show” ,”red meat”, “snowflake”, “bigly”, “majorly”, “hugely”, “deep state”, and, of course, “MAGA”.

High Rising Terminal Illness

Originally posted elsewhere on Saturday, August 12, 2017

…a.k.a. “upspeak“, “uptalk“, high rising terminal (HRT), high rising intonation (HRI), or Australian question intonation (AQI).

I really don’t care what you call it, I just want it to stop!

Sure, gallons of column-ink have been spilled lamenting the audible plague that’s descended upon lowly speakers of the Queen’s English over the past 25 years, yet it persists…

While the exact origins remain somewhat murky, and there’s evidence of healthy debate regarding a precise definition, it’s safe to say “upspeak” is undoubtedly a global epidemic, with no apparent cure. Believe me, if there were a nasal spray, (or a topical cream), which would treat the condition, I’d have bought a pallet of the stuff and have an ample supply with me at all times!

Sadly, the afflicted rationalize clinging to this irritating pattern of tonal inflection by claiming demands to stop will stunt their so-called “emotional range”.

Are you kidding me?

Am I to believe these precious “snowflakes” [sorry, I couldn’t resist] are so desperate about being perceived as “authentic” [sorry, I couldn’t resist that one either] they’ll mindlessly – and I do mean mindlessly – adopt an absurd speaking style without so much as a second thought, and expect the rest of us to simply accept it? Nope, not gonna buy it!

As I said before, it’s a damned plague. Listen, you and I both know “upspeak” is a learned behavior that, when caught early enough, can be “un-learned” – do what you can to stop the spread!