I may be showing my age but the first turntable I remember was one we had as kids that folded into a Mickey Mouse carrying case. Mickey's arm held the needle to play the records. As someone who went through 8-tracks, records and cassette tapes - I for one was very happy with the invention of the CD. No more rewinding tapes or scratched on vinyl records. Now what's old is new again and the turntable is making a comeback and all those albums you have in your basement in milk crates might actually be worth something.

At Bay Bloor Radio in Toronto turntable sales are booming and Richard Bowden says it's mainly two groups of people buying. Bowden says, "It really seems to be people over 50 years of age who grew up with vinyl and have record collections they want to make use of. Then there is a younger group of people in their teens and twenties who are discovering records for the first time." Bowden says vinyl has a "warmer, more harmonic sound" that music purists can hear. Canadian rocker Neil Young was first to go on the record -- for records -- years ago when he voiced concerns about digitized music.

According to the Website Dig -- here is what Neil Young had to say on July 28, 2008.

Neil Young has taken to the stage at a technology conference to criticize the standard of digital music: "Quality has taken a complete backseat -- if it even gets in the car at all."

Speaking at the Brainstorm Tech Conference in California last week, Young was highly critical of Apple's iTunes and iPod -- suggesting the portable player offers the music quality of a "Fisher-Price toy".

"We have beautiful computers now but high-resolution music is one of the missing elements," he said. "The ears are the windows to the soul."

Young's comments echo remarks made by Lou Reed at this year's South By Southwest Music Festival in Texas: "It's like the technology is taking us backwards. It's making it easier to make things worse."

At Sonic Boom Records in Toronto Jeremiah Knight says many of the customers coming in to buy new and used records are teenagers. Knight says, "They like to be able to hold the albums, to see the cover art and that's something they don't get with downloaded music files." He says many people also feel albums have a "warmer sound." The store will buy used albums for 2 to 5 dollars depending on what kind of shape they are in. Artists like Blue Rodeo, Wilco and Radiohead are also putting new music out on records often accompanied by their cds inside or with codes to download their music. That way the consumer can have their music on record and in a digitized form. Older albums such as anything by The Beatles to The Doors is also being reissued with prices ranging from 20 to 30 dollars so you can get a old music on a brand new album.

Other Key Points:

  • In many instances, the vinyl album of today is thicker and sounds better than those during vinyl's heyday in the 1960s and 1970s
  • The turntables you can get now aren't as old school as they used to be, many of them now have cables that connect o computers so that music can be transferred to portable devices
  • According to shopbot.ca (a website where Canadians can compare prices) turntables range in price from $100 - $800
  • Replacement needles are available at most music related stores, such as Long and McQuade

Through late November, more than 2.1 million vinyl records had been sold in 2009, an increase of more than 35 percent in a year, according to Nielsen Soundscan. That total, though it represents less than 1 percent of all album sales, including CDs and digital downloads, is the highest for vinyl records in any year since Nielsen began tracking them in 1991

Sales of CDs, meanwhile, have been falling fast, displaced by the downloading of digital files of songs from services like iTunes. Sales of albums on CD, which generally cost half as much as their vinyl counterparts, have dropped almost 20 percent this year, according to Nielsen.

So don't be surprised if teenagers you know take an interest in records and check those old albums you have in the basement - they may be worth more then you think.

Pat Foran