After the Gold Rush Understanding how millennials give meaning to vinyl in today’s digitalized music market

This thesis aims to explore how globalized millennials give meaning to the process of consuming vinyl records in today’s digitally saturated music-market. It does so to through fourteen semi-structured in-depth interviews, composed of a globalized sample of millennials. These interviews have then been subjected to a thematic analysis, which revealed there are both manifest and latent motives in which globalized millennials give meaning to the process of consuming vinyl records in present-day. On the one hand, there are manifest factors such as materiality, physicality, and rituality, as well as the appreciation for the overall vinyl culture that stems greatly from record shops. On the other hand, there are latent reasons which are predominantly based on the content that the vinyl holds, in terms of music and memories, and how this constructs consumers’ identities. This leads to conclude that even though the seventies are to be considered vinyl’s gold rush, it is perhaps safe to say the format is experiencing a shakeup with a new generation in this 21st century. Instead of trying to surpass another music format, vinyl is adapting and coexisting in a way that allows for it to be appreciated by an enthusiastic and select audience, and thus showing how this format can survive and thrive well after the gold rush.