Putting a premium on music

Exploring the vinyl revival in the Philippines

Authors

  • Monika E. Schoop University of Cologne

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.35003

Keywords:

Philippines, popular music, revival, technostalgia, vinyl

Abstract

The twenty-first century has seen a revival of the vinyl record in many parts of the world. Based on ethnographic research, I investigate its so-far unexplored resurgence in Metro Manila, the capital region of the Philippines, contending that vinyl is charged with social meanings and that revivals reimagine the past for the present. I examine vinyl's manifold social meanings and the reasons for its newfound popularity through a multidimensional enquiry into vinyl's status as a 'premium product' in the Philippine context. First, I consider developments in the music industry and socio-economic factors playing into the value and status of vinyl. Second, I probe vinyl's symbolic potential as a marker of social class, cosmopolitanism and urban lifestyle. Third, drawing on notions of technostalgia and vinyl's multisensory affordances, I examine how vinyl's status as a premium product is established and reinforced by the lifestyle stores Satchmi and Heima, which market records and their associated appliances. Lastly, I show how vinyl's status is actively employed to promote local independent music and to counter its marginalization in the Philippine mediascape.

Author Biography

  • Monika E. Schoop, University of Cologne
    Monika E. Schoop is a postdoctoral researcher in ethnomusicology and popular music studies at the University of Cologne, Germany. Her research interests include music industries, music scenes, music and memory, protest music, as well as gender and queer studies. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Philippines and in Germany. Her book Independent Music and Digital Technology in the Philippines was published by Routledge in 2017.

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Published

2018-12-29

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Schoop, M. (2018). Putting a premium on music: Exploring the vinyl revival in the Philippines. Perfect Beat, 19(1), 8-31. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.35003