Groove Into Flow | Riley Radosavich

Groove Into Flow: How Vinyl Revival Fuels Modern Music and Mindfulness

Posted by Riley Radosavich on Thursday, April 4th 2024

Most popular in the 70’s, vinyls are resurfacing as a promotional staple for music. The global vinyl record market was valued at $1.98 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach $4.12 billion by 2030, according to Verified Market Research. An industry that sold only 1 million vinyl records in 2006 went to 41 million vinyl albums sold in the United States in 2022. There are multiple factors fueling this uproar in vinyl sales.

What Are Vinyls

Vinyls are a physical form of listening to music. Similar to the design and function of a CD, vinyls are plastic discs pressed to read music when spun. Vinyls are placed on a turntable and a needle reads and interprets the small engraving on the record. Vinyls were originally offered in black coloring, however modern manufacturing allows bold, artistic, colorful variations that are marketed as exclusive collectors items.

The Flow State

Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is deemed the Father of Flow. It is widely-recommended by psychologists to find activities that allow you to access a flow state of mind. During this state, people unlock their best productivity and engagement levels.

There are 8 conditions to enter flow:

Setting Clear Goals
Obtaining Immediate Feedback; You need to ensure the activity is bringing you closer to the goal
Matching Challenges With Skills; You need to be challenged enough to reduce boredom and anxiety
Limiting External and Internal Distractions
Transforming Time; You need to embrace time and feel it become irrelevant, sped up, or slowed down
Losing Self-Consciousness
Feeling Sense of Control; You need to feel unstoppable.
Merging Action and Awareness; Your focus needs to be on your actions.

Vinyls Are A Gateway To The Flow State

Vinyls offer consumers the opportunity to escape. The action of spinning a vinyl provides a convenient bridge to the flow state. While the vinyl plays, listeners are most likely completing other tasks in their environment such as cleaning, completing work assignments, or napping. Instead of serving as a distraction, the vinyl provides motivating qualities to help complete the goal at hand. The sound is a clear guide to limit yourself to and the vinyl provides a course of action that limits the pressures to skip songs or plan which song is coming next. This allows consumers to achieve the flow state with the focusing and directive qualities of a vinyl record. Artists and their marketing teams should consider this in use of their promotional materials.