‘I bought one for my nine-year-old daughter’

By Alexis Petridis



I was delighted when my eldest daughter, who is nine, asked for a record player for Christmas. It wasn’t to do with any great residual love for vinyl on my part, although I do have a weird notion that the actual act of having to put a record or a CD on might make you listen more closely to music than more modern, convenient alternatives. Perhaps you are more likely to play something all the way through if taking it off and putting something else on involves at least a fraction more effort than pressing your finger on a screen. But I am keen to instil in her the idea that music is something you pay for, rather than something that magically materialises because Dad’s got a family subscription to a streaming service.

So I liked the idea of her saving up her pocket money to buy “vinyls”, as the young people persist in calling them: she seemed more likely to spend money on something tangible, rather than a download. In addition, anything that serves to confine my eldest daughter’s taste in music to her bedroom is money well spent, as far as I am concerned. I am proud of the fact that she has her own tastes: I have never tried to influence what she likes. Still, the less I have to endure the disheartening oeuvre of Meghan Trainor and her current passion, an apparently interminable parade of drippy, solipsistic singer-songwriter berks – one of whom actually appears to have written a song whinging about, of all things, taking a pill in Ibiza – the better.

While I agree that anyone who spends 30 quid on a new vinyl album, then plays it on a turntable that doesn’t cost much more than that is completely nuts, a Crosley seemed ideal as nine-year-old girl’s first record player. They are colourful and immediately appealing: they look like fun, in a way that hi-fi equipment seldom does. They don’t need setting up: you just plug it in and it plays. I wasn’t bothered by the dire presentiments about the Crosley’s sound quality. I have really fond memories of my first record player, and that was thoroughly knackered, one of those ancient all-in-one players that stacked singles up on a giant spindle. It must have sounded awful, but I don’t remember how it sounded, because I was a kid, not a middle-aged hi-fi buff: I just remember the music. Later, my mate had a terrible Amstrad midi system that played everything too fast. He regarded this not as a blight that impaired his enjoyment of his record collection, but something of a bonus: if he taped you the Stone Roses’s album, it would fit on one side of a C90, not cut off before the end of I Am the Resurrection.

As it turned out, the problem with the whole enterprise wasn’t the Crosley’s admittedly awful sound quality or, indeed, its shoddy build (the tone arm and cartridge are so flimsy that I had to stick a 10p piece to the top of the cartridge to stop it jumping all the time). It was that none of the music my daughter likes is actually available on vinyl, something neither of us had bothered to check. I’d mistakenly assumed that record labels still stuck singles out on 7in – I had even envisaged a rather thrilling world of limited-edition coloured-vinyl singles and picture discs – but it turns out the much-touted vinyl revival hasn’t reached the arena of top 40 pop. I bought her a load of secondhand pop singles that I thought might appeal, but she doesn’t want to play Buffalo Stance by Neneh Cherry or Tainted Love by Soft Cell, or at least not yet: she quite rightly wants to play her own music.

So the record player that is perfect for a nine-year-old girl is gathering dust until such time as some music a nine-year-old girl might want to listen to becomes available for it, while the Sonos in the kitchen still reverberates to the sound of that drippy, solipsistic little berk whining about taking a pill in Ibiza.

Market appeal: a selection of Crosley record players at a US trade fair. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

‘The cute vintage shape and feminine colours appeal to women’

By Harriet Gibsone



In March, Sainsbury’s responded to “the unstoppable demand for vinyl in the UK” by selling LPs for the first time since the 1980s and stocking Crosley Cruiser turntables in 171 of their stores. After the portable record player arrived in shops in the run up to Record Store Day 2016 – priced at £80 – sales outperformed expectations by 28%. From May, the Crosley Cruiser will be a permanent fixture nationwide.

Its arrival in supermarkets is the latest move in the US brand’s canny exploitation of the vinyl revival. Crosley’s designers targeted vinyl as a retro trend and made its turntables objects, rather than mere music players. Like Dansettes, they are all-in-one players, with inbuilt speakers. They come mounted in carrying boxes – some primary-coloured, some given a floral print, some looking like briefcases. They are lifestyle choices, not pieces of kit.

The Crosley story starts with a businessman and engineer from Cincinnati named Powel Crosley. In the early 1920s, shocked by the price of radios after his son had asked for one as a gift, Powell decided to design an affordable product – a consumer radio that sold for $7, less than a tenth of the going rate. That success spawned the rest of his eccentric empire: to name but a few, he established the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation, which became the world’s most powerful radio station for a short period; he became the owner of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team; founded a car company, and branched into other lifestyle appliances, such as fridges and the XERVAC, a helmet that purported to “revitalise inactive hair cells”. By the 1950s, Crosley decided to step down and sell the company.

The Crosley name lay dormant until 1976, when it was bought by a company called Brown-Rogers-Dixson. But the change in fortunes was brought about by Bo LeMastus who licensed the Crosley name, eventually buying it outright early this century. He started making retro radios, telephones and jukeboxes before taking a punt on record players. He had his doubts about whether he could find a market, but much to his surprise – givendDespite CDs being the dominant music format, Crosleys began to fly off the shelves. “Turntables really took off 15 to 20 years ago, and those have been our No 1 category here in the US since,” says Jason Lee Menard, director of marketing at Crosley. “Obviously we’re taking advantage of the revival but it’s not something that’s new necessarily to us.”

Crosley’s fastest-growing market is now the under-25s. It has launched special-edition turntables – a Mickey Mouse-themed Cruiser turntable for Record Store Day 2016, a Peanuts player for 2014’s, and a One Direction player. But the key to their popularity has been the company’s partnership with the high-street clothing store Urban Outfitters, whose customer base is 18- to 35-year-olds, and to whom Crosley provides exclusive turntables that change from season to season to mirror evolving fashion trends. That was matched by Urban Outfitters’ move into selling vinyl and becoming a key player in the music retail market. Though UO’sits 2014 claim to be the biggest seller of vinyl in the US was swiftly debunked – Amazon topped the list – it is still the largest shopfront retailer, with 8.3% of the market, compared to Amazon’s 12.1%.

Rebecca Davies, Urban Outfitters’s media and lifestyle buyer, says its bestselling model, the Cruiser (£100), is mostly bought by young women. Sainsbury’s reports similar findings: 67% of its Crosley turntable customers have been female.

Crosley’s Dansette-inspired record player

“The cute vintage shape and feminine colours appeal to women who like music and design,” Davies says. “We sell a lot of vinyl storage and album frames – the record players are a central part of how they are decorating their living rooms and bedrooms.” She notes that another Urban Outfitters collaboration with Crosley, to make an updated model of the Dansette, the classic 50s and 60s record player, attracts a more mixed customer base. In record players, dark colours are for men, patterns and primaries for women, it seems.

Gender stereotypes aside, Crosley’s popularity reflects a more general longing for classic products and services – it’s the same impulse that has led to the craft beer boom, or traditional barber shops. What is curious, though, is that while the selling point for so much retro culture and merchandise is its quality – try beer that tastes of something! Don’t use a disposable razor! – Crosley has been criticised for both its build and sound quality. (Sample reactions: “Crosley record players are the absolute worst. I’ve had like five in the past three days and none of them works”; “If you love yourself, don’t buy Crosley record players”). The Urban Outfitters flagship model, the Cruiser, which is at the lower-price end of the Crosley range, has been criticised for its tinny sound, with reviews noting that it wears down records faster than a typical turntable because of the high tracking weight on the cartridge. One anonymous audiophile, who works in an established used hi-fi and record shop in London, reckons the Crosley boom and subsequent disappointment with the product could harm the vinyl revival.

“People have always wanted their tech to look good and audio equipment is no different,” says Verity Burns of What Hi-Fi? magazine. “The thing is, you really don’t have to choose [between style and substance] – there are great-looking turntables out there that also sound superb. I think the Crosley appeal is more to do with convenience. To have the turntable, amp and speakers in one box makes it very appealing, particularly to a young audience who might not have much space.”

According to the British Phonographic Industry, nearly 640,000 LPs were bought in the first three months of this year, a rise of 61.8% year on year. The interest in vinyl shows no sign of waning, and Crosley is an important part of the boom. “Whether [Crosley] will encourage people to move on to better equipment in the future, I’m not sure – but I hope so,” says Burns. “From my talks with people in the industry, turntable manufacturers are seeing a big uplift in sales from the vinyl revival, so people are definitely still investing in the more traditional kit.”

Crosley says it takes notice of the complaints, and keeps a close eye on Reddit threads and forums. “We listen to the audiophiles and what they have to say about Crosley,” Menard says. “We compile that feedback and take it very seriously, which essentially led to us putting out higher-end products towards the end of last year. We actually got some really great feedback from one major audiophile in the US – Michael Fremer, who runs a blog called Analog Planet. He just reviewed one of our $400 turntables and he had nothing but great things to say about it. And he has been a Crosley hater for the past 10-plus years.”

From its uncluttered set up to its casual supermarket placement, Crosley’s simplicity is key. That it is now even easier to haul into a trolley is crucial to its future success.

The Crosley offers a convenient package, but what about the quality?

‘You get a better sound hooking up your phone to a Bluetooth speaker’

By Pete Paphides



The BBC journalist who recently happened upon Jordan Katende in a Manchester record shop must have been rubbing their hands with glee. Here, in one convenient person-sized package, was everything that sums up the ambivalence many long-time record collectors feel about the vinyl resurgence. Interviewed in the wake of an ICM poll that revealed that 48% of people who bought vinyl last month have yet to play the record, Katende achieved instant viral infamy as he blithely explained: “I have vinyls in my room, but it’s more for decor. I don’t actually play them.”

When you think about the equipment most readily available to young music fans such as Katende, this isn’t all that surprising. The majority of new turntables purchased in this country are manufactured by Crosley. When it comes to combining affordability with a pleasing design sense, Crosley is hard to beat. Unfortunately, all its players sound absolutely terrible as well. I’m no hi-fi buff, believe me. I have never spent more than £200 on a turntable or speakers. I used to think there was a lot to be said for playing a record on equipment that was manufactured in the same era that yielded the record: the Four Seasons’ Let’s Hang On! sounds amazing on a Dansette; Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is exquisite coming out of a 70s music centre. But through having bought a Crosley for my elder daughter, I can confirm that Joanna Newsom and Alt-J albums sound horrendous on a Crosley.

There is no appreciable sonic difference between the quality of a Crosley speaker and a laptop speaker. So, like our friend Katende, why not stare at the sleeves while saving yourself the bother of having to change sides? That would explain why, after the week or two in which Dora’s new player was still enough of a novelty, it started to gather dust in the corner of her room. As she later put it: “Why would you bother with a Crosley when you could get a better sound hooking up your phone to a Bluetooth speaker?”

Which got me thinking. If I could put together a system that sounded as good if not better than Dora’s Bluetooth/phone set-up, did she think that would make a difference? Well, she still loved the idea of records. And she still loved the way they sounded coming out of my record room. So, basically, the answer was yes. I set myself a budget of £150 – £30 more than I paid for her Crosley – with the objective of seeingif I could find a turntable, amp and speakers on eBay for that amount.

I had to drive to a house in Essex to secure a lovely early-70s Pioneer deck for £50; £35 bought a perfectly decent Technics amp; and another £50 paid for a lovely pair of 1971 KEF speakers. Since then, her collection has steadily expanded: LPs by Belle & Sebastian, John Coltrane, First Aid Kit, the Smiths and Billie Holiday all resound around her room on a regular basis. If you heard them this way once, you’d want to hear them this way again and again.