Found Sound, a new record store at 234 W. 9 Mile in downtown Ferndale, is finding nostalgia and a craving for the listening quality of vinyl and is attracting a loyal customer base.
The store, opened July 21 on 9 Mile near Woodward, is run by two record store veterans from Recordtime in Roseville.
They know of what they speak of when it comes to vinyl's rise, demise and resurrection. Found Sound stocks new and used records and special orders them. It will also host concerts twice a month and show music-related movies.
Ferndale was chosen as the business location for
Found Sound because of "what you might call a counterculture, an art-based culture," says Found Sound manager Ray Hayosh.
"The first day was great. We had people waiting at the door, he says. "I saw this building and thought it is the best location in metro Detroit for a record store. Besides the culture here, we're close enough to the city to get the city traffic and close enough to upper suburbs to get their traffic."
He says the customers are a mix in age, interest and level of knowledge.
"There are enough collectors to make it a niche store, but we have a lot of people who just enjoy music. They're not obsessive fanatics, they're just casual listeners," he says.
And they're not necessarily mostly customers who knew and miss playing records.
"There's a big interest in vinyl with teens. Theres' a pretty big nostalgia factor to it..Even if only their parents listened to the records, they want to know more about it," he says. "For some it's the actual listening…People talk about a warmth to vinyl..The digital just has a very cold kind of feeling…with analog there's a much more inviting feeling. For some it's not the sound but the aesthetics of vinyl records. They can display them on a shelf and share them with people."
The comeback of vinyl records has been helped by the availability of portable turntables and the business of independent labels that continued pressing records that major labels wanted only in digital format. Some bands, such as Pearl Jam, never stopped putting out vinyl records, he says.
"Now major labels are re-releasing everything under the sun," he says, "and there's a lot of stuff that's available in vinyl."
It may not be high-tech, he says, but it's still a fascinating thing how records play music.
"What's bizarre to me is the idea of a record needle reading a groove, he says. "It's crazy it's been over 100 years and it's still such an amazing thing."
Source: Ray Hayosh, manager, Found Sound
Writer: Kim North Shine
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