The following was published in the TribLive North Journal on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024 6:01 p.m.
Ross record store meets demand for vinyl while continuing family tradition
Reports of vinyl’s death were greatly exaggerated.
The mid-1980s advent of the compact disc prompted many a misguided music collector to dispense with scratch-susceptible records and replace them with the new medium.
Eventually, the convenience of streaming services basically sent CDs the way of the dodo, while the products they supposedly supplanted are doing better than ever.
“Last year, 2023, was the largest-selling year for vinyl records in the history of the business,” Shaler resident Mark Mawhinney reported.
The 1981 North Hills High School graduate has witnessed the phenomenon go full circle, so to speak, from his time as a 10-year-old helping at his dad’s record store to running one of his own, Music to My Ear on Babcock Boulevard in Ross.
Upstairs in the same building is a second business of his: Northern Audio, a carrier of top-end equipment for top-notch home entertainment. And yet another entrepreneurial venture is Spin-Clean, which manufactures kits to keep records pristine.
For folks who have an affinity for vinyl, Music to My Ear offers everything from 7-inch singles and used long-players to new and often sonically superior albums.
“We like to do things that nobody else is doing, and one of the portions of the record business that not everybody knows about is the audiophile-pressing end of it,” Mawhinney said. “We’ve developed a niche marketplace for that type of product.”
While many of his customers grew up when records dominated music sales, others weren’t born until just before or after the start of the 21st century. According to Mawhinney, the latter group accounts for roughly half the sales of vinyl nationally.
“The scariest part about that figure is twofold,” he said. “No. 1, 50% of the vinyl sales purchased by Gen Z’ers last year was Taylor Swift records, so she currently owns 25% of the vinyl sales business in the United States. That’s how much money she’s making. It’s a staggering figure.”
Perhaps as surprising is his second observation:
“A vast majority of the Gen Z buyers that account for 50% of the vinyl sales do not even own turntables. They’re buying the vinyl records because it’s ‘cool,’ they’re collectible, and they’re doing it to support the artists they love because they feel that the artists are getting ripped off by streaming.”
Prices keep climbing
Record buyers who lack turntables aren’t limited to youngsters. People of all ages purchase for the sake of speculation.
“The prices of used vinyl keep climbing,” Mawhinney said. “There’s only so much used vinyl in the United States, and because of how hot vinyl is and how many people are into buying it, the amount of inventory out there that’s available for sale keeps getting less and less and less.”
No one was thinking about relative availability in 1968, the year Paul Mawhinney opened a store called Record-Rama.
Forty years later, when he closed what had become known as Record-Rama Sound Archives, he owned about 3 million items in what he called the world’s largest record collection. In fact, he was well on his way to major accumulation by the time his son started assisting at the store in 1974.
“We had more inventory than just about anybody in town,” Mark said. “My mom would take me there and drop me off, and Dad would put me to work filing records and cleaning records, and at that time, filing 8-tracks, cassettes, 45s, all that kind of stuff.”
Other family members followed suit. Lori Resko-Gindele, Mark’s sister, has memories of helping the cause as a little girl at Record-Rama’s first location, in Etna.
“I used to go up there and press the stoplight button, so people had to stop and see what we had on sale,” she recalled with a laugh.
Eventually, she was doing the bulk of the filing for Record-Rama’s ever-expanding inventory.
“I can remember being nine months pregnant and shifting albums, and they were like, ‘You’d better get down off that ladder!’” she said. “I loved doing it so much, you couldn’t tell me no.”
‘Challenging at times’
Resko-Gindele continues to handle some of the filing duties at Music to My Ear, where her other brother — named Paul, like his father — is responsible for purchasing albums to stock the shelves.
“It’s a little difficult to try to figure out what titles to carry,” he said. “You have to keep the younger crowd interested, as well as the older crowd. It’s challenging at times.”
Another challenge is educating younger buyers about the necessity of taking special care of records. Aiding the process is another Mawhinney product.
“Our family has owned Spin-Clean for 50 years,” Mark said, dating back to when his dad bought the small-scale company as a natural complement to Record-Rama.
For decades, production of the kits remained limited and handled predominantly by Lori.
“I would be sitting home at night after a workday, sitting there ’til midnight making rollers and brushes for the next load,” she recalled.
Mark bought Spin-Clean from his father when he retired, and the company now boasts the world’s largest-selling product of its kind.
And some music industry leaders are taking notice. Last year, Spin-Clean produced special-edition kits in conjunction with the Beatles’ ownership to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the band’s best-selling anthologies of songs from 1962-66 (red cover) and 1967-70 (blue).
Mark’s other business is his first. As a young entrepreneur, he launched Northern Audio Exchange 35 years ago as a consignment shop, located in what had been a 2,000-square-foot luxury apartment.
“As soon as I saw it, I said, ‘What better place to sell home audio and home theater than out of a home environment,’” he explained.
He’s maintained the ambience for customers to experience various sights and sounds before deciding to invest in some of the highest-quality products on the market.
Downstairs, Music to My Ear carries on a 56-year family tradition of keeping customers supplied with records, regardless of whether they ever get played.
Harry Funk is a TribLive news editor, specifically serving as editor of the Hampton, North Allegheny, North Hills, Pine Creek and Bethel Park journals. A professional journalist since 1985, he joined TribLive in 2022. You can contact Harry at hfunk@triblive.com.