Sorry, but having been in record wholesale/retail for almost 30 years(in the US), in the 90’s it was reduced to strictly a novelty item, if carried at all at retail. There were no parallel releases of major titles in all formats, in fact cassettes were being phased out at that time as well. As early as 1990, major label title availability on a variety of desired titles, old and new, started drying up.
As that happened, complaints about the situation were very few and far between. Everybody went out and bought a CD player; it became a premium feature for cars.
I worked a lot in new/used situations during that time period, and we would pay next to nothing when vinyl would come in, it was a low priority/rummage sale item. Certain items, like limited edition or promo only items would fetch good money, but that was for the oddball collector/fanatic market.
The ‘revival’ was another round of record company shenanigans. Having finally realized that the pooch was screwed with Napster and all the other downloading, they seized on an underground trend happening in the early 2000’s where DIY punk bands of the time were releasing singles on vinyl as a big “FU” to the majors(a time honored punk tradition)and also just to be weird. As sales of CDs started to slip due to downloading, they jumped on vinyl again as a way to sell your music collection to you all over again, with the typical knee jerk “let’s make something uncool cool again” trendiness factored in, just like how you couldn’t give away Jazzmasters and Jaguars after 1964 untill Costello and Television made them
inversely hip around 1977.
I find this current obsession over vinyl regressive, just nostalgic fetishism, just like the great vintage/tube amp vs Class D or no amp debate here. Vinyl had so many limitations when it was all there was, and when digital came along, I shed not a tear, as did plenty of other people. With “the kids” so focused on downloads, one song at a time, that in itself has destroyed the concept of the album as a complete work of art, maybe even the capacity to enjoy a lengthy collection of music. Album sales are an exercise in trendiness, like wearing a Tshirt of a band you know nothing about and have never heard, just because somebody else said it was cool.
