Interesting, I am one of those who prefers to buy vinyl, but to view it as some kind of anti-capitalist act is pretty silly. It's a niche market, and you are paying a premium to have one of these collectors objects. I find it ironic that when cds came in, people were in a huge rush to replace their old lps. Now that LP reissues are making a huge comeback, people are now replacing their old cds with lps.
Not sure how it is in your part of the world, but here, the record store clientele are usually young males and few females, who would probably fall into the hipster category (a generation informed by Pitchfork). Or older music fans, again mostly male who would have been considered hippies at some point (a generation informed by Rolling Stone).
What I love about vinyl is that can sit down in my living room and put on records and just enjoy them (as long as my 5 year old isn't around to complain, though she does like Devo). I rarely listen to music on my computer, as I would rather listen to entire albums. I do listen to mp3s in my vehicle, purely for the convienience.
I would consider myself a collector first, and music fan second, and I'd say that most people who buy large amounts of music are the same. Yes, the music is wonderful, but there is little reason to own all these objects in order to enjoy music itself. It's a compulsion to collect, and it can be very obsessive. This obsession is what is feeding the vinyl resurgence, when people just "have to have" a new release, even if they own the thing 4 times over and will rarely listen to it. This is not an antidote to capitalism, it is capitalism. As the author of the article said:
"Indeed, if you're paying what some people earn in a week for a set of Beatles albums, you may have more to do with the problem than the solution."
That's pretty much it, although I don't see any of this as a problem. It's a marketplace, and you have different types of consumers, who have different spending priorities, and someone is going to be making money off of them.
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