Video: Sweat Records Featured on National PBS - Long Live Vinyl!

Music's push into the digital age has, if strangely, benefited one medium: vinyl! With no more middling-quality CDs to horde, more people are realizing what the hardcore collectors have always known. Records sound warmer, there is more opportunity for interesting art work and packaging, and they're a hell of a...

By Arielle Castillo

February 3, 2010

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Music's push into the digital age has, if strangely, benefited one medium: vinyl! With no more middling-quality CDs to horde, more people are realizing what the hardcore collectors have always known. Records sound warmer, there is more opportunity for interesting art work and packaging, and they're a hell of a lot more pleasing to collect and display. Plenty of labels are now offering vinyl releases packaged with a digital download code for your iPod, and the most successful record stores in the 21st century have retooled.

Radio-Active Records in Fort Lauderdale and Sweat Records in Miami are both doing brisk trade in both new and used vinyl. And little did we know, but one of the last vinyl pressing plants, Alpha Music Manufactoring, is right here in Plantation. Business there is going so well, the factory is adding new manufacturing machines.

Both the plant and Sweat were featured in this recent segment on Nightly Business Report on PBS -- the national one, not just WLRN. The final video was also amusingly edited to include Sweat's stocking of coffee drinks and "vegetarian jerky treats" -- and my favorite shot is a quick pan across new local seven-inches. So, congrats, Electric Bunnies and Miami Bass Warriors for inadvertently winding up on PBS, too. Check out the video above.

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