Meet the Vinyl Community: welcome to a weird, wonderful world where people watch each other play old records on YouTube.

• Author: Stooksbury, Clark

The man holds up a 78 rpm record bearing the blue-and-white logo of Chess Records, an iconic label for any fan of the blues. He places it on a vintage Califone turntable, and we hear Howlin' Wolf's "Rockin' Daddy" in all its tactile glory. The song plays for three minutes and six seconds. And then the brief video ends.

It's the summer of 2010, and I've just stumbled on a subculture: not just fans of old music on vinyl records, but fans who post videos of those records playing on YouTube. The man holding the Howlin' Wolf 78 is Rich Hynes, owner of the Underground Record Shop in Indianapolis. I discover that he has posted many more clips as well. Sometimes they feature artists I've enjoyed for years, such as Muddy Waters and Johnny Cash; sometimes they introduce me to great musicians I've never encountered before, such as the Alabama Jug Band and the rockabilly pioneer Lattie Moore.

Soon I'm watching more vinyl clips on other YouTube channels. Before long I'm uploading my own videos, featuring artists ranging from the Texas blues legend Lightnin' Hopkins to the Tennessee bluegrass should-have-been-a-legend Phil Chittum.

Hynes started uploading his videos both to promote his merchandise and to spare his fragile old records from being overplayed. "I often rescue records out of garages and basements," he says, "clean them up, make a video, put the record in a storage sleeve and only watch the video when I want to hear the song." Thanks to YouTube, anyone else with an Internet connection can listen too. Channels such as Hynes' let viewers hear and see music being played in its original format, and sometimes they offer access to music available nowhere else.

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But it is the loosely defined "Vinyl Community" gathered around those channels who really represent YouTube's participatory nature. Members of the VC, as the Vinyl Community calls itself, don't limit themselves to pointing their cameras at spinning discs. They watch and respond to each other's videos, discuss recent purchases, document trips to record stores, show off their music collections and the rooms that house them, and review new releases.

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