Vinyl is now more popular than CDs, so why not put vinyl in your car instead?
The Lexus Is Wax Edition resurrects the once-defunct idea for an in-car recorder. Unfortunately, this is a one-off so vinyl lovers out there won’t be able check it out to have the ability to spin some wax on the road.
Pitchfork and Lexus collaborated on the vehicle, but the engineering came from SCPS in Los-Angeles. It is not as easy as you might think to make a record player work in a vehicle. You can feel the car moving on the road and changing forces like braking, acceleration, and turning. These factors can cause the needle not to move or alter the motor’s ability to turn the album. SCPS developed a custom record player by using 3d printing, a mixture of aluminum and carbon fiber. The record player is placed on a silicon pad to absorb shocks. The record spins without skipping thanks to a stepper motor and micro-adjustable ton arm. It is in the same spot as the glovebox and slides out when you want to listen to music. The music plays through IS’ optional, the Mark Levinson stereo with surround sound and 17 speakers.
Lexus and Pitchfork also requested a collaboration between Madlib and Kaytranada in order to produce a double-single album for the Wax Edition. The seven-inch vinyl will soon be available as part of the Vinyl Me, Please subscription.
According to The Recording Industry Association of America, records were the most-loved physical music format in 2020. Vinyl was surpassed by CDs last year for the first time since 1986. Its market value increased 28.7 percent, to $626million, compared with a 23 percent decrease for CDs at $483 million. In 2020, physical media accounted for only 9 percent of the total revenue from the American music industry.