Why Are Photo Books Seeing A Vinyl-Esque Revival?
At the beginning of this year, it was revealed that 43.46 million vinyl albums were sold in 2022, making up 43.4% of all album purchases in the US. This made 2022 the biggest year for vinyl since Luminate began tracking data back in 1991, and has demonstrated that the great vinyl revival is not slowing down any time soon.
This is also a good example of what we see happening with photo books. Over the last few years, we’ve been thrilled to see more and more customers using our services. Obviously, the more people who buy and enjoy our photo books, the better, but we’re a curious bunch here at MySocialBook, so we can’t help looking at the bigger picture!
Like vinyl records, photo albums were once the only way you could see your pictures after taking them. This all changed with the arrival of the internet and social media, but over the last few years, the resurgence of physical photography -- especially photo books that turn social media pictures into physical albums -- has been unmissable.
With this in mind, we’ve tried to answer why physical photo books are becoming more popular, as well as some interesting similarities between vinyl and photographs.
The Influx Of Photographers
The rise of social media and smartphone tech has meant that there are more photographers now than ever. This means that social platforms like Facebook and Instagram are full of pictures, all being posted by millions of people around the world.
Creating a Facebook and Instagram photo book is a way to distinguish yourself from the rest, ensuring that your work doesn’t just get lost in the ether and remains quintessentially yours.
The Fall Of Social Media
Speaking of taking photographs from social media, some people are removing themselves from social media altogether. In 2022, it was reported that there was less usage of every social app from Gen Z compared to years prior.
Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. But people having social media and not using it would explain the rise in people uploading their photos to our photo book maker. If you have social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook, you’re likely to use these accounts to post and preserve your photographs. If you don’t really use those accounts, however, you’re going to also want a way to keep those photographs outside of the platforms you’re fading away from.
Touch!
As human beings, we appreciate tangible things that we can touch. While there is a fascination with the online world, there is also a growing disillusionment with what it offers.
Let’s use music as an example. While it’s fun to wait for an album to come out, download it on your phone and then listen to it. It’s more fun to hold that album in your hands, unwrap it from the plastic, touch the prints, and even smell it! The excitement of holding something can not be underestimated, and photo books provide this excitement and then some!
The Question Of Ownership
In the same vein, we like to own what we pay for. Looking at the vinyl resurgence, one of the main reasons vinyl is so popular is because we don’t own the music we listen to anymore. It’s either downloaded into a cloud or streamed on a streaming service.
A photo book, like a vinyl record, belongs to you. It exists in your household, on your shelf, and you can choose how to display your photo book however you want. Because it’s yours to do whatever you want with, making it far more appealing as a result!
Emotional Connections
It’s also true that we form more of an emotional connection with physical things. When you place your cherished photographs on social media, special moments you have captured get transferred into a database – something completely outside your own life. This, subsequently, takes away some of the emotional connection that you had with those photographs in the first place.
In order to truly stay close to something, we have to feel it. It has to be present in our lives; it has to exist. And photo books offer just that -- a way for your photographs to exist.
Zoning In Instead Of Zoning Out
Although wonderful in many ways, social media has negatives that can’t be ignored. Staring at screens, for instance, causes us to dissociate from what we’re observing. This means that, if you have a collection of photographs that you want to show people, it’s far more likely that they will get impatient, lose interest, and gloss over them.
Sitting your friends down with a book in your hands, however, means they will pay attention to every page and every photograph, which is exactly what your collection deserves.
One For The Archeologists
Lastly, photo books are going to last longer in your conscience. What do we mean by that? Well, think about how many photographs you’ve posted on Instagram or Facebook this year. Then think about how many you’ll post next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. After a while, you’ll forget about your summer in 2023, and any pictures you took years ago might get deleted from the cloud entirely.
A photo book ensures you keep those memories close and allow them to survive for generations. Okay, they might not be dug up by archaeologists! But they are far more likely to be looked at by yourself or your children – or your children’s children! – whenever you want a trip down memory lane.
In fact, that’s exactly what photo books are. If social media is the cloud, then photo books are the cobbles underneath; each of them working to pave your very own memory lane.
