45 rpm records, like this one from 1955, often held a single—one especially popular tune from a particular artist—with a flip side or b-side, a bonus for owners. Due to the nature of the medium, playback of "hard" records, eg: LPs, causes gradual degradation of the recording. The recordings are best preserved by transferring them onto more stable media and playing the records as rarely as possible. They need to be stored on edge, and do best under environmental conditions that most humans would find comfortable. The medium needs to be kept clean — but use alcohol only on PVC or optical media, NOT on 78s. The equipment for playback of certain formats (e.g. 16 and 78 rpm) is manufactured only in small quantities, leading to increased difficulty in finding equipment to play the recordings. (This "gradual degradation" is more noticeable on some discs than others. In fact it is possible to have forty year old records that sound as new and brand new discs with pops and tics. How the records are handled and the equipment on which they are played as well as the manufacturing process and quality of original vinyl have a considerable impact upon their wear.) Where old disc recordings are considered to be of artistic or historic interest, record companies or archivists play back the disc on suitable equipment and record the result, typically onto a digital format which can be copied and converted without any further damage to the recording. For example, Nimbus Records uses a specially built horn record player to transfer 78s. However, anyone can do this using a standard record player with a suitable pickup, a phono-preamp (pre-amplifier) and a typical personal computer. Once a recording has been digitized, it can be manipulated with software to restore and, hopefully, improve the sound, for example by removing the result of scratches. It can also be easily converted to other digital formats such as DVD-A, CD and MP3. As an alternative to playback with a stylus, a recording can be read optically, processed with software that calculates the velocity that the stylus would be moving in the mapped grooves and converted to a digital recording format. This does no further damage to the disc and generally produces a better sound than playback. This technique also has the potential to allow for reconstruction of damaged or broken disks. With regard to inner sleeves, plastic polyethylene is purported to be better than the common paper sleeve and less bulky than the poly-lined paper variety. Paper sleeves deteriorate over time, leave dusty fibers, and produce static that attract dust. 100% poly sleeves produce less static (thereby attracting less dust), are archival, and are thinner by nature so they minimize pressure on the LP jacket seams.
Heavenly Ocean's 2006 album The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack released on vinyl and CD. Groove recordings, first designed in the final quarter of the 19th century, held a predominant position for an impressive amount of time—just about a century—withstanding competition from reel-to-reel tape, the 8-track cartridge and the compact cassette. However, by 1988, the compact disc had surpassed the gramophone record in popularity. In spite of their flaws, such as the lack of portability, records still have enthusiastic supporters. Vinyl records continue to be manufactured and sold today, especially by independent rock bands and labels, although record sales are considered to be a niche market composed of audiophiles, collectors and DJs. Old records and out of print recordings in particular are in much demand by collectors the world over. Many popular new albums are given releases on vinyl records and older albums are also given reissues as well, sometimes on audiophile grade vinyl with high quality sleeves. In the UK, sales of new vinyl records (particularly 7 inch singles) have increased significantly in recent years, somewhat reversing the downward trend seen during the 1990s. Many Electronic dance music genres such as Drum & Bass and Hip Hop are released almost entirely on Vinyl. This is because for disc jockeys ("DJs"), vinyl has an advantage over the CD: direct manipulation of the medium. DJ techniques such as slip-cueing, beatmatching and scratching originated on turntables. With CDs or compact audio cassettes one normally has only indirect manipulation options, e.g., the play, stop and pause buttons. With a record one can place the stylus a few grooves farther in or out, accelerate or decelerate the turntable, or even reverse its direction, provided the stylus, record player and the record itself are built to withstand it. Most CDJs and DJ software these days have these capabilities and many more, but despite this, the use of Vinyl for DJing is unlikely to ever die out. In India, vinyl was discontinued in the early 1990s, however, a sizable backlog of titles has resulted in continued popular use of the vinyl LP.