The Archive by Sean Dunne

Here's another documentary about a man passionate about vinyl records. The Archive by Sean Dunne was made four years ago and it's about Paul Mawhinney who over the years has amassed what has become the world's largest record collection. Due to health issues and a struggling record industry Paul is being forced to sell his collection.

An article from April this yea by Patrick Pittman has more information about the difficulty Paul Mawhinney has been facing in selling his records and the latest on it is that he's given up on finding a buyer,

"Paul’s slowly fix­ing for retire­ment. Having all but given up on find­ing a cash buyer, he now hopes to donate the entire col­lec­tion to the Library of Congress, in exchange for a mod­est retire­ment income."

If you are a fan and collector of vinyl records, I am sure you will sympathise with Paul.

The world is dead out there, they have their ears closed. They don't understand what's going on at this moment and it's gonna take them 10-15-20 years to wake up and realise what they missed. The music is a 100 times beter on a vinyl album and I've had problems with all the kids because they don't believe me, they don't think that's true.

First of all just imagine this. They move the music by computer and what they do is they chop off the highs, they chop off the lows and then they compress everything. How could that possibly be equal to the open sound that you get on a record with the bass and the highs and the fullness in the middle.

There is no comparison to what they're selling for music these days. Days of vinyl as we used to know it is pretty well over.  Paul Mawhinney

I leave you with John Miles' Music (Was my First Love), the song you hear Paul Mawhinney listening to quite emotionally in the film.