As vinyl records continue their inexorable resurgence, a new variant has emerged to cater for those who believe that the old-fashioned 7" single contains too much music.
Tiny Vinyl LLC, a startup based in Nashville, TN, has launched a range of 4" singles, and the first batch – now available at Target – includes releases by Black Sabbath, Ghost, Mötley Crüe, the Rolling Stones and Third Eye Blind.
The singles are limited to just four minutes of music per side, meaning that Black Sabbath's 1970 classic Paranoid is amongst the first batch of releases, while the 1980 single Die Young, which clocks in at 4'33", will never receive the Tiny Vinyl treatment.
"We created Tiny Vinyl to reward fans with an adorable, collectable, and playable miniature vinyl record,” Tiny Vinyl's Neil Kohler and Jesse Mann tell Billboard. “We knew we needed our vinyl format to play an overwhelming majority of popular music, which happened to be trending to less than four minutes per song.
"It was always important to us to make Tiny Vinyl play at 33rpm on a standard turntable. That’s the most common format, so we made that our standard. Lastly, to engage fans at this scale, we knew the jacket and art had to feel authentic, just like 12" vinyl - only at the 4" diameter."
Tiny Vinyl is the latest in a long list of novelty vinyl sizes, from a range of 3" records released for Record Store Day, including singles by The Beatles and the Beastie Boys, to a 9" version of Nine Inch Nails' 1989 single Sin.
Most extravagantly, electronic music maestro Luke Vibert – as his Wagon Christ alter ego – released an 11" glow-in-the-dark vinyl single on Cologne's Electro Bunker label in 1996.
