Tiny Vinyl records are just four inches in size, and play four minutes per side. They're hoping to tap into the trend for collectible physical media.
Expect to pay around $14.99 per record, though.
A new music format is bringing back the vinyl single for people who think seven inches is too much. Tiny Vinyl records are just four inches across, and that limits them to a mere four minutes per side.
They should still be playable on one of the best turntables though, and plenty others to boot – you just have to set the speed to 33 RPM.
That tiny size just happens to be perfect for pop music, and as Billboard reports, many of the first releases are exactly that: they include Chappell Roan's Pink Pony Club, Doechii's Denial Is A River, Gracie Adams' That's So True, and Britney Spears' Baby One More Time.
Back catalogue is coming too, so the releases also include the likes of The Rolling Stones' (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, and Frank Sinatra's Jingle Bells/Silent Night.
Vinyl records are hardly new, of course: the first 7-inch single arrived in the late 1940s. But, the four-inch Tiny Vinyl releases hope to tap into streaming-age desires for limited run, collectible physical media – something tangible in a digital world.
Tiny Vinyl: how to play it and what it costs
According to Tiny Vinyl founders Neil Kohler and Jesse Mann, this isn't just a marketing stunt. They claims that it's an attempt to ride the vinyl wave while also tapping into the trend for mini collectibles. And as they told Billboard: "Hit songs are getting shorter. 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.”
Each Tiny Vinyl release has one song per side, although I reckon you could get an entire Napalm Death album into side one and still have room for a second.
As previously mentioned, they play at album speed (33 RPM) to get more music from the miniature size. And they use roughly one-tenth the materials you'd need for a normal 12-inch vinyl record.
The first Tiny Vinyl releases are on sale in the US via Target, and while the Tiny Vinyl website says the format is "affordable" the first releases are pretty pricey for just two songs: they are listed at $14.99 (about £11.27 / €12.95 / AU$23.09) apiece.
