Dez Reads. Turn Off Your Phone and Listen to Vinyl.

Our children expect us to be able to call up any song or video clip on demand, thanks to low-cost streaming via Spotify, YouTube, and their peers. This is very convenient, but does it come at the cost of accidental exploration and discovery? If you grew up with cassettes as I did, or vinyl as my father did, how many songs did you discover while navigating albums in full? Is that not what the artist intended – for albums to be comprehensive works of art? How has our on-demand, single-focused music consumption culture cheapened artists’ overall bodies of work? It seems to me that artistic incentives have changed drastically thanks to streaming. My kids like it; I do not.

Colby Nelson examines the rising adoption of vinyl records as a medium, as told by the Wall Street Journal. I’ve never really noticed a quality difference relative to digital music, but I do share Colby’s view that there’s something relaxing about outsourcing my listening decisions to the artist, rather than a new choice every four minutes.

Fitting that throwback theme, Will Kim is (literally) buying into the vintage clothing renaissance. On the other end of the spectrum, Mark Emerson and Mike Bova look at the dark side of modern culture; Mark tells us that scammers are selling fast passes to the DMV (grim on so many levels), and Bova comments on private equity eating our favorite sports teams.

And finally, today our fearless leader and CEO Anne Marie Malecha is appearing on a panel discussing reputation, gender, and politics with some of the smartest people in DC. That’s at 3:45 pm ET today at George Mason University, and you can watch live here.

Thanks, as always, for reading (and watching!) along with us.

Here we go.

Music.

WSJ. Why You’ll Want a ‘Listening Room,’ Designed to Help You Put Down Your Phone

This week the Recording Industry Association of America released their annual recorded music revenue report, which, to no one’s surprise, is heavily focused on the music streaming business. But it was shocking to see that vinyl sales in the U.S. grew by 7% to $1.4 billion last year, the eighteenth consecutive year of growth. I thought the vinyl revival was a fad, but it just might be here to stay.

I’ve been considering purchasing a record player to find a way to unplug and, perhaps, to show my young daughters that music doesn’t just come from our iPhones. Fortunately, I am not alone. The article shows a growing trend of people going even further by designing rooms dedicated to listening to music with the intention of detaching from their devices.

Vinyl is back, and it’s spinning a whole new tune. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s rebellion against algorithms, or maybe music just sounds better when you have to flip it halfway through. Whatever the reason, it seems like analog is striking a chord in our modern digital world. (Further reading: The Wizard of Vinyl Is in Kansas)

– Colby Nelson

Crime.

Yahoo!. Scalpers Caught Selling Free DMV Appointments For $250 In Miami

Here we go again. Another peculiar and yet entrepreneurial opportunity for folks to make a buck. This time, it’s exploiting the DMV’s online appointment system. We all know the pains of needing to go to the DMV – the tremendously long lines, the impossible wait times, and the disgruntled employees (which, to be fair, I don’t blame them one bit). But until recently, for a small $250 service fee, you could have bypassed the misery with a now-illegal fast-pass service.

The Miami-Dade County Tax Collector’s Office uncovered a network of scalpers hoarding free DMV appointments and reselling them at sky-high prices. Using bots and fake accounts, these opportunists managed to snatch up hundreds of appointments, forcing regular drivers into multi-day ordeals just to renew their licenses. The county has since cracked down, voiding over 200 suspicious bookings and introducing legislation to make selling DMV appointments a criminal offense with a $500 fine.

I have to admit, part of me respects the hustle. It’s truly supply and demand at its finest. But the DMV? That’s a whole new level of niche capitalism.

While officials pat themselves on the back for shutting down the scalpers, maybe the real problem isn’t the middlemen but the system itself. If there’s a market for people paying a premium to avoid government inefficiency, someone will always find a way to monetize the frustration. That’s not a crime spree – it’s a business model.

– Mark Emerson

Sports.

NYT. San Francisco Giants Sell Stake to Private Equity

Private equity (PE) investors are making another splash in sports with a 10 percent purchase of the San Francisco Giants by Sixth Street Partners.

Baseball was the first major league in North America to welcome these types of investors into their sport. PE firms and the leagues have rightfully recognized that live sports is one of the few appointment TV moments driving viewership, and they are looking to capitalize. Now, more than half of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams, including the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs, have relationships with private equity groups. Sixth Street is making diversified bets by investing in the N.B.A.’s San Antonio Spurs and the European soccer clubs F.C. Barcelona and Real Madrid.

The Giants are likely a good target for this type of transaction since they are currently owned by a syndicate of 35 owners, so what’s one more? Perhaps more interestingly, some of the money will go to upgrading a real estate development next to the ballpark, something the new owner of the Mets, Steve Cohen, has been eyeing for his part of Queens since acquiring the team in 2020. In fact, just this week, the New York City Council voted to approve zoning changes for the $8 billion casino project, clearing one more hurdle toward full approval.

– Mike Bova

Culture.

The Economist. The business of second-hand clothing is booming

Recently, I bought a pair of vintage Levi’s jeans from a vintage clothing store in South Korea. A light-wash denim from the 1980s, it had just the right kind of fit and design that I cannot find in denim made nowadays. Wearing a pair of pants older than I am, I found myself echoing the old saying, “They just don’t make them like they used to.”

Clearly, I am not the only one who loves second-hand clothing. The second-hand clothing business is at an all-time high, with the global market for used fashion items now worth approximately $100 billion. McKinsey & Co. estimates that this industry grew 15 times faster than retail clothing in 2023.

If you can get over the fact that someone else wore them, there are numerous reasons why vintage clothing is attractive. Some people buy them for their affordability; some prefer them for environmental reasons. Others, including me, just like their worn-in, classic look. At the very least, this trend is a welcome breath of fresh air from today’s consumerist urge to always own the newest and shiniest products.

So, the next time you pass by a vintage store or even a Goodwill, be trendy and go take a look inside!

– Will Kim

Dezenhall Resources.

A Note from Anne Marie Malecha.

Dez is looking forward to joining Mike Doble, Megan Meier, and Colleen Laughlin for what promises to be a lively and timely conversation about reputation and crisis management.

Thanks to Sergei Samoilenko and the team at George Mason University‘s Character Assassination and Reputation Politics Research Lab for hosting us at this year’s conference.

Learn more about CARP 2025 and tune into the live broadcast: https://lnkd.in/eCJYxB6i

Dezenhall Resources, Ltd., Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch LLP, Washington Office

– Anne Marie Malecha

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