Halloween might have been and gone, but nothing embodies the spirit of the living dead quite like vinyl. Abandoned by Sony in 1989 in favour of CDs, the format was expected to go quietly into the night, but due to its superior sound quality and consumer disaffection with digital platforms, vinyl has lived on, growing stronger with each passing year.
And now it comes in an adorable 4-inch size, the format's first physical change in decades. Tiny Vinyl is exactly what it says on the tin: a vinyl record, but smaller. Due to their tiny size, the discs can only hold a single track on each side. But they play on a regular turntable with no specialist equipment required. And for collectability, they really are hard to beat.
A different kind of vinyl
Tiny Vinyl has its roots in a different kind of vinyl collectible altogether. Neil Kohler (who co-founded the company with former concert promoter Jesse Mann) previously launched Funko, the firm known for its Pop range of stylised vinyl figures based on characters and artists like Freddie Mercury, Back To The Future's Marty McFly, Noel and Liam Gallagher and Bart Simpson. "We saw the resurgence of vinyl records and thought 'Wouldn't it be cool if we could make a record that was small enough to fit inside the package of a Funko Pop?'" says Kohler.
They approached a local record pressing company with a view to producing some samples. But Nashville Record Pressing turned out to be not just any local pressing plant, but a division of GZ Media, the world's largest manufacturer of vinyl records. Talk about a happy coincidence.
But the engineering process was far from smooth.
"It was important to us to play at 33 RPM so that it could play on a normal turntable without any special equipment," Kohler says. "45s are cool, and certainly there's a place for them, but we wanted it to work just like a regular 12-inch vinyl." It turned out to be quite a technical challenge.
The outer grooves of a standard 12-inch record have a much longer circumference than the inner ones, so information can be spread across them more widely. That’s why you get better sound quality from the grooves towards the perimeter. With the grooves closer to the centre of the record, information has to be packed more densely, which means less good sound quality.
Given that a Tiny Vinyl sits within the label of a regular 12-inch record, there really isn’t much room to work with – hence the short running time of just four minutes each side.
Nevertheless, the engineers at GZ Media found a way. Three months after sending off some master recordings provided by singer-songwriter Daniel Donato (a friend of Mann's from his concert promoting days) along with some artwork they had comped up, Mann and Kohler received the first ever Tiny Vinyl discs. "We were kind of shocked that they were actually playable," says Mann.
They gave Donato 100 copies to sell on tour, which he had to ration to avoid selling out immediately.
Validated, they produced a run for Rainbow Kitten Surprise, a band managed by one of Mann's friends, and news spread by word of mouth. A meeting with the buyer at retail giant Target soon followed. Now Target stocks over 30 Tiny Vinyls, including releases from big names like Rihanna, Ariana Grande, The Rolling Stones, Mötley Crüe and Chappell Roan. You can see every release on Tiny Vinyl’s Instagram.
Decks appeal
Touring musicians love Tiny Vinyl, as not only are they eminently collectible, they're also much easier to cart around than a crate of 12-inches. And with streamers paying such piffling royalties, any extra merchandising opportunities are always welcome.
The sound quality of such a dinky record won't be up there with a 180g full-sized vinyl. But that hasn't stopped fans buying them – even if they don't have a way to play them; Mann points out that 50 per cent of vinyl buyers don't actually own a record player. "Lots of people put the vinyl on their wall to display instead, like a badge of honour," he adds. "It's a really palpable physical connection between a fan and an artist."
This is just one of the reasons he thinks vinyl will be around forever.
"Streaming is great, but it's almost too convenient," says Kohler. "It doesn't compare to holding something physically in your hands, opening it up, seeing the sleeve art, the credits and who they wrote with… You don't get that with Spotify. And you're not showing your favourite artist any appreciation by streaming them and giving them whatever fraction of a penny they get per play. If I buy the vinyl, or the CD, or the keychain, or the poster, I'm in. I'm a fan and I'm proud to show it. Tiny Vinyl is another way to say, 'I love what you're doing.'"
Opening the vinyl floodgates
So what’s next? Tiny Vinyl is planning a range of accessories for 2026, and would love to do something for Record Store Day, although the minimum required run of 2000 copies has proved "daunting" for the smaller independent labels and retailers whose day it is. But Mann and Kohler see Tiny Vinyl as an on-ramp to the world of vinyl records, a gateway drug for those who have grown up never experiencing the joys of physical media. Once you get one in your hands, it's hard to disagree.
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