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Displaying records to friends and family can be really exciting, but it can also be difficult. Music is technically not a visual medium, but collecting album art is an extremely popular pastime. Some people also find it fun to actually display the discs themselves. Care should always be taken to ensure the safety of the collection. No one likes a broken record.
Framing and Hanging
There’s nothing stopping anyone from placing a record back into it’s jacket and placing it inside of a picture frame. Collectors who go this route will want to ensure that the glass isn’t so tight that it presses on the record and causes any stress to it. Glass helps to protect the album art from dust and sunlight. Nevertheless, it’s still a good idea to display records in an area where they won’t fade.
Small hooks can be used to place LPs gently on a wall without frames or glass. This makes it much easier to access the actual vinyl whenever someone wants to play it. On the other hand, it makes it more likely that the album will fall on the floor. This can damage a record, and it’s also pretty embarrassing if it happens when other audiophiles are around.
Picture Discs in all their Glory
Some albums are already works of art. Vinyl records have at times been colored with certain patterns so that they can be admired each time they’re played. On the classic rock end of the spectrum, Tubular Bells received what is probably the most famous example of a picture disc. Some versions of the album have the cover art molded straight into the record. Collectors with more modern tastes might want to have a look at releases by bands as recent as Atreyu. These records don’t need to be displayed in any particular fashion since they’re already so unique.
Timepieces and Time Capsules
There is another option for those who want to truly ensure that a particular record album is never played. Some people actually buy clock mechanisms and mount them on the b-side of an LP. The makeshift clock can then be displayed on a wall. This is a good option for those who have a record they want to display but lack the jacket and art.
While some artists have resorted to melting records into various shapes, this is offensive to just about every music fan who ever lived. Making a record into a clock preserves it so it could still be played in the future. Of course, the majority of people will want to look at other ways of displaying records.
