February 8, 2011
Ortofon is the world's largest and oldest manufacturer of phono cartridges. For the kids, those are the pieces of turntables that turn squiggles on the big piece of vinyl known as a "record" into sounds, like Britney Spears "3 (Club Remix)". You can find records at record stores and thrift stores, pretty much, and you can order them sometimes from bands trying to be all cool and stuff. Or you can still get them in the dance and DJ scene, even though many, many DJs have moved on to totally electronic setups with digital musical delivery. That being said, you can't scratch properly without the turntable and thus the phono cartridge, CD scratchers on the market notwithstanding.
The Ortofon Vinyl Preservation Academy is a shadowy organization working for the rights and dignity of analog music delivery systems everywhere. Or something like that. It's actually kinda hard to tell from their Facebook page what they're doing, but they definitely love vinyl DJs. You can go there and watch plenty of videos of scratching and cutting and other DJ maneuvers. Go ahead. We'll wait.
See? Wasn't that interesting? I don't know how they distribute these StickerGiant stickers but I want one for my laptop so I can seem cooler than I am.