Big things come in small packages, or so the old saying goes — and Neil Kohler and Jesse Mann, the partners behind Tiny Vinyl, are putting that idea to the test. As you might expect given the name, Tiny Vinyl offers listeners a highly condensed listening experience: Each release offers two songs, one per side, on a four-inch platter that's about as big as the label on a regular record. In concept, it isn't unlike the old 45, but in execution, it's more robust, with full-fledged artwork and liner notes.

It's obviously more of a collectible for fans than an audiophile's dream, but with a major rollout supported by Target, there's clearly a demand for the type of connection represented by Tiny Vinyl's business model. With that in mind, we were excited to speak with Neil and Jesse about where this all started for them, the challenges they've faced along the way, and what the future holds. Check out the full list of upcoming releases here, and read the full interview below.

I was wondering if we could begin by talking about the impetus for Tiny Vinyl. I heard about it through a friend who's planning on buying a whole bunch of these things for his wife, so word is spreading not just through press releases, but people who are actually excited about the product.

Jesse Mann: Great. The impetus was a couple years ago, Neil, my partner, has had a long history in the toy business, specifically toys and collectibles. For 30-plus years, I've been in a bunch of different businesses, but most recently for 15, 16 years as a concert promoter. And we were talking and he was like, you know, the miniaturization of everything has just been so successful. Think of Barbie or Matchbox or Lego or any of those items. What do you think about the idea that there could be a small vinyl record that's playable? 

Neil used his experience as being part of the original team that brought Funko Pop to the US to say "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if these kind of matched?" After months and months of building a prototype, being able to take it to an artist and put it in an artist's hands — Daniel Donato was the first artist, and he immediately felt that there was a there there. He got really excited and was like, "Hey, let's make these. I own the masters for my music." That was the key point to be able to replicate something. Someone that had ownership rights.

So Daniel provided audio. We took that audio, created some art that his team approved, created, you know, TV 0001, made them, and gave them to him. He took them out on tour. They sold very quickly on the merch table; he was only able to put a few out at night. And that kind of gave us the wind in our sails to say, okay, there's probably a business here that's standalone. That's music-focused. How do we make this fun and cool? And most importantly plays on the majority of record players in the world at 33.3 RPM? 

So that's sort of how it came together. Slowly other artists, just through hand to hand combat, frankly, of living in Nashville and having relationships that I used to have in the music industry and relationships that Neil had, came on board as more of like a test cycle. That was 2024, where whether it was Rainbow Kitten Surprise or Bears Den out of the UK or Dexter and the Moon Rocks or a lot of country artists here said, "Yeah, we like this too. Let us use it for sales, DTC, merchandise, promotional reasons, whatever it might be." All the while, Neil had been talking to Target about it, and they were really excited. 

So you've got kind of the combination and the natural progression of, I guess I would call it, to some extent, business development, but like a one-to-one relationship side of business development. More of a wider conversation with all of the labels, introducing them to the market. And then Neil's relationship with Target saying, "Yes, let's do this." And kind of the marriage of the manufacturing plus the retail desire plus the IP coming together to launch.

That touched on a lot of things that lead to what I really want to talk about. Everything you're saying makes perfect sense from a marketing standpoint. It's a nice hook to get people's attention. The merch angle is obviously there. But I think the feeling that's behind people responding to something like this kind of dovetails with the anti-Spotify sentiment that we're seeing develop. One of the things that we really talk a lot about here is active listening, and how streaming discourages that. And how whatever you might believe about vinyl audio fidelity, whether it actually sounds better than digital or whatever, the fact is that you're forced to engage with the music in a way that you aren't if you're just letting it pipe through a speaker and spin off on an algorithm by itself. 

Given that you have this background in music promotion, I wonder how much of that was front of mind for you. I mean, do you guys feel the same way? Do you feel like you've lost a little bit of a connection with music that we had when we were younger listeners?

Jesse: There's a graphic, actually, in one of our decks that I'm going to show you really quickly that basically speaks to what you just mentioned.

So you've got the streaming on one side, the vinyl on the other, and us in the middle, right? And the vinyl side, yeah, is cool and collectible and rare and engaging. Some of it's expensive, and it's definitely not portable. Very rarely are people picking up a 12-inch and walking around at a show. And streaming, unbelievably convenient and easy.

You've got literally 10 million songs in your pocket or whatever the actual stat is at this point. But it's a very passive listening space. So yeah, I do think what fans want is a physical connection to their favorite artist. It's why they buy merch at a show. It's why show posters are still exciting, especially limited editions. And when someone opens up, whether it's a Tiny Vinyl or a 12 inch, they have art in their hands, both playable audio art as well as 2D art, visual art, that is their connection to the artist.

And I feel like the fact that you only have two songs on these increases that concentration even more. You're not just engaging with one side of an album at a time. You've purchased two songs. If you open it, if you're not just treating it as a collectible, you're opening it, you're listening to side one very quickly and then side two. So you have to pay attention to the music in a way that I don't think people have been forced to do, or sometimes even allowed or encouraged to do, for a long time.

Neil Kohler: I'm glad you're bringing that up, because it's something I think we've underestimated — the fact that it's a different format. I mean, have we sent you samples? Have you got physical samples? We've got to get you some samples. Seriously, here, I'm going to do this just because it's so much fun for me. Here's a piece we did with Lindsey Stirling. Every format is the same. It's all the four inch by four inch format.

But it's a real album. It's a real jacket cover. And when you open it up, it's got a real liner inside that's just like a record liner. It's just tiny. And then when you pull this out, it's a tiny little record. When you hold that in your hand, it's like, whoa, that's so cool. But what you're saying is really something I don't think we've thought about, because when you put this down and you're going to play it on your regular turntable, you actually have to pay attention, because there's no auto setting for four-inch vinyl. So you could put the needle down and hit nothing but felt if you're not careful, right? You actually have to listen actively, because it's only four minutes and then it's going to be over and you have to pick the needle up and take it back.

I hadn't thought about the actual forcing factor of the form, but that's clever. That's really clever.

Neil: What we think more than anything is that people want to physically connect with the artists they love and that on tour, 12-inch vinyl is a little bit of a hassle because it's heavy for the tour team. It's a brick in the case for the tour to carry around. And then nobody wants to leave a concert and carry a piece of vinyl through the city until they get home. This fits in your pocket and it's a little bit more affordable.

‍Another one of the things that we talk about a lot with the acts who are adding their music to Harmonic is the thought that fans really do want to support their favorite artists. They do want to spend money supporting musicians. There was a generation or two when it seemed like people felt like music should be free and they didn't understand why they should be asked to pay anything for it, if that was ever the case, I don't believe it is now. I think more people are starting to understand.

Neil: I think they want to show the artists that they love them by buying their merch and they want to show the other fans how big of a fan they are. They didn't just get the sticker pack and the poster, they got the record, the vinyl, the blue jean jacket, and they're in. They're like super in. Tiny Vinyl is a great solution for that.

Yeah, there's two things. You could see this as just a gimmick or like a neat marketing tool, but I also think it resonates with listeners in a way that… I'm not sure how many people who are doing the kind of thing that you're doing really understand it yet.

Neil: I just want to make a couple of qualifiers because, you know, making vinyl is a bit of a black art. You know, the stampers, the negative press that actually creates the grooves. It's not trivial to make four minutes of music fit in four inches of vinyl. But the other thing I would say is it is somewhat subjective in some cases as far as the quality of the sound. I mean, you never put the densest symphonic music on the inner track. That's always on the outer part of the 12-inch vinyl, because that's got the longest straight groove really to play it on, right? So on a four-inch vinyl the quality is very good, but it's not, you're not gonna be sitting there with headphones going, "Let's play the score to 2001: A Space Odyssey on this." That's not what you're buying Tiny Vinyl for.

Right. That actually makes me want to ask, have you guys wanted to produce Tiny Vinyl for any songs that you haven't been able to because of the limiting nature of the format?

Jesse: Jam bands are not going to fit into this format anytime soon.

Neil: Yeah, I mean, I would love to do Dark Side of the Moon and it'd be tough to fit a few of those songs. I'll be honest, we've made a couple even this short time that we've been in business that didn't work. And we would love to have made them work. But the sound, the quality of sound that we could recreate at four inches for the density of content that we were asked to make, it just didn't work. We told the partner, "We love you guys, we'd love to do this, but we don't feel like it passes our quality standard," because it was a dense symphonic piece and it didn't work. So we just passed on it. So the answer is there's a lot that we want to do, but there's some that we can't because they're too long or too intense to fit in this format.

Jesse: And I would say that when you look at this overall product, you know, it's starting with a collectible, right? It's starting with a piece of merch. It's fun. It's adorable. It's probably the most stolen thing off of an intern's desk, you know, ever, right? The fact that it's playable is really key and really fantastic, but, you know, only so many tone arms in a turntable's world can make it to that inner diameter.

Tiny Vinyl plays really well on a manual turntable where the actual tonearm can get there. And we're working with lots of different turntable manufacturers to explain, "Hey, you know what? Your automatic turntable doesn't normally track to that point." About 75, 80% of turntables in homes are manual. That's your classic needle drop. And you'll see from Neil's demo, they play great.

But if you're on a turntable that won't let you turn autostop off, you're going to have problems playing it. And we understand that that's just the case and that's okay. This is not meant to be an audiophile product.

Neil: Jesse summarized it really well. It's adorable, it's collectible, it's fun, it's fan support, and it plays. But it plays as like, you know, the fourth or fifth priority in the hierarchy of needs.

These things that you're talking about, like having to account for the variation in fidelity, turntable statistics — how much of that did you have to learn as you went along, and how much of it did you know going in?

‍Jesse: Oh man. I wouldn't say either of us have a doctorate in vinyl manufacturing, but luckily, we're partnered with the largest vinyl producer in the world, GZ Media. They have three pressing plants in North America — Toronto, Memphis, and Nashville — and we work specifically with the Nashville team from a fulfillment perspective. The product is made in Czechia and no one else out there can create a product from scratch like this that literally didn't exist before. 

There are lots of little interesting nuances. The amount of data that changes from the outside 12-inch diameter to the four-inch, or to the inside of it, is significant, and that creates different waves and waveforms that are, you know, how big the sound is. So all of those things, yeah, that took a long time for us to not just learn, but realize what the limitations are and what kind of product we want to sell. So we've been really careful not to, what's the British term, over-egg the pudding where we're, where we're saying that we're going to replace a 180-gram, 12-inch, you know, remastered version of A tribe called Quest's Low End Theory. Could it have, you know, "Scenario"? Could we make one that has "Scenario," has a three-minute track on it that's really cool and tiny and fun? Absolutely. But from an audio perspective, it's not meant to be that. That's not the goal here.

For a long time, lead time for manufacturing vinyl was kind of a nightmare. I don't know to what extent that's still the case; how far out you have to plan these things, how much you have to account for supply.

Neil: Yeah, capacity in the vinyl world has shifted in response to demand, which has been growing 15 to 20 percent a year for the last 10 years. And GZ Media, who Jesse alluded to earlier, is the largest vinyl manufacturer in the world. Their main plant in Czechia is the biggest vinyl producing plant in the world.

They have three satellite plants here in North America, and their most recent plant is the Nashville Record Pressing facility, and we're in Nashville, so we work with them very closely. We have the ability to add an unlimited number of presses to make as much Tiny Vinyl as we need to. Today we manufacture about 2000 units per press per day. That's extremely scalable, and is scaling already, because the demand has been huge, which is fun. So yeah, it's typically 75 days, let's say three months is probably what it takes from somebody reaching out to us and saying, "Hey, we want to make a Tiny Vinyl." They give us the audio and the art, we go back and forth a little bit, and then three months later, they've got Tiny Vinyl on sale.

And is that kind of how it works now? People are approaching you rather than the other way around?

Neil: Yeah, we've been fortunate because of the work we did, particularly with Target. Target got very interested in the concept early and made it clear to their partners at Universal and Warner and Sony that they wanted to do something here. And that filtered through the different ecosystems at Virgin and Disney and Hive and Atlantic Records and Republic and Interscope and all their other imprints. We've had one title on the shelf at Urban Outfitters, which was this Lindsey Stirling piece I shared with you earlier. That's the only piece that's actually been at physical retail so far. But when we go out this fall and we have a huge assortment of titles on the shelf in every Target retail store, we think there's going to be a lot of interest and a lot more demand coming our way. And we're already talking to Barnes and Noble and Walmart and Amazon and the other outlets, but first things first. It's really the labels who are our customers.

The last thing I want to ask, if you're willing or able to answer, is just what you guys are listening to.

Jesse: I tend to start with classical in the morning. Looking right now, I listened to Shostakovich yesterday morning. And then it kind of progresses through there. What am I listening to now? I really love Parcels. I really love a small band called the Magic Hours. Someone introduced me recently to Louis Stubbs Jr., who's kind of like a blues guitar player. Vampire Weekend, I think, is the last great indie band that's out there right now. But I'm constantly listening and I'm also learning a lot from my kids. 

I would say, you know, I definitely tend, living in Nashville, not towards the modern country. I like the NPR country, as they call it. So that's the Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, Tyler Childers, and Sturgill Simpson world. But yeah, I try to listen as much as I possibly can.

Neil and I also did see — when Bonnaroo got canceled, we went to see Justice together in June. I've seen them a couple of times, and that was really, really special.

Neil: Yeah, I've got a pretty eclectic palette myself. I like some country, I don't listen to a lot. I like Elderbrook. I like house music. So Satori, you know, DJs, a lot of DJs. Jesse recommended Justice, and Justice is on my playlist all the time now. And I like classical music too. Classic rock, Pink Floyd, probably Pink Floyd, you know, once a week.

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