Hands-on with Tiny Vinyls new tiny record player

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The miniature record maker Tiny Vinyl has announced some tiny accessories for its pocket-sized singles, including a new Tiny Vinyl Player ($49.99), crate ($19.99), and display frame ($14.99). The lineup is available exclusively at Target starting today, July 12.

Tiny Vinyl debuted last August as a new way for music lovers to enjoy some of their favorite artists’ singles in physical format. (For my fellow Millennials out there, they’re basically a new take on HitClips.) Each four-inch, fully functional Tiny Vinyl record has one song per side and is numbered, making them highly collectible. The current Tiny Vinyl catalog features releases from several dozen artists, including BTS, Chappell Roan, Doechii, Kid Cudi, Noah Kahan, and Zara Larsson.

In a press release, Tiny Vinyl co-founder Neil Kohler said the company’s new accessories are a direct response to fan requests. Co-founder Jesse Mann added: “These new products give music fans and collectors everything they need to build out their own little Tiny Vinyl universe, a setup as fun and personal as the music they love.”

Hands-on with Tiny Vinyl’s new player and accessories

Tiny Viny’s new accessories range in price from $15 to $50.
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

Tiny Vinyl records are playable on many standard turntables at 33 RPM, making the Tiny Vinyl Player an inessential novelty purchase for most adults who are already into the vinyl-collecting hobby. I think it has much more appeal as a “baby’s first record player” that parents buy for their kids. My younger self would’ve had her American Girl Dolls DJing with it. (American Girl actually sells a toy turntable for the same price already, but it’s not functional.)

The player is a manual belt-drive turntable in a box with a faux leather exterior. Inside, there’s a small storage pocket, a simple control panel, and built-in speakers. It has Bluetooth support if you’d prefer to pair it with a nicer wireless speaker or headphones instead. You can also plug in a wired speaker on the back.

The storage pocket can comfortably fit about six Tiny Vinyl records — preferably, ones you’re not precious about. When the player’s lid is shut, it hits the corners of their gatefolds unless they’re pushed to the back of the pocket.

They are, indeed, tiny vinyl.
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

The player’s control panel features a power button, an audio output selector with an LED indicator light, and a volume slider. When it’s on, its silicon platter doesn’t start spinning until you unlock its plastic tonearm, raise it with its cue lever, and move it over the platter. The tonearm and its lock are a little delicate; those are the only parts I’d be worried about a child accidentally breaking.

Tiny Vinyl sent me three different mini-records to test on the player. It offers the kind of audio quality you’d expect for $50: pretty tinny, muffled, and a little distorted. (I also played the records on my regular turntable for comparison’s sake, and they sounded 10 times better.) On the upside, I couldn’t hear the player’s interior mechanisms at all when it was on — it runs really quietly.

The Tiny Vinyl Player supports Bluetooth and wired speakers. (That blue indicator light means it’s paired with my JBL Charge 5.)
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

The Tiny Vinyl Player comes with a USB cord and power adapter. A company representative told me that it should only be plugged into an outlet, as hooking it up to a laptop or another device with a USB port won’t give it enough juice to work.

The Tiny Vinyl Storage Crate can hold up to 30 Tiny Vinyl records. It has the same pebbled pleather finish as the player and is designed to sit beneath it. There are four indents on its surface where the player’s feet are supposed to go.

The Tiny Vinyl Storage Crate can hold up to 30 mini-records. (I only had three on hand.)
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

Tiny Vinyl’s new 2×2 Display Frame is meant to showcase your four favorite Tiny Vinyl covers. Its build quality is also on par for the price: It’s made with MDF (medium-density fiberboard) and an acrylic pane. Right out of the box, my initial review unit was splitting in several spots and had dried adhesive on some of its corners. (Tiny Vinyl had a replacement in the mail at the time of writing, and I’ll update this story if it’s any different.)

The display frame comes with four clear plastic sleeves bearing the Tiny Vinyl logo. The company rep confirmed that these are made from polypropylene, which won’t damage your records with off-gassing over time like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) sleeves.

Vinyl is back in a not-tiny way

Tiny Vinyl records work on many standard turntables.
Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

The press release noted that Tiny Vinyl’s inception was motivated by two recent trends: miniature collecting and vinyl collecting. The former gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic, largely thanks to videos of miniature builds on social media. They tap into viewers’ desire for control, fascination with craft, and penchant for the adorable, experts told NPR last spring.

The vinyl revival, meanwhile, has been brewing for nearly two decades now. According to a report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), U.S. vinyl sales have seen 19 years of consecutive growth. Last year, they hit $1 billion in revenue for the first time. (That’s not even counting pre-owned vinyl.) Call it the Taylor Swift effect: The singer-songwriter’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, sold over 1.6 million copies on vinyl last year, per a report from Luminate, an entertainment industry analytics company. That’s 5.5 times as many units as the second-bestselling vinyl release of 2025, Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend, which sold 292,000 copies.

There are several factors behind the vinyl resurgence, two being mere nostalgia and consumers’ growing interest in owning physical media. Another is because popular artists like Swift (and their labels) are embracing the format alongside their fans.

In recent years, this has increasingly involved a strategy of releasing multiple vinyl variants of the same album as a means of driving sales, according to another Luminate report. These special, often limited-edition pressings boost the collectible factor and fuel fan FOMO. (For her part, Swift released 11 different vinyl variants of TLOAS, including nine webstore exclusives that were only available for a short time.) Tiny Vinyl records, which are chart-eligible with the RIAA and Billboard, are yet more variants to hunt down.