'People don't own music anymore': Inside UAE's vinyl revival and the business behind it
Streaming is saturated. So, UAE artists are pressing their music onto vinyl instead
In the UAE, a small but determined community has found an answer in a familiar, but unlikely place — vinyl.
Jayesh Veralkar has spent 25 years on the business side of the music industry, most recently heading partner marketing for an entertainment tech company in the region.
When he moved to Dubai nine years ago, he struggled to find what he calls "soul" in the city's music scene. "I could just see everything on the surface level in terms of popular top 40 acts," he says. "The lesser-known music scene was a bit fragmented."
That changed during the pandemic. With his wife and business partner, Sarina, Veralkar founded Vinyl Souq — a community platform built around music discovery, in-person experiences and, at its core, vinyl records.
"We wanted to promote all styles of music, not box ourselves with any specific style," he says. "We want to curate cross-generational experiences... a very fluid platform for music discovery, to promote lesser-known sounds."
Records, he found, offered something streaming could not. "You're not just keeping songs. You're listening to the full albums... there is so much laborious activity that goes into this process, that we feel like people will have a little bit more appreciation with the physical format."
From marketplace to label
Vinyl Souq began as a record fair, bringing together the handful of shops and collectors that existed in the city at the time — The Flip Side, Raw Music Store, and later Metal East Records.
Over three years, it has grown into a platform of more than 50 curated experiences, including a 700-person mini-festival that activated six venues across Dubai simultaneously.
The natural next step was a label.
Vinyl Souq Records, the imprint's physical-media-first arm, was built to spotlight UAE-based talent through its ongoing compilation series, Made in the Emirates — a nod to the government's manufacturing initiative of the same name, reframed for culture.
"UAE is known for so many different things," Veralkar says. "But name a single UAE music artist that someone would know."
Volume one, released in January 2025, featured nine artists across more than 15 nationalities, spanning jazz, funk and fusion.
All 500 pressed copies sold out within the UAE — and for many of the artists involved, it was the first time they had been paid royalties for their original music rather than for a social media post or a live show. "Seventy years down the line, someone comes across and can track back — this was the scene in the UAE," Veralkar says.
The logistics problem
Making a record in the UAE is harder than it sounds, because there is no pressing plant anywhere in the region.
Volume one had to be mastered in London, its stamper cut in the Netherlands, and the discs themselves pressed in Mumbai, at a plant a former colleague from Veralkar's Sony Music days had reopened after four decades.
Volume two, a showcase of the UAE's electronic music scene curated by Shadi Megallaa, founder of The Flip Side record shop at Alserkal Avenue, marked a turning point.
The compilation — eight tracks, ten artists, including one three-way collaboration — was picked up by Word And Sound, a respected Hamburg-based distributor operating since the 1990s. It is now stocked in more than 30 countries, including the US, Australia, Japan, the UK, Sweden, Germany and Denmark.
Each double LP retails for Dh200 and comes with a download card for Vinyl Souq's Bandcamp page — the compilations are not available on streaming platforms.
For Megallaa, the appeal of vinyl has never been about a comeback. "People often talk about a vinyl resurgence, but from my perspective it never really disappeared," he says. "The people who truly loved the format never left. Vinyl has always operated on its own terms."
He has spent roughly three decades as a DJ and more than 20 years producing music, and says his approach to Made in the Emirates was less about filling a gap than leading by example.
"There is certainly a gap, but my focus has always been on doing things the way I believe they should be done, rather than trying to fill a particular void." He is reluctant to single out any one standout release from the compilation. "We haven't even scratched the surface of what this community can achieve. I genuinely believe the best is still ahead of us."
A scene rebuilding itself
Mostyn Rischmueller, the Australian DJ and producer known as Megadon Betamax, has watched the UAE's independent scene evolve since arriving in Dubai 18 years ago from Sydney, where he had spent the late 1990s producing hip-hop-influenced music and touring.
He and friends founded the label Voyeurhythm shortly after moving, just before the global financial crisis.
He believes vinyl sales have kept climbing over the years, driven by more people pressing records and manufacturing turntables and equipment — a reaction, in part, to the limits of streaming.
"It doesn't have the same experience. It's not a tactile object," he says. "People don't own music anymore — owning something real is a good thing." He also points to a growing wariness of AI-generated tracks circulating on streaming platforms as another reason listeners are turning back to physical formats.
His own label began pressing vinyl 15 to 16 years ago "more as a point of difference than anything," he says — a way of signalling commitment to a project, even though pressing remains expensive and slow.
As for whether much of a live scene remains, he is candid: DIY parties and clubs that were once common largely stopped before or during the pandemic, has left most working DJs today make their living from restaurant and brunch bookings rather than club nights.
He credits Vinyl Souk, and a handful of other local DJs and promoters, of helping to pull together something of "a DIY renaissance" in recent times.
Rischmueller met Veralkar before Vinyl Souq existed, when Veralkar was still talking through the idea of starting a record market. "I am fully supportive of that," he says. He believes younger listeners, particularly Gen Z, are drawn to the format too — whether they are DJing with it or simply listening on a good stereo system.
Music, made intentionally
For all three men, the appeal of vinyl goes beyond nostalgia. It is a response to a music industry that increasingly rewards volume over intention — and, they argue, a format built to outlast whatever comes next, including AI-generated tracks now surfacing on streaming platforms.
"As humans, we still feel the need to stay connected with humans," Veralkar says. "I feel like physical media will keep you a bit more rooted... with more intentionality and mindfulness."
Megallaa is less certain about what the next five years hold, but is clear on vinyl's role in it. "I do think we're moving into a future that feels increasingly disconnected from the physical world," he says.
"That's one of the reasons vinyl remains so important to me. It encourages people to slow down, own something tangible, and experience music in a much more intentional way."
