[globular-toast]

Back in the day, it wasn't done due to elitism but rather necessity. Vinyl was the only distribution format for club tracks because of the unique way the DJ can physically manipulate the record for the purposes of beat matching, cutting and scratching. Since a mass production of vinyl incurs a large initial overhead lower quality "white labels" were produced in small numbers for newer releases.

Nowadays I'm sure it's just done for marketing purposes, though, as there's no reason not to release the track digitally.

[crtasm]

A lot of the releases I listen to are only sold as short runs of vinyl due to unlicensed samples.

[schrijver]

> Back in the day, it wasn't done due to elitism but rather necessity.

For sure. I should have mentioned the current trend, as vinyl-only labels are having something of a resurgence.