Jazz Struggles on Streaming, But Vinyl Sales Give the Genre Hope

The fabled Village Vanguard in New York is filled on this April evening with fans of Samara Joy. This isn’t simply because the gifted 23-year-old singer brings to mind Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald at their peak. The audience is here to be in the presence of a once-in-a-decade jazz superstar whose career has soared since she was crowned best new artist at the 2023 Grammy Awards in February. In between songs, Joy says she’s still getting used to it. “People come up to me in the street,” she says, laughing in disbelief. “And I’m not even dressed!”

Listening intently from one of the club’s banquettes is Jamie Krents, head of Universal Music Group’s Verve and Impulse! record labels, whose catalogs boast some of the most important works of Fitzgerald and Vaughan, to say nothing of legendary saxophonists Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Now it’s Krents’s job to sell Linger Awhile, Joy’s much-lauded Verve debut.