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Vinylogue

Steve Aoki

EDM giant, collector extraordinaire, vinyl connoisseur, and entrepreneur — Steve Aoki’s path is one with a thousand turns.

By Sam Tornow / Photography by Brad Heaton

Steve Aoki contains multitudes.

He’s a walking spectacle — a neon blur of crowd-surfing, bass drops, and airborne cakes. To the masses, he’s the face of high-octane DJ remixes and viral stage antics. To others, he’s the relentless force behind the Kills in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. But those who really know him still see the hardcore kid from Newport, California — skating through the streets in oversized jeans, a go vegetarian tee, and Sharpie-scrawled X’s on his hands.

More than anything, though, Steve Aoki is a collector.

As a kid, it was Wolverine and Punisher comics. As a teenager, vinyl records. Decades later, trading cards and high-priced Kaws pieces. He’s obsessed with owning and preserving culturally significant artifacts. That fascination led him to launch Audio Media Grading (AMG) in 2023, aiming to create a standardized grading and slabbing system for vinyl. Purists may resist, but Aoki sees it as a way to safeguard music history while letting records appreciate in value — just as trading cards did in the COVID-era boom.

Like many others, Aoki’s vinyl fascination came from his older brother. Ten years his senior, his brother Kevin had a whole cache of Licorice Pizza — a local, famous record store — logo on them. While the sound interested the younger Aoki, the covers and the lifestyle were what really hooked him.

“Part of the culture of listening to this music is dressing a certain way,” said Aoki. “Everyone had the same bowl cuts, and they had these long trench coats, like military green jackets, and they all drove Vespas and they all had this style. They were very counterculture. As a kid, I didn’t know what counterculture was, but they all just looked really cool and different.”

Quadrophenia

Who, The

2024

Rock, Hard Rock, Mod

2 x Vinyl, LP

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For Aoki, the perfect collision of cover art, music, and fashion came with The Who’s 1973 double album. The cover shows a twenty-something perched on a motorbike, draped in a black trench coat with the band’s name emblazoned on the back — a snapshot of culture in motion.

It wasn’t just an album; it was a blueprint for how sound and style intertwine. “It represented everything about the sound and the culture and what these kids look like,” Aoki said, a revelation that shaped his understanding of music’s role beyond the speakers.

When Aoki’s brother turned 17, their parents sent him to military school, leaving behind a stack of records. Steve liked the music, but it never felt like his. So he set out on his own path, diving headfirst into hip-hop.

His first obsession? Nightmare On My Street. The video played in constant rotation on television, but it was the campy horror visuals in the music video that sealed the deal. The eerie synths, the playful storytelling — it pulled him deeper into the world of music that felt more like his own, something he discovered.

“I I had that opportunity to get that 45, and my mom let me buy it,” he recalls. That’s such an important record for me because it’s my first vinyl record I bought.”

From there, he chased the sound for several years, diving into West Coast hip-hop. But something was missing. He ired artists and groups like N.W.A. — the bravado, the attitude — but their world wasn’t his. A self-described scrawny outcast with a growing vinyl collection, he memorized every lyric but never saw himself in the music. No matter how much he loved it, it wasn’t a culture he could claim as his own.

Finding His Sound

Aoki started freshman year of high school younger and shorter than most of his classmates. The seniors towered over him. He took positive attention wherever he could find it.

One day, he spotted a kid lost in his Walkman, nodding along to a track only he could hear. Noticing Aoki’s curiosity, the kid ed him an earbud. That small gesture — an invitation to listen — was a turning point. For the first time, music wasn’t just something to ire; it was a way in, a connection.

“There was this hard older kid that had it all … I that I drove hours to Thousand Oaks just to see his records. It just meant so much to me.”
Steve Aoki

The next day, the same classmate handed Aoki a mixtape packed with Youth of Today. He devoured it. The speed, the fury, the unfiltered emotion — it all felt immediate, urgent, his.

Aoki shaved his head and drowned his barely 100-pound frame in size 40 baggy pants. At night, he skated with the other hardcore kids, carving through the streets like they owned them. At 14, he gave up meat — because that’s what hardcore kids did. Then he claimed straight edge. No hesitation. No half-measures. He was all in.

Live music was the next step. The bands they watched weren’t untouchable rock stars in massive arenas — they were kids, just like them. No barriers, no separation. Just teenagers screaming on the floor, thrashing, pouring everything they had into the moment. And that made it feel possible.

Seeing it up close changed everything. It wasn’t about idolizing from a distance anymore — it was about realizing they could do it, too. The only thing standing between them and the music wasn’t fame or industry connections. It was just picking up an instrument and stepping into the chaos. Aoki started the political hardcore band This Machine Kills in his late teens.

Chung King Can Suck It

Judge

2024

Rock, Hardcore

Vinyl, LP, 45 RPM, Album, Reissue, Remastered

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“I always felt like I had limitations in life,” Aoki said. “When I found hardcore I found this kind of mentality of ‘fuck it, we could do it all.’ We could start a band. We could dress how we wanted. We can listen to music that no one else understands… It was such a big moment of freedom, and those records were a huge part of that.”

For Aoki, record labels were as essential as the bands themselves. If a label dropped something, he had to own it. Revelation Records, based in nearby Huntington Beach, became a key fixation, deepening his connection to the hardcore scene. But discovering it late meant missing its early releases, which only fueled his urge to dig deeper into the label’s history and the music that shaped it, driving him to full-on fanaticism.

Around this time, Aoki got his first taste of scarcity in collectibles — a concept that would captivate him for life. As a younger kid in a scene dominated by older peers, he watched them own first pressings and limited runs, records they had scooped up when they first dropped or at live shows, long before Aoki even knew what hardcore was. Owning these records meant having elevated status in the culture. He became fixated, doing whatever it took just to see these rare records, let alone own them.

“There was this older hardcore kid that had it all. So, I just wanted to go to his house to look at them, hoping that he would give me one,” he confessed. ”I that I drove hours to Thousand Oaks just to see his records. It just meant so much to me. I’d be like, ‘My god, there’s a hundred of those. I can’t even believe I’m looking at it.’’

Steve Aoki with a rare Gorilla Biscuits 'Start Today' vinyl pressing

Steve Aoki with a rare Vermiform Records compilation from 1993.

While hardcore remained a cornerstone of his musical DNA, Aoki’s tastes continued to evolve. He immersed himself in the DIY punk scene, playing in bands and booking shows, further solidifying his connection to music’s underground. This DIY spirit would later manifest in his entrepreneurial ventures, including launching his record label, Dim Mak Records, a platform that is now associated with genres like U.S. electro, dance punk, and the wider indie-sleaze movement. As his label grew, so did his interest in EDM (electronic dance music), and he began DJing, remixing tracks, and eventually producing his own music. He became a tour rat, hitting place-after-place, sleeping in cars, mostly doing it himself; It was an evolution of the hardcore attitude.

In the process, he found his next sound.

Aoki’s DJ sets became a melting pot of influences, seamlessly blending hardcore, punk, and the burgeoning sounds of electronic music. His early performances were intense, complete with crowd surfing and champagne spraying, quickly garnering him attention, eventually propelling him to the forefront of the EDM movement, where he’s remained ever since. Tomorrowland, ULTRA, EDC — he’s a mainstay at all of the super-sized EDM festivals.

And as his audience has expanded, so did his vinyl collection.

Over the years, his stash grew into a massive archive, stacked with the first pressings he once dreamed of owning. Inside his mansion, he’s built a full-fledged library — an ever-expanding testament to his obsession. Rare test pressings, obscure imports, and one-of-a-kind acetates line the shelves, each with its own story. It’s less of a collection and more of a personal museum, a tangible timeline of his lifelong devotion to music.

In 2020, Aoki turned to trading cards and other collectibles with the launch of Aoki’s Cardhouse, his YouTube channel dedicated to grading and flipping trading cards. During a CNBC appearance to discuss NFTs in 2021, he showed off mint condition Tony Hawk, Hulk Hogan, and Kevin Durant memorabilia, and compared his collecting journey with a pirate searching for buried treasure.

This all came to a head in a casual comment during a 2021 house tour video with Sports Card Investors. As Aoki showed host Geoff Wilson his record collection, they discussed how vinyl lacked a centralized grading system, unlike other collectibles. It seemed like the perfect venture for Aoki, who had deep knowledge of records and other hobby markets. Two years later, in partnership with Rob Martinez and Collector Archive Services, Audio Media Grading was born.

“I started seeing [grading] in every other collectible,” Aoki explained. “We all saw it around 2020, when video games were skyrocketing to millions of dollars. It was the first time Super Mario Brothers sealed copies were selling for a million bucks. But no one’s going to buy a million-dollar copy of Super Mario unless a trusted brand name is grading it.”

To Slab or Not To Slab

Part of the high-end grading process involves slabbing — encapsulating a collectible like a card or comic book. Once a record is slabbed, it likely won’t be played again. This practice has sparked division within the vinyl community. Critics of slabbing argue it’s a cash grab, inflating the secondary market and turning vinyl into just another speculative asset, like NFTs, watches, or Pokémon cards. Others insist that records should be played, not sealed in plastic.

But proponents see slabbing as an essential evolution. Grading has always been part of the vinyl world (although mostly self-governed), and slabbing is a necessary step toward a more standardized system. Plus, more fans are buying records for the artwork or to the artist, not necessarily to spin them. In 2023, a report from Luminate revealed that 50% of vinyl owners don’t even own a record player. A defender of slabbing may say, “If that many collectors aren’t playing their records, what’s the harm in preserving a few historically significant ones in slabs?”

Aoki isn’t blind to the criticisms. He hears them loud and clear. He’s watched the videos, and he’s encountered similar objections in other collectible circles.

His most succinct response? “Not every piece of music should be graded.”

In the world of trading cards, only the most valuable ones get slabbed. More often than not sneakerheads, too, wear their shoes rather than leaving them on display. As for records, Aoki believes slabbing won’t impact the everyday collector. But grading, he argues, will benefit everyone.

“I have a lot of vinyl because I’ve been collecting it since I was a kid — 30 years of collecting,” he says. “I go through it now, handpicking certain pieces. This one’s tucked in the back, limited to 200 copies. I buying it, and I wouldn’t dare play it. I don’t want to add any more wear and tear.”

Since its inception, AMG was grown steadily. Aoki and Martinez were initially able to raise money around the organization. They’ve built a small team. At one point they even acquired a competitor, trying to cement their status as the place for grading. In his words, the goal is to “do what we can to keep expanding the space and inviting more and more people to understand the value of grading music.”

AMG’s journey seems to be just getting started, though. While slabbed records, whether done by AMG or not, have sold for tens of thousands dollars — in 2023, a 1996 Eminem factory-sealed album sold on Goldin for $64,200 — vinyl has a long way to go to catch up with the trading card or comic book worlds (if they ever do). Price tags aside, Aoki’s venture does, inarguably, preserve historical records that may otherwise not get played.

For him, it is a labor of love, protecting the physical aspect of a culture he’s spent a life time falling in love with.