50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

https://lightcapai.medium.com/the-great-return-from-digital-abundance-to-analog-meaning-cfda9e428752

by ResisBey • 7 months ago

274 340 7 months ago

lightcapai.medium.com

ResisBey2• 7 months ago

OP here. I wrote an analysis on the divergence between streaming saturation and physical media growth. Physical media has shifted from an audio format to a "token of identity" or a support mechanism for artists in an era where streaming payouts (marginal value) approach zero.

exitb2• 7 months ago

There’s also a very real utility to non-streaming media. It turns out that a system that lets you listen to anything is terrible for actually building a collection. Your „library” fills up with tons of stuff you „liked” at some point and saved as some sort of a bookmark. Over time it actually works against the goal of keeping track of the group of records you enjoy. When you introduce friction to the system, whether it’s having to buy something, or even hunt down and download an mp3, it results in better libraries.

toomuchtodo7• 7 months ago

I am one of these people. I buy to support the artist (usually $40-$50 for an album), but listen to the digital versions via Jellyfin and Plex (to avoid Spotify). I’ll also donate directly to artists, or buy tickets to their shows even if I cannot attend. Great analysis.

frankzander• 7 months ago

Tbh I would like to have a donation button on a artist website so I can donate and than download the album I like where I like.

toomuchtodo7• 7 months ago

Same. Let me just pay you to be an artist, and keep putting art into the world (while avoiding middlemen and platforms whenever possible).

al_borland• 7 months ago

Wouldn’t the artist offering you to buy the album from them, DRM free, accomplish the same thing while clarifying the transaction that’s happening?

Aboutplants• 7 months ago

I’ve wanted something like this ever since the early Napster days. Patreon is the closest thing but that puts an onus on the artists to produce content all of the time. If some of my favorite less popular artists had their Venmo in their Instagram profile I would probably use that.

nemomarx• 7 months ago

Bandcamp is pretty close to this experience if they set it as "pay what you want" (which a lot of artists do)

3rodents• 7 months ago

Spotify has this as an option for artists.

https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/fan-support/

https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/getting-a-fan...

dylan6042• 7 months ago

I bought the vinyl release which also came with the digital download of an album last year. When the vinyl arrived, there was a handwritten personalized thank you note from the artist. Best of all worlds

maccard• 7 months ago

In my band, we sell digital lossless albums on bandcamp for just that reason.

jwagenet2• 7 months ago

IMO, please continue buying records, but don’t buy tickets to shows you can’t attend. I can’t speak for live music, but in SF there is/was an issue of club nights selling out, but having low attendance due to people buying tickets as an “option”. This is a problem because it screws up venues planning for bar sales as a revenue source and deterring last minute buyers/door sales (who may either be heads or punters) who see a sold out show online.

toomuchtodo7• 7 months ago

I gift the tickets to those seeking them. Someone is still attending, it’s just not me. Good call out regardless to not mess with venue ops.

embedding-shape3• 7 months ago

but in SF there is/was an issue of club nights selling out, but having low attendance due to people buying tickets as an “option”.

As a bar/restaurant owner who sometimes host electronic parties, that sucks and does mess up a lot. But as a dance party attender, that sounds like a good thing, the parties tend to have way too high attendance, and if there is no space for people to actually move around and dance, I don't really know what the point of it even is anymore.

Epa095• 7 months ago

I have some friends on the east coast of Canada playing in a indie band. They have experienced this many times, that the venue is sold out but then only 15-20 people show up. Supposedly a lot of these places have people buying annual access packages to support the venue, but don't end up going.

They have now started touring in Europe instead. Many cities with short distances, and people actually show up for the show. Much more rewarding to play with actuall audience.

rendaw• 7 months ago

I've also done it once... it was a track that was vinyl only. I sent it to a guy who digitizes vinyl as a service.

Forgeties79• 7 months ago

I should offer this to people as well ha. I love doing it and love having all my records on my server.

jprokay13• 7 months ago

I’m in a similar boat. Many artists I listen to on Bandcamp offer cassettes(!) at a fair price and will charge a comparable price for the digital. However, I’ve seen some artists charge thousands for digital only but $10 for a tape that includes the digital version.

I don’t know why they do this, but I do know I have an ever growing stack of tapes I can’t listen to…

Aurornis2• 7 months ago

However, I’ve seen some artists charge thousands for digital

What? Do you have an example?

nine_k• 7 months ago

I sometimes see how artists who I follow on Bandcamp write about their struggle with ordering the production of vinyls, shipping delays and troubles, etc.

I'd rather them spend this time on doing their art, or going on with their lives. If you want to give an artist a token of appreciation, send them money. I always increase the suggested price of an album or track on Bandcamp to some interesting-looking number.

To produce, ship, and store an otherwise unused complex artifact just as a token of appreciation which is not otherwise enjoyed by the parties looks wasteful for me.

izacus• 7 months ago

I struggle to figure out how you came to the conclusion that a soulless money transaction is somehow comparable to buying a custom made vinyl album someone spent time on.

sbarre3• 7 months ago

I guess buying the vinyl is like buying a shirt or a poster now?

I support artists I like by going to their shows and buying lossless digital copies where possible (even if I listen to their music elsewhere).

But I don't want or need more physical "stuff".

larusso• 7 months ago

I still have my old BluRay collection which I build up from the mid 2000. This already was the replacement of the DVDs I had before. They still sit in the shelve because I don’t know what else to do with the space. Same goes for books etc. I mean I really like the covers etc and the fact one has a physical token. But I simply have too much of it in my house already. And replacing the stuff yet again feels useless. I also like the feeling that if I wanted I could simply let go. Before someone asks: The unit the BluRays are located is a TV unit. And getting rid of them would mean I have an empty shelve. They also cover the cable / power cord mess behind it a bit. So removing is actually not a solution. I would either need a replacement to put there as a cover or get rid of the TV unit shelve thing :). Typical 1st world problem that is.

sbarre3• 7 months ago

About 15 years ago I got rid of almost all of my physical media. I was moving a lot at the time (I've moved 13 times over the last 20 years, several times to different cities) and I had hundreds of CDs, DVDs and books.. It was literally a quarter of my boxes every time I moved..

So I sold and donated all of it, kept what had special value, and re-acquired a lot of it digitally.

I still think I made the right decision, although every now and then I miss something specific and regret it, but I get over it pretty fast.

colechristensen2• 7 months ago

Albums are art that can be displayed and one of the most accessible forms of real-art-connected-to-the-artist.

dylan6042• 7 months ago

On the wall above the table with my turntables hang the album covers of some of the albums that were influential in my musical path as a dj. The records are still in their sleeves in a flight case

embedding-shape3• 7 months ago

I guess buying the vinyl is like buying a shirt or a poster now?

Yeah, in some way that's true. In the house music scene almost every producer also sells vinyls of their best songs, sometimes "collectors editions", and also DJs obviously sometimes pride themselves on only playing vinyl. For the artists I really do enjoy, I tend to buy their songs + with the vinyl, as a way to support them, but I indeed have no way of actually playing them, and haven't had for more than a decade.

So here I sit with 20+ vinyl records, most of them unopened, and no record player. But I don't mind, I just want to give money to the artists that provide me joy.

LTL_FTC2• 7 months ago

Are these smaller artists that also have a Patreon? The first time I moved and had to move and get rid of all my stuff I swore I wouldn’t accumulate it anymore. As much as I like the idea of a vinyl collection I would not want to lug it around during my next move…Stuff is heavy.

agumonkey• 7 months ago

some do it as speculative collectible too

WillEngler• 7 months ago

Yeah, I've done this. I've bought records for years but only bought a record player recently. I would want to buy something at the merch table for a small band I like. They don't always have a shirt in my size but they always have records. Oftentimes the records went on loan to friends, which was a nice way of gently spreading my taste.

lanfeust6• 7 months ago

Yeah, I also buy digital for this reason.

maxglute• 7 months ago

yeah it's just something for display. I wish vinyl packaging came with a spine.

knollimar2• 7 months ago

It seems like a silly cargo cult to me. It feels like ewaste compared to a poster

oogali• 7 months ago

If it really is cargo culting, and the people buying the physical product are not keeping the manufacturers in check because they never play the vinyl, then I can see a potential situation where manufacturers ramp up to meet "demand" but at lower quality (improved profits).

The secondhand market becomes saturated with inferior pressings that are inevitably bound for landfills since they don't meet the quality/expectations of the people who actually play vinyl.

Hypothetically.

skeeter20206• 7 months ago

This doesn't make any sense; there's no craft here, where it's cheaper to press "bad" records vs "good" ones. You would literally need multiple production lines to intentionally execute this "strategy". Also a record cost next to nothing to make.

wlonkly• 7 months ago

What's the *e*-waste from a record and sleeve?

creatonez• 7 months ago

PVC releases potentially harmful vapors and is difficult to properly dispose of.

knollimar2• 7 months ago

You're right it's probably not ewaste. I think the record is entirely wasted along with the energy to produce it. The sleeve is the only value if you don't play it

Clamchop2• 7 months ago

What cargo do the cultists think is coming?

saltcured• 7 months ago

A wonderful sonic experience from ritualistic handling of a vinyl disc in a paper envelope?

Little do they know, the true sonic experience comes from wetting the disc with a special felt pad and watching the stroboscopic markings on the edge of a turntable platter...

Throaway198712• 7 months ago

Ive got 1300 records and I dont live in the USA. So there!

paleotrope• 7 months ago

Maybe they call it a Vinyl Disc Player?

thechao• 7 months ago

My dad grew up in the 50s & 60s. During COVID he purchased my daughters' the, I quote, "shittiest briefcase record players" he could find. Both girls listen to their music on their devices, but also buy vinyl. The other day, my eldest came down from her room complaining that her vinyl "sounded awful". I told her to bring it up with their Grampy. His response: "you can't appreciate good playback until you've heard awful playback on shitty record players like I had to.". My eldest is now plotting a complete hifi system, and is learning all about how to transfer "vinyl" to "digital" without losing the parts of the vinyl she likes.

This was a 5 year play by my dad. Shout out.

colechristensen2• 7 months ago

“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.”

Sometimes I wonder how much INTENTIONAL engineering people's discontent for good or ill happens across the spectrum of human activity. One thing is for sure, people don't talk about it much.

I can think of many examples.

HPsquared2• 7 months ago

Nobody would work if housing and food were super cheap, for instance.

kbelder• 7 months ago

The Fremen.

ResisBey2• 7 months ago

This! If you just care sound quality it becomes "product", no more an experience where you feel it. You tell me your story with your dad, all started by he buying his children "shittiest briefcase record players". An elderly woman gifted me a Brockhaus encyclopedia, making me see the stark contrast between Google's billion-dollar presence and the noiseless authority of the printed word.

bob1029• 7 months ago

480i content, CRTs, analog signal chains, non-digital transports, film grain, et. al., provide opportunity for our imagination to step in and produce a better interpolation than the ground truth might otherwise provide.

justincormack• 7 months ago

There is the old quote "I like radio, the pictures are better"

mrob7• 7 months ago

Music doesn't need so much support from imagination. You could argue that 24 fps film is a good thing (I disagree), because special effects are expensive and the bad motion quality obscures the flaws, but the same doesn't apply with music. Every major city has an orchestra full of skilled musicians and a concert hall with good acoustics. Just record it as it sounds in the room and put it on CD. You can apply the same philosophy to popular music genres too. CD quality is good enough for this to work. The only imagination needed is to pretend that stereo audio is the full surround sound experience, and that's not difficult when you're sitting in the right position.

xboxnolifes2• 7 months ago

At least with CRTs, it's not just the imagination. It's the actual analogue interpolation creating a different image than the raw pixel-perfect without blurring/smoothing.

This video and timestamp comes to mind: https://youtu.be/2sxKJeYSBmI?si=ikuOuZl-Ho5_VK4k&t=1613

disqard• 7 months ago

You reminded me of how Marshall McLuhan called TV a "cool" (as opposed to "hot") medium.

My interpretation is that back in his day, TV was grayscale, grainy, and interlaced, and therefore demanded that the viewer exert their imagination to "complete the picture".

I imagine that if he were to see today's 4k full-color 120Hz panels, he would call TV a "hot" medium.

KaiserPro4• 7 months ago

CRTs

Its only really recently that CRTs have been surpassed by modern screens in terms of colour.

However I'm not going back to CRTs anytime soon. Just a dumb OLED public signage display, and some high bitrate codec

microtonal3• 7 months ago

I was going to ask, when are the youngsters going to discover CDs? Much less prone to degradation to vinyl, lossless ripping, superior quality.

stefanfisk• 7 months ago

But sadly often horrible mastering.

detourdog4• 7 months ago

Introspect my favorite music media was cassette tape. I found them more robust and repairable then CDs.

browningstreet• 7 months ago

Never. Now we have tiny music (digital), and big music (LPs), so no need for medium music (CDs).

numpad04• 7 months ago

They don't, because just about anything available is better than CDs. Vinyl craze is actually not about "warmth", just genuinely more data.

xboxnolifes2• 7 months ago

If it is to happen, CDs and CD packaging would need a rebranding. Part of vinyl popularity is the large sleeve surface that provides a large canvas for a piece of art. Another part is that you get a physically large analogue object that, while previously would be cumbersome, has become interesting in a heavily digital age.

Imustaskforhelp2• 7 months ago

I am the youngster in this case and I am going to tell you something but we really need to move off of spotify.

I never really got onto spotify. I was always the youtube kind of guy, although I recently started listening to youtube music when I realized that my youtube feed was being impacted and youtube music's a better way to listen I guess

We really need to get to pen-drives first before CD as well I guess. Like downloading songs from youtube to run them in pen-drive or just listen to locally would show us youngsters something

I have been recently thinking of downloading all of my songs and uploading it to some vps so that I can listen to from anywhere. I feel like steps like these with media ownership would gradually help rediscovery of CD perhaps as well as we people would really love supporting the artists then as well and buying their CD might be the way if we end up downloading their musics.

Pen-drives are ubiquotus as well so perhaps we might need the pen-drive era in between

Also computers are absolutely removing the CD port. Even my desktop doesn't have it. I think it has the slot but I had my PC built in the store so they didnt really add it but literally no devices have CD except perhaps our car but I think even some new Cars might not have any CD's

If someone is forced to buy a CD player just to play CD's, it just adds more friction and I would argue that Vinyl is much more so for the aesthetics itself as well which I feel like CD's aren't really that much for.

So my point is, People aren't really using Vinyl for quality, they are using it for aesthetics. If CD's have a chance, they really need to get more on the ease of starting and pen-drives can help start the local-music movement.

NooneAtAll32• 7 months ago

Much less prone to degradation to vinyl

huh... and I thought the vinyl craze happened because it's more durable out of ye old formats

CDs are well known to oxydize in the span of decades of storage

kristopolous• 7 months ago

It's about owning the physical object like a concert ticket stub only way more accessible. They already have the music on their phone they don't need to listen to it on a record

rkuykendall-com• 7 months ago

I bought my kids all the songs on Tonie. Now I am buying them all the same songs on Yoto. I can't wait to just start burning CDs again.

antod3• 7 months ago

My daughter (16) and her friends are. She's asked for specific CDs as presents, and is now the guardian of my brother and mine CD stashes dragged out of the wardrobes and attics.

She'll trawl thrift shops for CDs too.

New CDs in shops now are much much cheaper than they used to be as well.

Giving up Spotify isn't on the cards yet though. I'll teach her how to rip songs next I reckon.

Bayart• 7 months ago

CDs suffer from different forms of degradation. I wouldn't trust a 50 year old CD if there was one as I do a vinyl record I picked.

Using the same master a CD would always sound better than a vinyl record, but I and many people would always take vinyl over a CD because of the praxis. Set and setting is important, in the end. Vinyl is more demanding in every aspects, it imposes more care and respect for what you're listening to.

reaperducer3• 7 months ago

I was going to ask, when are the youngsters going to discover CDs? Much less prone to degradation to vinyl, lossless ripping, superior quality.

I think they are. There was an article in the newspaper in the last month or so saying that CD sales are on the rise, and mainstream pop stars are releasing their music on CDs again.

As noted in another comment, I see CDs in music (and other) stores more and more where I live.

starky• 7 months ago

"you can't appreciate good playback until you've heard awful playback on shitty record players like I had to.". My eldest is now plotting a complete hifi system

This has strong energy of "Teach your kids how to play Magic, they won't have money for drugs."

DonHopkins• 7 months ago

"Teach your kids how to grow weed, they won't need money for drugs."

eudamoniac• 7 months ago

This is fine, but I'd encourage anyone to test all new audio setups with a blind triangle test at least, because most people can't distinguish most differences. If you can't tell a difference, using cheap equipment is great!

chamomeal• 7 months ago

Also a lot of the fun of audio is that it comes down to taste more often than you’d think. There are full setups for a few hundred dollars that I love, and fancy expensive setups that I don’t care for. For me the most fun part is hunting for under appreciated equipment in thrift stores. It’s amazing what you can find without much looking

Imustaskforhelp2• 7 months ago

Reminds me of one other comment on a different thread about a person trying an old CP/M machine and seeing some restriction like I think it was 50x70 pixel restriction or similar.

The point I am trying to make is that nostalgia can seem really good as that comment also pointed that, we often only remember the good parts of the system.

It's only when we recounter them that the bad parts resurface again.

Now instead of taking the fair criticism and perhaps doing something about it if possible, your dad tried to use the old technique of "back in my day ..."

And I will tell you kids ABSOLUTELY hate this. It's more so, Gramps you were forced to deal with this thing, we got digital and you aren't willing to understand my problem so why should I be stuck with the problem or the countless other examples.

I don't know much about vinyl but if it's the record players, perhaps your father can buy them a good one which could help them solve the issue they are facing.

utopcell• 7 months ago

respect

xnx• 7 months ago

Every child should start the technological hedonic treadmill at a low level and rapidly progress.

tracerbulletx• 7 months ago

Physical media collecting is about a lot of things but one of them is to have a physical artifact representing your relationship with an artist and the art to have in your home to touch, hold, pick up, and display. Makes sense to me.

RajT88• 7 months ago

This. Vinyls are the most "special" of media formats, because they require the most care. They function as wall art. If you actually want to listen to them, it's a ritual - something you have to make time and space for. You don't have that with anything else - an Artifact is a great way of putting it, but I would also suggest some other words: relic, totem, effigy, charm

mattsolle• 7 months ago

I was in this demographic for a log time. I wanted to support small artists in ways past just going to their shows. This seemed like a nice way to do that (not a big shirt guy for bands). It also helps that you are not only getting music but a large(ish) art piece as well with the vinyl covers. It also feels good to physically have and own something. I recently bought a Portable CD player as well. I think a lot of the Gen Z folks I talk to are starting to (if just wishfully) drift back towards physicality in some ways.

trelane• 7 months ago

Welcome to CD ownership! You should rip the music to a lossless format (e.g. FLAC) so you can play those and keep the CD from getting scratched.

This will also so let you listen to it on computers (including cell phones). You can also transcode the music to e.g. MP3 to allow easier storage.

microtonal3• 7 months ago

It also feels good to physically have and own something.

I gave all my CDs (probably more than a 1000) away about a decade ago. I find physical media annoying, they take up space and require more effort to use them. All those CDs became more of a burden. I guess it's because I grew up with cassette tapes, portable tape players, then CDs, then Discman, then Discman with buffering. Having gone through all of that, being able to play music on your phone is... excessively nice. I also care more about the music than the packaging -- if I want something nice on the wall, I would get a painting, litho, etc. instead.

The only thing I really miss is old-school music discovery. Reading reviews, then going to a record shop, listening a stack of records to decide, talking to record shop owners and friends for scoops, etc. was so much more fun than letting algorithms do recommendations. And after spending your monthly pocket money on two albums, you were invested in the music.

cm20122• 7 months ago

Surprisingly, chat GPT is amazing at recommendations. (I guess that it is also an algorithm). But it recommended me some great artists and explained why I might like them.

zkmon• 7 months ago

And 50% of that are for showing off their oddity in their social networks. The WTF factor. Do something archaic.

Aurornis2• 7 months ago

Or people just enjoy things. Let’s let people enjoy things.

skeeter20206• 7 months ago

You're both right of course, but it does seem to be an enjoyment filtered through the social media promoter lens, which makes me a little sad. Unlike say, the enjoyment I got listening to a record (and then CD) as I examined the liner notes and insert, this go-around feels like external validation by casual (or no) acquaintances. Historically this is not as valuable and can lead to some bad outcomes...

GaryBluto• 7 months ago

I've never seen "Let people enjoy things." used as anything other than a thought-terminating cliché. Just because something brings someone happiness doesn't mean it is immune to criticism.

petepete• 7 months ago

The same thing's happening to books where being seen as 'a reader' is a much higher priority than being well read.

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/booktok-tiktok...

crazygringo• 7 months ago

Yup, sold my turntable a while ago but kept my favorite ~20 albums. I rotate through them, displaying them on my bookshelf. They look great. They're art, they're vibe, they're decoration.

(Ultimately I went all-in on smart speakers, so I couldn't just hook up the turntable anymore, and getting a turntable/adapter that digitizes the audio to send over Bluetooth, just no...)

chollida12• 7 months ago

Makes sense. Most kids I know put records up on their wall as art. or as a way to pay artists directly by purchasing their album at a concert

If you want to listen to music then Spotify runs circles around vinyl as a medium. Records really suck for music quality which is why everyone dumped them when tapes came along and then even more so when cd's became a thing.

If Vinyl was a good medium to listen to music then no one would have bought cd's or had a Spotify subscriptions.

I can't imagine people going back to old school crt televisions to watch sports or movies either, but I do see people

risyachka• 7 months ago

Spotify is popular because it is cheap, convenient and has all the music in the world.

No one uses it because of quality or because it is the best medium for music.

chollida12• 7 months ago

Spotify is popular because it is cheap, convenient and has all the music in the world.

Glad you agree with me:)

Clamchop2• 7 months ago

Minor nit, cassettes were and are mostly worse audio quality than records and they coexisted for decades with their respective compromises. Cassettes replaced 8-track in the portable space and eventually enabled the Walkman.

CDs killed both.

prmoustache• 7 months ago

CD didn't really killed cassette. They coexisted peacefully for 2 decades. CD was nice, transportable but cassette was still more convenient to carry around because a walkman was much smaller[1], wouldn't skip when running/jumping[2], a cassette was less fragile and it was simply so much easier to leave a cassette in a deck and record anything you would ear on the radio on the go. Virtually nobody could/would live burn a dj mix from the radio.

Napster + portable mp3 player and smartphoned did kilómetros ll the cassette.

[1] especially the late 90's early 00's ones that were barely bigger than a standard cassette case.

[2] there was buffering for discmans but it wasn't 100% effective if skipping happened for longer than the buffer

skeeter20206• 7 months ago

I won't ever go back, but my teenage daughter wanted (and bought) a low-fi digital camera, "dad cam" videos are a common format, polaroid prints had a resurgence and I would not be surprised if we saw a retro tv/video movement. Go figure...

hipgrave• 7 months ago

Seems relevant to bring up that I'm currently working on a device that I hope will bridge the gap between vinyl and digital for some people: https://sleevenote.com

ajdude• 7 months ago

I've been on a physical media craze lately. It's been quite a few years since I stopped using Spotify, and I've been rebuilding my collection. Usually by hunting CDs at thrift stores to rip in iTunes to Apple Lossless. I own a bunch of vinyl records, and I've also ripped several of them.

After buying one vinyl album from a niche artist (djpoolboi), he actually then sent me a link to download the same tracks on flac, which I appreciated.

Lately I've found myself buying the same album both on vinyl for listening to at home, and on CD to rip for my digital music collection.

I work from home a lot so having to get up to flip the record gives me an excuse not to stare at my screen all day too.

stego-tech3• 7 months ago

Guilty party, here. I feel I can explain myself though, or at least offer context about why I own about a dozen records and no way whatsoever to play them.

I’m a recovering audiophile. I got into the hobby because I enjoy technology in its myriad aspects, and had discovered that good speakers can make things sound better. As I began accruing CDs and re-ripping into lossless audio, I also began collecting vinyls via Record Store Day events of bands or artists I found interesting at the time, or the odd Collector’s Edition bundles of albums or games. The thinking was that when I finally settled into my own place, I could invest into some Hi-Fi kit to play them back.

Well, I fell out of the audiophile sphere when I got into data analysis, physics, human biology, and psychology: I had become inoculated against the bullshit that permeates the space, but still recognized the value of my album collection. I’d also pivoted into preservation, and so I began accepting relatives’ collections of older formats, like 78s. I still lacked playback mechanisms, though I now had the space and budget - just more pressing projects than a record playback setup.

And so here I am in 2025, in an apartment that transmits energy between units, with an upstairs neighbor that does somersaults and tumbles all day (thus shaking the space slightly). The cost of everything has skyrocketed, but it’s no longer a matter of a turntable and a phono stage to get going (need isolation as well, and that ain’t cheap). I’ve also - shockingly - got other, more pressing projects in front of me, one of which is a bedroom Hi-Fi setup that has physical controls for music streaming instead of smartphone apps - again, not remotely cheap.

Right now, my meager collection sits in a crate under the sofa, languishing. One day I’ll get to enjoy them, but today is sadly not that day.

skeeter20206• 7 months ago

> One day I’ll get to enjoy them, but today is sadly not that day.

I've got news for you: you won't. Your post reads like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. Also it's 2026, and being the first day of the new year the PERFECT time to just go ahead and do it. You could probably buy a used record player today for < $50 and be listening to a record.

stego-tech3• 7 months ago

Your post reads like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good enough.

As someone with OCD: guilty!

In all seriousness though, I do have bigger, more important projects that consume the limited Capital I have first: finding new employment for one, replacing the sagging IKEA furniture and wobbly Amazon TV stands with something more resilient and long-lasting (eyeballing Salamander Designs for that), likely a new mattress for the bedroom, the list goes on.

That said, you're right in that I should be keeping a list of components updated with pricing and watching for deals. I know what I need, I just haven't chosen it yet, and that's the first step in any project build.

LTL_FTC2• 7 months ago

To second the other commenter, just go for it! Music doesn’t have to be blaring to be enjoyed. Just buy some turntable and begin enjoying your collection. Heck, you could even use headphones. I have a pair of open back headphones with a cable that is like 15 feet in length. So I can easily connect to my receiver and sit back and listen on the couch.

stego-tech3• 7 months ago

Other than the greenhorn (who is clearly baiting), you and skeeter did rightly call out my waffling and delaying. The kicker is that I already have 99% of the kit, and all I'm missing is a phono stage and turntable to get going. The issue remains that real life keeps jumbling my priority list, and thus I delay and delay it for other things.

At the very least, I need to sit down and choose the turntable and phono stage I want, at a price point and feature set that matches my current kit. I can then setup deal monitoring to help me reprioritize that project upward if something good emerges.

Alconicon5• 7 months ago

You are not a recovering audiophile at all, you are still fully in that rabbithole. Instead of enjoying music you ramble about your neighbor shaking and isolation etc.

You also didn't pivoted into preservation, it just happened because of whatever 'audiophile' thinking you think you have.

At the end you just stream music as everyone else.

Which is fine.

michaelbuckbee• 7 months ago

Analog purchases have become much more of a signaling mechanism than for direct consumption.

In my family group there were a good numbers of vinyls gifted this past christmas and none of them are going to be regularly listened to as the majority of music consumption they do is "on the go" in the car or mobile.

Similarly, I'm seeing them make more purchases of "trophy books" where they read the book on their phone or listened to the audiobook but liked the book so much that they want to have it on their shelf (there are also special editions with elaborate edge decorations, etc. that seem to feed into this).

nicman23• 7 months ago

that is so dumb, but also buying shirts and merch that you are not going to wear at all is also dumb and i guess the vinyl is smaller size

carbonbioxide• 7 months ago

People like to support artists or own physical media for art appreciation.

tedivm• 7 months ago

I think a lot of people in the comments here are missing the point in a lot of ways.

The first is that even if people don't own a record player at the moment doesn't mean that they don't plan on getting one. I have multiple nieces/nephews who got record players (at their request!) this year for Christmas. Briefcase record players are becoming ridiculously more popular. The thing is there's no point in buying a record player if you don't already have some records, and artists are doing a lot more limited prints so sometimes you need to buy immediately to be sure you're going to get one.

My wife and I bought a new sound system in 2024, and we decided to include a record player. We have used it way more we had expected to. We still have streaming services (Tidal) but listening to a record has a ton of benefits. There's the fact that the entire album itself is an organized experience, not just random tracks, and the tactile nature of it is really appealing. The albums themselves are like pieces of artwork in a way that a CD or screensaver would never be.

It's also nice knowing that the artist I'm buying from is getting real money from the purchase, unlike the pennies they get from streaming.

HardwareLust• 7 months ago

Guilty! I have bought a handful of vinyls (limited edition, colored vinyl, etc.) in anticipation of saving up to buy a good quality turntable.

And these were all artists and albums I know and love through CDs or streaming, so it's not like I'm buying them blind.

999900000999• 7 months ago

It's just a cool piece of merch to me.

Artist make no money off streaming. This is a real artifact I get to own, keep sealed and maybe get signed.

I did have the unfortunate experience of buying a D12 Devil's Night vinyl to find the cover image quality to look like some intern copied it off Google images.

falkensmaize• 7 months ago

I buy vinyl for one reason - it forces me to actively listen to the music. My teen daughter does the same.

I have many happy memories of getting a new record as kid, laying in the floor and listening from start to finish while poring over liner notes and album art. There was a level of connection with the music that I just don’t get from listening to Spotify while I’m washing the dishes or something.

I know it’s sentimental, but I get so much joy out of watching my daughter do the same thing now. She has a blast going to our local record store, finding records from her favorite bands old and new and then coming home and just listening. No devices, no distractions, just her and the music she loves. In a sometimes horrible and depressing world, it’s a sweet escape.

rdiddly• 7 months ago

It gives me hope for the future to see the young'uns recognizing instances where progress isn't necessarily progress. If you oversimplify audio history as 70s=vinyl, 80s=cassettes, 90s=CDs, 00s=MP3s, and 10s=streaming, they've parted ways somewhat with the current moment and gone all the way back to the 70s. Ironically as an older fart myself, who once owned numerous records ("vinyls" is a newer term), and later cassettes, and later CDs, I guess I eventually decided I'd had enough authenticity and converted the whole lot to MP3s and stuck with that when streaming came around. So when I parted ways with the now, I only went back to the 00s, and that was mainly to retain control/ownership rather than having yet another damn algorithm mediating my experience. It's a sweet spot for me - maximum convenience while not giving up intentionality.

jagged-chisel• 7 months ago

I buy for someone who does own a player, but I do not own one.

paxys• 7 months ago

Not too surprising. Most vinyl records come with a digital download code. So you can still listen to it on your phone or wheverever else, and have a nice collectable to go with it.

IndySun• 7 months ago

The actual title of the article is "Why Gen Z is Driving the Vinyl Record Boom?".

basisword• 7 months ago

I know a lot of people who use them as decoration. As someone who has been buying and listening to vinyl records for a long time I find it a bit odd but I understand it. Going into a friends home and checking out their book collection or record collection used to be a fun thing and tells you a bit about someone. Now that everything is digital that is completely gone so having a few of your favourite records around, even if you don't listen to them fills that void.

analogpixel• 7 months ago

99% of toy collectors don't take their toys out of the boxes to play with them.

hypertexthero• 7 months ago

Vinyl record covers are nicely-sized artworks for displaying in a room.

Listening to an album you love, while taking the time to flip the record or tape, or taking the time listen to an entire album in your streaming service of choice, helps you to notice things and be present.

Recommended film: Perfect Days by Wim Wenders - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days

Recommended book: Bridge of Waves by W.A. Mathieu - https://www.shambhala.com/bridge-of-waves-288.html

In 02026: Slow down, and fix things.

Slow is smooth.

Smooth is fast.

superultra• 7 months ago

I oversee pressing for over 150k+ records a year. We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low. I wouldn’t doubt if the number of buyers who don’t own a record player is even higher tha 50%, and that the percentage of people who actually play the records is actually 10-20%. I don’t have data on that, it’s just a hunch.

Many of us in the indie music industry (hip hop sustained record plants for many years, arguably until independent music started pressing in the 2000s) have mixed feelings about records. It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste. And they’re cubersome to bring on tour.

But there isn’t another physical medium that sells at all as well as vinyl. Soft apparel always does well. But people want vinyl.

I don’t love the Gen Z framing of this though. Vinyl purchasing at this point is multi generational.

I don’t think it’s some mysterious Gen Z love of physical. I think we all know that Spotify doesn’t pay artists appropriately and we want to help sustain the music we love. Buying digitally is just isn’t the same for a lot of people (even though it arguably is the best and easiest income generator for artists).

jen20• 7 months ago

Do they want the vinyl itself or do they want the cover art and so forth?

tssva• 7 months ago

Anecdotal data from my Gen-Z daughter, currently a college freshman, is that they want the cover art. Her dorm room walls are decorated with vinyl albums in frames where they cannot be listened to.

lucideer2• 7 months ago

I'd say it's varied & most often a combination of multiple things.

- They want the cover art

- They want a physical token representing an artist they like

- They want to financially support the artist in a direct way

- They speculate they might get a player someday (much akin to book buyers leaving books on their shelves unread for years on end)

1 of the above might be the primary driver for any given buyer but I'd assume all of the above play some part in their motivations.

godzillabrennus• 7 months ago

My wife and I both own vinyl, and neither of us has ever owned a record player. We put them on display for the most part. We have a song we got married to, and we bought a couple of album variations (each with different artwork) with that song; we also like the cover art on some vinyl releases as wall art.

onion2k3• 7 months ago

I'm curious - does the music content actually matter to you? Would you buy an album from an artist you've never heard just because the cover art was great?

microtherion• 7 months ago

If you use the records as a display (and though I don't do that, I empathize; CD covers just don't generate the visceral reaction that LP covers do), wouldn't it make sense for publishers to offer record covers without the actual records?

garciasn• 7 months ago

Gen X. Own a record player.

Listen to vinyl as “intentional listening” and love the album cover art.

My daughter (Gen Z/A) could play her albums but doesn’t. She puts them on display in her room. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Loughla2• 7 months ago

I own a very nice record player. Absolutely love listening to vinyl while looking at the cover art (Jethro Tull has the best album art and I'll fight anyone who disagrees).

For me it's a time machine back to my childhood. We grew up poor and couldn't afford tapes and then CD's. We had thrift store vinyl albums.

For my kids, vinyl was this weird thing that sounded scratchy. Then they grew up and found that the plethora of selection was both a blessing and a curse. They now frequent local record stores and invest in physical media like vinyl specifically because it forces intentional choice.

There really is nothing as good as finding an amazing album you didn't expect, and there's nothing as crushing as realizing the album you just bought based on one song only has that one good song on it (any album by The Police, I'm looking at you).

tracker12• 7 months ago

Also Gen X... though don't own any vinyl or a record player... mostly ripped CDs through the later 90's up through 2010 or so. Since then, mostly just use online streaming.

That said, I did once consider getting a record player only to rip/archive my grandmother's collection of vintage vinyl that wound up going to my niece on her passing.

I just prefer convenience/portability. Of course, as far as purchasing goes... I bought far more music when original Napster was around... it lead me to discover a lot of music that lead my to outright buy/rip full albums myself. It's the one thing that is significantly worse today without actual DJs in control of music at radio stations in favor of automated industry garbage controls.

I have no good way to discover new music any more. At least nothing I actually find myself using.

justarandomname• 7 months ago

We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low.

Oh. my. gosh. This has been driving me NUTS recently. Please please please here me out. The first dozen or so records I bought were of albums I already owned digitally, as FLAC so I was one of those kinds of people that didn't redeem the downloads. I wanted to buy my faves, stuff that I knew I'd love to listen to on vinyl forever. Now that I'm buying brand new stuff, that I don't have digital copies of I've noticed they rarely, rarely, if ever include a download link and so I had to renew my dang apple music subscription to listen to albums I already own when I'm away from my record player and its started to really turn me off from buying any records outside of bandcamp (where you always get the digital version too.)

analog31• 7 months ago

While I haven't seen vinyl at performances, I've seen plenty of CD's. My family enjoys attending shows given by smaller indie acts in areas such as folk, jazz, and classical. There's often a merch table with CD's to buy. We often buy them, then I take them home and rip them onto an NAS.

I've asked some of the musicians flat-out: Which way of buying your material will get the most money directly to you? The answer is always: Buy the CD. Of course I can also make donations, and have done so.

RileyJames• 7 months ago

I’ve been buying vinyl for the sake of collecting it, with limited intention to ever play it.

And I’ve been wondering why would anyone buy the cassette or CD? (And I own more cassette players than the zero vinyl players)

I recently found out that some of my favourite vinyls, that I’ve been collecting, ONLY include the art/lyrics booklet in the CD version. These are from the early 2000’s (peak cd?).

I reckon I’d buy an art / lyrics booklet over a physical medium of the music itself. Particularly if it included flac download of the music.

bentley• 7 months ago

And I’ve been wondering why would anyone buy the cassette or CD?

I have no interest in cassette or vinyl. I love CDs because they provide the highest music quality, uncompressed audio that’s trivial to rip to lossless FLAC files, complete with metadata.

coldtea3• 7 months ago

And I’ve been wondering why would anyone buy the cassette or CD?

Many people I know buy the CD because they prefer owning a physical medium, and the CDs they actually play and have a collection of them.

As for cassette, I don't know about buying regular releases on it, but there's a small but very passionate music community around cassette releases for experimental and indie music (same as a demoscene using old computers or people making new 8bit games).

Alconicon5• 7 months ago

So you go to work, earn money, then you buy yourself some object to put it in a shelf?

And thats basically it?

You are not even playing it?

To do what with it? Letting your kids/family sell your collection with a loss?

Is it background decoration for you? Couldn't you just buy bulk of Vinyl no one wants to use it for your decoration purposes?

That feels like consumerism at the peak.

exitb2• 7 months ago

I buy cassettes. Mostly old, period-correct ones, but some new. I also have a fairly high end tape deck, that these days can be had for rather good price. Our perception of cassettes are mostly warped by the experience of badly recorded tapes played on horrible, unmaintained players, but inherently the tape is much less of a limiting factor to quality than most of the things people use to play music nowadays. In fact, when comparing my vinyl and cassette purchases, I have higher change of getting a bad sounding vinyl than a bad sounding cassette.

Notably, tape decks with separate play and record heads let you listen to the recorded signal, while it's being recorded and quickly switch between the tape and source signal. Even on a good pair of headphones, when correctly dialled in, vast majority wouldn't be able to recognise which signal is the tape.

GauntletWizard• 7 months ago

I buy vinyl for the album cover. If somebody were to sell me a digital download which also ships me an empty slipcase, I would buy it, for almost the same price that I pay for vinyl. I do have the record player, but I don't think I've used it more than a dozen days in my life.

There's a lot of value to the physical artifact, but the precise nature of the physical artifact is up for playing with.

Symbiote3• 7 months ago

A friend was selling a parent's vinyl collection on eBay, and a couple of times buyers asked to be sent only the slipcase to save weight and therefore postage costs.

throwaway777x• 7 months ago

The best example to me why I buy vinyl without a record player is the Flying Lotus - Your Dead album art. It is an incredible work of art:

https://www.turntablelab.com/products/flying-lotus-youre-dea...

More and more though I would rather just buy merch to support the artist.

onion2k3• 7 months ago

It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste.

It's only waste if it's being discarded. If someone wants to keep it and cherish it, even if they're not playing it, then it's not waste.

tonyedgecombe• 7 months ago

It's all waste eventually.

itake• 7 months ago

At some point in the future, the owner will pass and their children will have a mass of plastic to manage.

Perhaps their children will cherish it for generations, or perhaps their children will have different musical tastes from their great great great grandpa and the plastic ends up in a landfill, forever un-played.

thih9• 7 months ago

Technically they could get some paper stating “you own one vinyl” and we would use less plastic and storage (and we’d get an alternative monetary system perhaps).

compiler-devel2• 7 months ago

It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste.

And yet again customer demand and financial gain supercede environmental concerns. There’s no hope for a better, less consumer-oriented culture if even the indie creatives among us acknowledge the problem yet succumb to it.

xorcist• 7 months ago

Then buy it used! That's one of the advantages of physical objects!

coldtea3• 7 months ago

It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste.

Compared to the plastic waste produced daily it's a drop in the ocean. And at least this is kept and collected.

even though it arguably is the best and easiest income generator for artists

Digital is nowhere "the best and easiest income generator" for musicians. A common complain from musicians is how, with the advent of online music, sales craterred, and musicians despite having the same or more fans, and be able to fill the same venues, have lost the living they could make by selling even 50K records (with a favorable indie label split).

altacc2• 7 months ago

Perhaps they meant digital download sales such as Bandcamp & Beatport and less so for iTunes, Amazon, etc... as there are still real revenues to be made from selling digital music. It all depends upon how many middlemen between purchaser and the artist but vinyl adds in unavoidable production costs, risks of unsold stock, etc... versus Bandcamp where there is little upfront cost, low risk and low transaction costs.

dale_glass• 7 months ago

I think that makes sense and was in a way unavoidable.

Compare a physical shop with Spotify. A physical shop has limited space, so old stuff has to be pruned out to leave room for the new releases. So sales for old stuff gradually stop, and there's a small selection of current releases you can buy.

Spotify and the like aren't like that. It's an infinitely growing amount of music you can play. New releases may be completely unnoticed by users who follow recommendation algorithms. You can trivially follow impulses like "So what else did the the band that made Video Killed the Radio Star make?".

Since digital is infinitely reproducible and not perishable this will keep getting worse and worse. Any new artist competes against all of the music that was released before them.

eptcyka2• 7 months ago

I will spend more in a month on a digital download at times than what I would've paid Spotify in years.

sehansen• 7 months ago

During the entirety of the 90's 11883 records sold at least 50 000 units[0]. If we assume $3 royalty each[1] that's ~1200 artists making $150 000 or more in an average year. That's ~$300 000 adjusted for inflation.

In 2024 1450 artists got over $1 000 000 in royalty from Spotify.[2] Additionally 2.3% (~276 000) earned at least $1000 and 100 000 earned at least "almost $6000".

It seems to me that there now is a long tail of artists making a few thousand a year on Spotify that assume they would have sold tens thousands of records each year in the 90s. E.g. the 100 000th most popular artist on Spotify assuming they would have sold as well as the 1200th most popular artist in 1998.

The more likely case is that the top ~10 000 artists would have made less back then than they do now and the rest would have made essentially zero dollars from selling records back in the 90s.

0: https://bestsellingalbums.org/decade/1990-238 1: https://dailybruin.com/1998/09/27/paying-the-price 2: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/03/12/spotify-loud-and...

AlecSchueler• 7 months ago

Compared to the plastic waste produced daily it's a drop in the ocean. And at least this is kept and collected.

Basically anything taken individually is a drop in the ocean. Problem is all those drops add up and that's what creates the ocean.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 7 months ago

And at least this is kept and collected.

Just to expand on this, there is a reasonable distinction made between multi-use and single-use plastics. Things like a shampoo bottle, plasticware, drink bottles, etc. are considered single-use. (Yes, even the shampoo bottle despite being in your bathroom for weeks because its thrown out when it's empty.) As the parent comment mentions, purchasing a vinyl record does little—practically nothing—to contribute to daily plastic waste, especially with how few customers there are (compared to shampoo bottles).

b00ty4breakfast• 7 months ago

It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste.

I don't know all the nitty-gritty, but the last Shellac record was "pressed" using an injection molding process that utilized recyclable PET (I can't find the interview with Albini[RIP] where this was discussed but if I find it I'll edit it into the comment).

alnwlsn• 7 months ago

Confused by this until I realized you meant "Shellac (band)" and not "Shellac - resin secreted by the female lac bug" which was used to press records in the 1920s.

The last shellac record was indeed made from shellac. And shellac is a natural (or at least non-manmade) material; does this make it more environmentally friendly than vinyl or PET?

bartread4• 7 months ago

I’m increasingly conscious of being an outlier here. I prefer physical, for a variety of reasons (ownership being one of them), but also prefer CD to vinyl. Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it. I own vinyl, I like vinyl, but CDs are objectively better and somewhat easier to store.

bayindirh3• 7 months ago

I love both for different reasons. CDs sound better, they can be ripped and archived and can be carried around without any loss in their digital form.

On the other hand, vinyl is great for intentional listening. Putting that hour aside to brew a nice cup of coffee and listen to something while exploring the feelings the album evoke, then get a break to flip/change the record and continue.

It's a kind of personal care for me. I even recently showed a little love to my old record player (an Akai AP-D210) so it can regulate its RPM better and play smoothly as it can.

I can argue that CDs are for listening to the music, and vinyl is for listening to yourself.

reaperducer3• 7 months ago

Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it.

Anecdotally, I see more and more stores that sell music now carry CDs.

Just yesterday I saw an entire wall of new-release CDs at a Barnes and Noble bookstore.

autoexec3• 7 months ago

Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it.

I loved CDs, but I was forced to stop buying new CDs decades ago because I can't stomach supporting the RIAA. That said, it is still my preferred physical media for music (followed by minidisc) even though ultimately my CD collection was digitized and stored.

eptcyka2• 7 months ago

CDs are great for ripping into FLACs and then playing them from Jellyfin.

topranks4• 7 months ago

For me there is no point storing digital music on optical discs. Easier to steam it or listen from a hard drive.

On the other hand the larger format of vinyl and rather peculiar way it works scratches the “tactile” part of what makes physical attractive a lot more.

Each to their own of course but that’s me.

RAdrien2• 7 months ago

CDs are annoyingly delicate to handle. Vinyl does not care about your finger tips. Vinyl sleeves are also more attractive than CD cases and easier to store on a shelf or bucket.

ta988• 7 months ago

A lot of plastic? less than a couple takeout orders no?(sure that's less of a toxic plastic in food containers but still)

im3w1l• 7 months ago

I oversee pressing for over 150k+ records a year. We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low.

Maybe you are right, but I wouldn't discount the possibility that people are willing to pay for the idea that they could some day download it even if it never ends up actually happening. Kinda like getting an insurance policy you probably wont need you know?

conartist6• 7 months ago

35. My record player is in storage, but I still buy records sometimes because they're beautiful art and I want people to keep making them. For now I lend/give them to my friend who has a proper player set up. Spotify's max-blandness shuffle algorithm is like having a wank compared to letting an artist give you a full performance

j4nek• 7 months ago

I think we all know that Spotify doesn’t pay artists appropriately and we want to help sustain the music we love.

not a big fan of all music streaming services, but they only keep about 30% of their revenue. the rest goes to the labels, and this is where most of the problem is. before the 2000s, very small artists hardly earned any income from the sale of (physical) media. I don't like the new platforms such as Spotify, Tidal, etc. either – but this kind of discussion often just distracts from the mafia-like structure of the major labels.

finghin• 7 months ago

It’s labels plus the limited revenue available due to competition.

15$ or so just doesn’t reflect the work that goes into a month’s worth of music listening.

danmelnick• 7 months ago

This is part of the problem for sure, but it's also how the revenue is split between back catalog vs new music.

In the physical media era, when you bought a record/CD you owned it forever and your marginal cost of listening to a song approached zero over time. Most dollars went to new music.

Now, it's close to a 75/25 split of dollars going to back catalog vs new music on streaming services.

If you're a new musician, you're not competing against new music, you're competing against the entire history of recorded music. You're fighting for a piece of a pie that the Beatles are still taking a chunk of.

And the labels are a part of the problem there, they made the deals with the streaming services that allows back catalog to dominate.

e-neko• 7 months ago

Playing vinyl is a bit like making espresso on a manual machine: a small ritual. Bit without the machine, it's a cargo cult.

knowitnone3• 7 months ago

if they don't play it, what do they do with it - toss it under the bed? If people wanted to pay artists, a t-shirt is way more practical or just send them money.

obrhoff• 7 months ago

At this point its mostly a merchandise/ collectable which I also think is okay.

baby• 7 months ago

It's all NFTs

joecool1029• 7 months ago

So I had a year or two in the same situation, old sony turntable had door mechanism fail and the stylus I had wore out and didn't have an easy replacement. Got a sound burger for Christmas and it’s pretty great for casual use (it stows away nicely).

Most of my collection I did get for the art or to support the artist more directly (there’s one I always buy the test pressings from on every album he puts out, I get to hear it like a month before release).

My dad has a pretty big record collection, he didn’t play them a ton, what we would do was dub them to metal cassette and listen to those so it wouldnt degrade the records. So there’s a boomer equivalent to using streaming over playing the original physical copy.

chpatrick• 7 months ago

I've been buying LPs after concerts just to have a nice souvenir, I can always listen to them on Spotify. I only just got a turntable this Christmas and it's cool to actually listen to them.

Finnucane• 7 months ago

If they really want the old-school analog experience, you need a turntable and a cassette recorder so you can make mix tapes for your friends. We didn't have 'playlists', we had mix tapes. Also, to have in the car for road trips. Also, I must go and yell at that cloud now. Excuse me.

tracker12• 7 months ago

I would be pretty happy if I could get the Android version of Winmmp back... or something very similar... my phone has as much storage open as the biggest ipod I ever had, and it's pretty much always with me. That said, it's just easier to use a streaming service... the issue is that new music discovery just sucks at this point.

827a• 7 months ago

I have a handful without a record player; they make fantastic, cool wall art. That is the extent of why i buy them. I have no intention of ever buying a record player.

iainctduncan• 7 months ago

Another aspect of this is that a band or label really need to hit a minimum sales quota to justify pressing albums, so people buying vinyl are actually helping them more than they would be by simply donating the profit of a vinyl purchase (which is of course not the retail price of vinyl). Bands want to release, and this helps them do it.

Preordering product – whether books, vinyl, or digital – really, really helps self-funded artists and indy arts business.

Keep it up, kids! :-)

weinzierl• 7 months ago

What do people do with the vinyl then? Collect it like baseball cards?

Funnily I'm in the complete opposite cohort. I own a record player, because stereo sets used to come with one even when vinyl was on the decline already. I have less than a handful of records which I ever only played out of curiosity.

almosthere• 7 months ago

What half am I supposed to be surprised by?

anshumankmr• 7 months ago

I myself am a DVD enthusiast (in so far as I have a copy of TDK trilogy and Raimi trilogy plus a few other classic movies/shows and songs from the 00s). There are a few shows that I enjoyed as a teen and the fact is I no longer have a way to even legally watch them in my country, so for me the ability to never lose those movies despite streaming platforms being around is the main motivator. (However I do not have a functional DVD player anymore which sucks).

So I think lets not shame people for what they do on their own time that affects none of us really.

buildsjets• 7 months ago

I make up for them buy currently owning 10 of the damn things. One for the main house stereo, 2 in a DJ setup in the basement, one for my all-tube Harman-Kardon setup in the office, 4 in the ready-to-sell stack, and 2 nostalgic display pieces that just collect dust.

880 full length albums in my 12" collection, with pressing dates between sometime in 1955 and this October 2025. 70 years... They all get fairly regular rotation, I alternate between choosing something I feel like listening to, and using the Randomize button in Discogs.com where I track my collection.

A someday project is to figure out how set up an automated workflow to use ambient song detection/recognition to magically recognize when I am playing an album and scrobble it to last.fm to track my plays. It's nothing I want to do manually but it would be neat to see my own analog spotify wrapped summary.

gyulai• 7 months ago

So, the advantages of physical media are much touted these days, but all the actual physical media we have are yesteryear's technology, and each come with their own unique problems, plus there is the problem of waste. Why isn't a new physical format taking hold?

Something like Bandcamp-style downloads, which you put on a micro SD card. You put the card in a 3d-printable piece of plastic, resembling a cassette case. When you buy the download, the band sends you a printed piece of paper (the inlay for the cassette case thing) saying “limited edition run #1, Sequence Number 465/2000; thanks for your support”. If you want to get fancy, maybe record the transaction in some kind of ledger; perhaps put the buyer's name on the band webpage as a patron.

For the software, perhaps there could be something open source based on hardware like the anbernic rg355xxsp and similar devices (multipurpose, portable, hackable by design, …)

It would take very little to get it established: A critical mass of bands in some genre getting together, their fans getting on board, and things spreading from there.

burnt-resistor• 7 months ago

Anemoia exists, I guess.

I have 2 (and a spare for parts) tts and a DJ mixer to allow crossfading (it's a 4 channel because it was the cheapest usable thing available). I threw in moderate Audio-Technica MicroLine cartridges in both and had to get a digital scale and some other calibration crap because these tts are some relatively cheap with a bunch of adjustments lacking interchangeable cartridges. I'm at around 10 milk-crate sized storage boxes and have stopped buying almost entirely. It's not a "purist" rig at all (I'm allergic to audiophiles) considering it feeds into a Marantz NR1711 that has Tidal and a PlexAmp Pi that drives a couple of Elac Debut mains and an SVS PB16.

mcv• 7 months ago

I'm not buying vinyl records, but I still have a ton of them, and my ancient record player broke down ages ago. Similarly, I've got tons of CDs I'm not using anymore. The fate of old media, I guess. But I do miss selecting a specific album to listen to. Spotify is not the same.

I guess I'm in the market for a new record player. Is that market picking up again?

jjgreen2• 7 months ago

In a music shop a few weeks ago, I had to explain to a young man that the opening of the inner sleeve should be inside the outer cover so that the record that he'd just purchased (for a crapload of cash) did not fall out. Sweet really.

ChrisMarshallNY• 7 months ago

I have a USB record player in storage. I have a number of old albums; mostly for keepsakes. I have a few Tangerine Dream picture disks (including one, cut into the shape of Poland), and a few records that have been out of print for ages.

I don't think of them as "investments," though. I don't think they're actually worth that much.

I have the music on them as digital files that I got from Apple Music, though (I have an Apple One sub). Much better quality sound.

kypro• 7 months ago

As a millennial I think I was probably in the first generation who first started buying vinyl not because we had record players, or preferred the sound of vinyl (although some claimed to), but because when most of us came of age during the time of iPods and mp3 players, if you were going to buy physical media to support an artist, vinyl was probably your best option.

CDs were rapidly heading in the same direction as tape (and continue to), and both were less romantic and felt in many ways a less "authentic" format than vinyl did. The physical aspect of vinyl has a beauty that simply isn't replicated by the CDs optical storage system or the tapes magnetic storage.

Another thing I'd add is that I have a craving for analog more and more in my life these days, especially in music and other media formats. Everything is so polished and so clean that the novelty of the quality has worn off, and everything around you instead feel increasingly unnatural.

As an analogy, I've always thought it was interesting how awful the hologram quality is in Star Wars given they have extremely advanced technology otherwise. But if they were in perfect HD although they would be better from a functional perspective, there would also be something less romantic about them. It's hard to put my finger on why I feel that way, but I think the same is true of lots of technologies. When street lights are replaced with LED lights, they are more functional, but they're also less romantic. Or if you look at food packaging from the 50s, there's something romantic about the materials, colours and print used vs today's plastic packaging and digitally designed labels.

Anyway, I guess this doesn't surprise me at all and I think it totally makes sense, although I suspect most people don't even really rationalise why they're doing it. Vinyl just feels right because there's something more authentic and real about the format.

vertnerd• 7 months ago

As someone who grew up with only vinyl in the 60s and 70s, I would never choose it over a CD for audio quality.

BUT I would enjoy recreating the rituals that go with playing vinyl: obsessive cleaning of the disks, the gentle manipulation of a delicate tone arm, and the soft thud when the turntable cover drops. Playing a record was a minor event to be savored. I doubt the younger generations are getting all of that right.

ubermonkey• 7 months ago

Yeah, this.

Vinyl absolutely CAN sound great. If you have a nice amp and good speakers, modern listeners will be amazed at the fidelity possible from vinyl played back on a good turntable with a decent signal chain.

BUT.

CD is still better. CD is simpler. You don't have to faff about with cleaning them, or treat them like hothouse flowers. The platform is incredibly portable.

And yet: Vinyl is more fun.

We moved last year. Our audio room can play streaming, CD, or vinyl. It's the first and third options that get by FAR the most usage. CD comes up once in a blue moon.

xvxvx• 7 months ago

Lots of negative comments about vinyl here, from people who have no clue. I collect vinyl because it sounds better. Vinyl has a warmer sound that is missing from digital formats.

Streaming is convenient for travel and great for previewing music, getting recommendations etc. But if I want to sit back and truly enjoy albums that I love, that’s where vinyl comes in.

I have a decent sound system. Buying albums on vinyl that I’ve listened to 100’s of times and playing through the system blows me away. I’ve been unable to get the same effect or quality from digital, despite trying everything aside from a $2000+ DAC. Wired streaming. Lossless. Various services and formats. CDs. Technically better quality. My ears disagree.

At the end of the day, vinyl is more enjoyable for me and many others. It’s a better experience.

To quote Trent Reznor:

VINYL MISSION STATEMENT

IN THESE TIMES OF NEARLY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO ALL THE MUSIC IN THE WORLD, WE'VE COME TO APPRECIATE THE VALUE AND BEAUTY OF THE PHYSICAL OBJECT. OUR STORE'S FOCUS IS ON PRESENTING THESE ITEMS TO YOU. VINYL HAS RETURNED TO BEING A PRIORITY FOR US - NOT JUST FOR THE WARMTH OF THE SOUND, BUT THE INTERACTION IT DEMANDS FROM THE LISTENER. THE CANVAS OF ARTWORK, THE WEIGHT OF THE RECORD, THE SMELL OF THE VINYL, THE DROPPING OF THE NEEDLE, THE DIFFICULTY OF SKIPPING TRACKS, THE CHANGING OF SIDES, THE SECRETS HIDDEN WITHIN, AND HAVING A PHYSICAL OBJECT THAT EXISTS IN THE REAL WORLD WITH YOU. ALL PART OF THE EXPERIENCE AND MAGIC. DIGITAL FORMATS AND STREAMING ARE GREAT AND CERTAINLY CONVENIENT, BUT THE IDEAL WAY I'D HOPE A LISTENER EXPERIENCE MY MUSIC IS TO GRAB A GREAT SET OF HEADPHONES, SIT WITH THE VINYL, DROP THE NEEDLE, HOLD THE JACKET IN YOUR HANDS LOOKING AT THE ARTWORK (WITH YOUR FUCKING PHONE TURNED OFF) AND GO ON A JOURNEY WITH ME. -TRENT REZNOR

delduca• 7 months ago

I have a couple of vinyls, no player too :-)

I buy them because I like to see the cover & lyrics while listing to it (mp3).

iancmceachern• 7 months ago

Also just in:

Half of all buyers of scented candles actually burn them.

Half the buyers of those fancy soap bars in the shapes of fruit or whatever actually use them as soap .

Half of all shutters on houses can actually be closed to "shutter" the windows

bbbobbb• 7 months ago

I would buy and play vinyl if the music I listen to (renaissance, baroque) was actually released on vinyl.

RAdrien2• 7 months ago

At least some vinyl buyers who don’t own record players may be buying them as gifts for people who have them.

Last Christmas, I bought 3 vinyl records as gifts. I don’t own a record player.

H1Supreme• 7 months ago

I wonder if used vinyl purchases would skew this number more towards "owns a turntable".

ranvel• 7 months ago

yeah, those crazy people who gift vinyl to people and collectors who want to make a profit are craaaazy people. (this is sarcasm, these are normal things (not at all an exhaustive list) that might make you buy a vinyl without owning a turntable)

also, we're probably getting some really good stats with this stuff with the folks buying at their local record store, right?

by the way, what was the phrasing of the question they used to get this information?

50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

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