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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
>"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."
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!
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.
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
I have a record collection and a cd collection. It was not the same. So many CDs of older music sound bad on CD. Recordings made during the CD era sound fine though, but I'm not an audiophile. Maybe the "loudness wars" are a complaint for some.
The loudness war (in the usual sense of the phrase) on CDs was to not seem weak against other releases. The loudness war (if I may use that phrase very liberally now) on analog media is to not seem weak against hiss and surface noise. The desire to compress and limit dynamic range does exist for both, but for these different reasons.
However, a huge difference is that on CDs you're up against a fixed maximum (0 dBFS) so all peaks are equal, which is fatiguing; on vinyl you're up against the adjacent groove, so your maximum amplitude any given moment depends on the amplitude of things in the recent past and near future! Ways to optimize for this are prevalent, amazingly, and the result is less fatiguing.
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.
Afaict this has already happened. Vinyl is about the big art, CDs are all about the pack ins. You get small books, pictures, stickers all packed into a cardboard box the size of a novel. Not jewel cases.
At least for the K-pop artists my daughter listens to.
I still have a working copy of AC/DC's Back in Black from 1996. I have older tapes that work fine too, but not sure how much they've been played since they're mostly from thrift stores.
Pressed cds last well in general. Burned cds have a lot of issues. vinyl also wears out from using it, while cds are listen as much as you want with no issuse.
I have ripped all my cds to flac on my NAS and put them on usb in whatever format as needed.
Vinyl was infamous for degrading during use to the point where you could identify whether an album had been played more than a dozen times by the reduction in sound quality.
The only additional data that (some) vinyl has over CDs is inaudible ultrasound. Ultrasound is intentionally omitted from CDs because they're intended for humans to listen to. In all audible aspects a correctly mastered CD release is closer to the original sound than any vinyl. And if you really want ultrasound (perhaps your dog enjoys it), you can get digital releases at higher sample rates.
It's not really about the data on the vinyl, and not really about sounding closer to the original. The vinyl flavor comes from the equipment. It's an analog device interacting with the real world, so the process of getting the sound from the vinyl to the speakers introduces a different sound. And some music sounds more pleasing with that process. Could you achieve something similar by using the digital release and running it through a filter? Probably.
But it definitely does impart a sound difference.
Since CDs are digital sound, there's not really the same reason reason to use CDs over a digital release.
edit: fwiw, I don't agree with the parent talking about more data, either. Since pretty much all the music these days is digital pretty much right through the entire recording process, I don't think this is all that relevant. I guess maybe sometimes they might use a different master for vinyl though? But regardless; if you're looking for "more data", you're not going to use either a CD or a vinyl.
Much of the vinyl noise and distortion is pressed into the vinyl itself. Even if you play it using an optical player it will still sound worse than a good CD.
People used to say human eyes can't perceive >60fps.
It's also just CDs, not digital formats in general. Grab an audiophile and ask their opinions about digital PDM/PCM formats, high bitrate AACs even, against true vinyls. They wouldn't have as much opinions as they do against CDs.
Also: 44.1kHz sampling rate != arbitrary waveform up to 22050Hz, unless music you're listening to consists of pure sine waves(and not even classic Yamaha FM sound chip signals).
But in the case of analog recording, nobody can distinguish a pure analog recording from the same thing but with a good ADC/DAC pair in the signal path in a blind test. It's theoretically possible to hear undithered 16 bit quantization noise if you turn the volume up extremely loud, but correctly mastered CDs should be dithered from higher bit depth.
And 44.1kHz sampling rate can theoretically represent arbitrary waveforms up to 22050Hz. The only complication is that this requires a brickwall filter, which is impossible to implement. That's why the sampling rate is set higher than needed to exceed the 20kHz limit of human hearing (in practice the limit for adult hearing is almost always lower). The higher sample rate allows for a practical filter with a shallower transition band to be used.
Mastering is mostly done purely digital, so only when they are pressed are they converted to analog grooves. This can never add new data / information.
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.
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.
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.
obligatory supplement: everyone used CRTs for monitors back then, albeit of different resolutions for PCs and for watching TVs. It's not like devs had to mentally simulate the effect.
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.
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.
“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.
There are overwhelming examples of people who continue to work when all of their basic needs are met. Some work because they love to, some work because they have to; we, collectively, should be trying as hard as possible to make work optional (automation, etc), because the point of life is to live, not to work. Some combination of Abundance [1], Solarpunk [2], etc. The entire planet will eventually be in population decline [3] (with most of the world already below fertility replacement rate), so optimizing for endless growth is unnecessary. So keep spinning up flywheels towards these ends if we want to optimize for the human experience, art, creativity, and innovation (to distribute opportunity to parity with talent).
Nay, work is one of the pillars of a fulfilling life. Though for most of humanity relative freedom to choose what work one does is more of a modern achievement, the original commandment (“be fruitful”) was so general it might suggest God knew what he was talking about.
I'd love to learn how you came to this definitive conclusion. At no point in human history have humans not worked (I'm sure there are some limited exceptions, none of which have been sustainable).
Perhaps you meant to say the point of life is to survive, but you have to work to make that happen.
"Art is to console those who are broken by life." -- Vincent van Gogh
Broadly speaking, creation is the meaning of life, not work, although some creation could be considered work. Survival is table stakes to achieve self actualization and a chance at finding meaning and contributing to the commons during a lifetime.
> At no point in human history have humans not worked
This is a non sequitur. The discussion is about the point of life. At no point in history have humans not pooped, but I would imagine that few consider pooping the point of life.
> people who continue to work when all of their basic needs are met
There are no such things as "basic needs". If people can easily satisfy their basic needs, they simply expands this concept until it ceases to be easily satisfied
In other words, abundance is a myth promoted by mentally ill cultists, and meeting the basic needs of all people is unattainable.
Liquid Death, CocaCola branded water, and household water filtration are unbelievable luxuries. Manufactured status for the masses. And my examines are truly luxuries: they are unnecessary for drinking water in developed countries.
Pools and green lawns have higher status when water is more expensive/scarcer.
I don't hang out with extremely high-status people, or the extremely wealthy, but I'm sure both of those groups have some surprisingly luxury water.
Luxury is a human concept that is completely disconnected from the underlying product.
Provenance, Branding, Myth, Environmental, Science all matter for status.
If people were broadly socialized for collaboration and collective good, people could and would achieve as much with many fewer hours of work, and with the many more hours available for personal creative pursuit and play.
There is no innate human nature that prevents this, only a prevailing social order which reinforces individualism and competition at the expense of the many.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I also moved many times in the past. Once CD-quality settled, I gifted my vinyls to a thrift store. (The 'art' was immaterial.)
20 years ago, I ripped all of my CDs into 192K MP3s (perfect enough for my ears) using an online metadata service. Getting rid of the 'jewel cases' (and eventually all of their non-CD content) but retaining the CDs (4 Logic cases worth, 3 sq. feet) saved a ton of room.
For backup I archived the thousands of MP3s onto an 80GB Seagate which I organized by genre, then stored in a shoebox. 12 years later I copied the Seagate to two more HDs. It worked fine (but gave-up-the-ghost later that year).
I've relied on those files since. Unlike several dead self-burned CD-Rs, the manu'd CDs (I never use) seem to have remained healthy in the cases at room temp.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Affording tickets is already a first-world problem; I have no idea what level this is when not attending has some knock-on impact or attendance hurts another person's experience. Maybe y'all should plan to stay home and make a donation to the food bank...
And those who don’t almost always only set a minimum price, so you can still pay more if you want. And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue.
> And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue.
Bandcamp Friday is such a fun day, I always have +5 purchases lined up from the previous month, and usually keep track of the social media of the artists I buy from that day, and many of them post something really wholesome about how much they made on that day :) Such a fun time all around.
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.
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
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>> 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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...)
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.
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.
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.
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...
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).
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)_/¯
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).
- 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.
This was a 5 year play by my dad. Shout out.
This has strong energy of "Teach your kids how to play Magic, they won't have money for drugs."
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.
However, a huge difference is that on CDs you're up against a fixed maximum (0 dBFS) so all peaks are equal, which is fatiguing; on vinyl you're up against the adjacent groove, so your maximum amplitude any given moment depends on the amplitude of things in the recent past and near future! Ways to optimize for this are prevalent, amazingly, and the result is less fatiguing.
At least for the K-pop artists my daughter listens to.
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
I have ripped all my cds to flac on my NAS and put them on usb in whatever format as needed.
Since CDs are digital sound, there's not really the same reason reason to use CDs over a digital release.
edit: fwiw, I don't agree with the parent talking about more data, either. Since pretty much all the music these days is digital pretty much right through the entire recording process, I don't think this is all that relevant. I guess maybe sometimes they might use a different master for vinyl though? But regardless; if you're looking for "more data", you're not going to use either a CD or a vinyl.
It's also just CDs, not digital formats in general. Grab an audiophile and ask their opinions about digital PDM/PCM formats, high bitrate AACs even, against true vinyls. They wouldn't have as much opinions as they do against CDs.
Also: 44.1kHz sampling rate != arbitrary waveform up to 22050Hz, unless music you're listening to consists of pure sine waves(and not even classic Yamaha FM sound chip signals).
https://testufo.com/
But in the case of analog recording, nobody can distinguish a pure analog recording from the same thing but with a good ADC/DAC pair in the signal path in a blind test. It's theoretically possible to hear undithered 16 bit quantization noise if you turn the volume up extremely loud, but correctly mastered CDs should be dithered from higher bit depth.
And 44.1kHz sampling rate can theoretically represent arbitrary waveforms up to 22050Hz. The only complication is that this requires a brickwall filter, which is impossible to implement. That's why the sampling rate is set higher than needed to exceed the 20kHz limit of human hearing (in practice the limit for adult hearing is almost always lower). The higher sample rate allows for a practical filter with a shallower transition band to be used.
Every signal can be represented as a combination of pure sine waves. That insight is the basis of Fournier analysis / transform.
Mastering is mostly done purely digital, so only when they are pressed are they converted to analog grooves. This can never add new data / information.
This video and timestamp comes to mind: https://youtu.be/2sxKJeYSBmI?si=ikuOuZl-Ho5_VK4k&t=1613
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.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_(Klein_and_Thompson_...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/12/supply-b...
[3] https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
(think in systems)
I'd love to learn how you came to this definitive conclusion. At no point in human history have humans not worked (I'm sure there are some limited exceptions, none of which have been sustainable).
Perhaps you meant to say the point of life is to survive, but you have to work to make that happen.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson
“Art is the proper task of life” -- Nietzsche
"Art is to console those who are broken by life." -- Vincent van Gogh
Broadly speaking, creation is the meaning of life, not work, although some creation could be considered work. Survival is table stakes to achieve self actualization and a chance at finding meaning and contributing to the commons during a lifetime.
This is a non sequitur. The discussion is about the point of life. At no point in history have humans not pooped, but I would imagine that few consider pooping the point of life.
There are no such things as "basic needs". If people can easily satisfy their basic needs, they simply expands this concept until it ceases to be easily satisfied
In other words, abundance is a myth promoted by mentally ill cultists, and meeting the basic needs of all people is unattainable.
How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all? Insights from needs-based analysis - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245229292... | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2024.100612
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43465127 - March 2025 (26 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529256 - December 2024 (10 comments)
(TLDR Decent living standards for 8.5B people would require 30% of current resource use)
Liquid Death, CocaCola branded water, and household water filtration are unbelievable luxuries. Manufactured status for the masses. And my examines are truly luxuries: they are unnecessary for drinking water in developed countries.
Pools and green lawns have higher status when water is more expensive/scarcer.
I don't hang out with extremely high-status people, or the extremely wealthy, but I'm sure both of those groups have some surprisingly luxury water.
Luxury is a human concept that is completely disconnected from the underlying product.
Provenance, Branding, Myth, Environmental, Science all matter for status.
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.
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).
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".
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.
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.
20 years ago, I ripped all of my CDs into 192K MP3s (perfect enough for my ears) using an online metadata service. Getting rid of the 'jewel cases' (and eventually all of their non-CD content) but retaining the CDs (4 Logic cases worth, 3 sq. feet) saved a ton of room.
For backup I archived the thousands of MP3s onto an 80GB Seagate which I organized by genre, then stored in a shoebox. 12 years later I copied the Seagate to two more HDs. It worked fine (but gave-up-the-ghost later that year).
I've relied on those files since. Unlike several dead self-burned CD-Rs, the manu'd CDs (I never use) seem to have remained healthy in the cases at room temp.
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.
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.
And those who don’t almost always only set a minimum price, so you can still pay more if you want. And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue.
[0]: https://isitbandcampfriday.com/
Bandcamp Friday is such a fun day, I always have +5 purchases lined up from the previous month, and usually keep track of the social media of the artists I buy from that day, and many of them post something really wholesome about how much they made on that day :) Such a fun time all around.
https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/fan-support/
https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/getting-a-fan...
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.
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…
What? Do you have an example?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
CDs killed both.
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
No one uses it because of quality or because it is the best medium for music.
Glad you agree with me:)
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.
(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...)
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.
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...