The return of vinyl records to prominence since the advent of streaming services like Spotify and Tidal is pretty much the textbook example of culture turning back on itself in a way that seems completely counterintuitive, but when you get right down to it, actually makes perfect sense.
Why It Doesn’t Make Sense
At first glance, it may seem bewildering to switch over to expensive turntable-driven sound systems and vinyl records just as the world embraced a new tech that would put virtually every song ever recorded at your fingertips, waiting and ready to be played from a cheap Bluetooth speaker paired to your smartphone, but that’s exactly what happened. In 2022, vinyl outsold CDs in the United States for the first time since 1987, a milestone that would have seemed absurd just a decade earlier. CDs have seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years, but vinyl is really where it’s at for a particular kind of music fan and audiophile.
But why, really, would anyone spend hundreds of dollars on 40-minute albums and the equipment to play them when you have access to millions of songs for the price of a cup or two of coffee?
Why It Does
Oddly, the answer is just as obvious as the question. Listening to vinyl records offers a completely different listening experience to putting on a custom made playlist by Spotify’s algorithm.
It’s not just that vinyl “sounds better”, especially now that streaming services offer lossless, hi-res music – though Spotify itself took its sweet time to reach this point. Vinyl records offer something that these streaming services don’t offer precisely because they’re expensive, unwieldy and, yes, old fashioned.
Buying an album at the frankly exorbitant prices that your average record goes for makes it an actual financial commitment that demands treating it with the “seriousness” that simply isn’t there with streaming services. The “cheapness” of an album on Spotify (if you’re going that route and not just cherry picking songs) makes your relationship to it almost casual by default. When you buy a new (or used) vinyl record, you’re much more likely to fully engage with it. You spent money on it, you have to go through the trouble of placing this large disc on a turntable, and you can’t take it with you on your morning jog or commute.
A New Old Way of Listening to Music
What this means, in short, is that you end up listening to vinyl records in a way that people did back at the very height of album-oriented popular music; back when music was an unstoppable cultural force, not just one of dozens of forms of disposable entertainment.
Yes, you can do other things as it plays, but a vinyl record inevitably holds, no demands, your attention far more than streaming services ever will. It’s a physical product that comes with huge album art and liner notes to pour over and requires you to actually turn it over after twenty minutes. Albums were made to be listened to like this and the best of them were structured to make the most of the particular quirk of A and B sides.
They also made the most of their packaging, at least since the heady days of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, in creating a wonderfully tangible multimedia experience that accompanied the music itself, including everything from massive posters to elaborate liner notes and, of course, lyric sheets.
After all, you can only listen to music one track at a time so why, vinyl enthusiasts would invariably ask, not listen to that track in the best way possible? For anyone wondering where to start, VinylPickup’s must-have vinyl records covers the essential albums worth owning. Why not, indeed.