The age of digital media has affected the music industry in more ways than one. It has evolved a new genre of music, has made music easier to produce, and easier to distribute. However, to my surprise, with the advent of YouTube Music, Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud, and others, analog music is still alive. I’m of course, talking about vinyls.
Sure, they’re expensive, along with needing to have a turntable, and some are hard to find. While there are a lot of reasons why vinyls aren’t preferred by most of this generation, let me give you some of the reasons why it’s still not dead.
Authenticity
People who have or collect vinyls are hardcore enthusiasts. People who find the time to travel and look for records they like because you don’t see or probably don’t notice many vinyl stores around your area. The fact that you have a vinyl over your friend that has a CD album or follows the artist on Spotify, gives you a closer feeling to the artist knowing what you have is authentic.
Not all artists release vinyls of their albums but there are still some that produce them such as Camila Cabello, Radiohead, etc. It’s expensive to produce vinyls which makes it so much more exciting with the fact that you have one of the limited stocks of your favorite artist’s vinyls. I also love the movie soundtracks that are compiled into a vinyl, really gives you the cinema-feel.
Quality
There’s no denying that vinyls beat any other kind of sound you can find today. Vinyls are designed specifically for their quality. In digitalized music, if you want it to be louder, you go and hit the volume button but if it’s too much, it becomes distorted. A vinyl has more musical information than any streaming site. Vinyls’ grooves are the source of volume, so a longer album means a quieter sound. You won’t get any distortion even if it’s already blasting when you’re listening to vinyls.
Communities of vinyl enthusiasts
It’s nice to have your own social group of people who have the same interest as you. I think this goes for all kinds of hobbies. You borrow vinyls from each other, sometimes trade, share new music with each other, and over all just enjoy each other’s company over a cup of coffee and good music. You know that this community is very small and it’s thrilling to find people who appreciates it just as much as you do. Now, who wouldn’t want that?
Related story: Floating Record: When Modern Design Meets Old School Vinyls
If you’re looking for a music database with a private marketplace to find old (used) records you should check out Discogs. If you’re looking for vinyl versions of newly released music, there’s a good chance that you’ll find them on Amazon’s vinyl shop, who will then also make the purchase available for free in your Amazon Music app via stream so you have both versions without the need to buy them twice or going through the trouble of ripping the records to mp3.
I encourage everyone to still support and patronize the use of vinyls. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below.
Photo credit: The feature image “Vinyl” was done by Maria Eklind.
