WaPo has a report on an old technology:
Music fans may love the immediacy of streaming music, but that hasn’t stopped them from bringing vinyl records mainstream. Revenue from vinyl jumped 10 percent to $1.4 billion in 2023, and outsold CDs for the second time since 1987, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
Back, back to the farm!
I always found vinyl to be annoying, from scratching to warpage to maintenance, and, after my fairly good record player was stolen, I was happy enough to be rid of my paltry vinyls and go to only CDs.
Is the quality advantage of vinyl over CDs really that discernible? I don’t doubt that it’s better than streaming and radio, or, if I may shudder in public, 8-track, but is the digitization inherent in CDs really that recognizable? I know my Dad claimed to know people who could discern virgin vinyl from vinyl played once or twice, but not me, so it’s no surprise that I can’t discern it.
Or is it the greater tangible footprint of vinyl? Streaming means, as most of us know, no tangible artifacts, as well as paying for each repetition. Having a CD is one sunken cost and a medium sized artifact, the jewel case if memory serves. A vinyl record sits between – a sunken cost that degrades with each play. And a bigger artifact with room enough for art and sheets of protective paper hanging out, to boot.
A romantic return to an earlier age where the environment is not in such perilous condition, where the dangerous impact of environment-deniers, of election-deniers, of people who isolate themselves from the real world through their horrendous hooting?
Probably contributions from these and a dozen other factors.
