What, still listening to MP3s? That’s so 2001. I think it’s our duty to tell you there’s a better way. It’s called vinyl.
Remember how everyone used to have an MP3 player? In the days before the iPhone, MP3 players were a must-have item. Smartphones have eaten into MP3 player sales over the years.
Now everyone downloads or even streams music, straight onto their phone or tablet. Just type in the search box, select the song you want and bang, instead music.
But collecting has kinda lost it’s soul.
No, no. Vinyl didn’t die when Janis Joplin did. It’s still very much alive and is vastly more preferable to listening to music in a digital format. Come, climb on my fixie. We’ll take a trip to the record store, and I’ll tell you the four reasons why you should ditch digital for 12″ vinyl records.
1. Your Taste in Music Will Improve
Let’s play a game. Go to your local record store — every good town should have one — and try to find Justin Bieber’s Believe, which sold almost 1,500,000 copies in 2012. Nothing?
Okay, try again. See if you can find anything by Nickelback. Nada? Okay, now see if you can find anything by the Pixies. What, an entire shelf’s worth? Why do you think that might be?
Simple economics, my friends. People who listen to vinyl tend to be quite discerning with what they listen to. They don’t listen to airy, saccharine, Top 40 guff with synthesised instruments. They listen to bands that have artistic integrity and write their own songs and play their own instruments. They listen to great songwriting, and have an ear for production. As a result, bands that meet those criteria are the ones you’ll find in your record shop.
When you listen to vinyl exclusively, you unconsciously make the decision to never, ever have to be confronted with Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. And that’s lovely.
2. Record Buying Is an Experience
It’s the type of experience where you show up and spend hours upon hours aimlessly looking for music. You take gambles, and you drop money on albums not knowing whether they’ll be good or not. You speak to people, and get to know their recommendations and opinions, and ultimately make friends. It’s a vastly more social experience than any app or online marketplace could ever be.
3. Vinyl Sounds Better
Sorry, folks. This one isn’t up for debate. Vinyl sounds better than MP3s ever could. I’m not just talking about that warm, mahogany-rich sound that vinyl is famous for, but in general. It’s just better.
Most of the music you listen to is stored and broadcast in a lossy format, where details are lost, and quality is reduced. This is because audio is compressed in order to make it small enough to shove on a phone, or to broadcast over the airwaves.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re listening to a streaming service like Spotify (but not Tidal, which streams in lossless), or an MP3, or even to the radio. You’re still not getting the full picture of that track.
Vinyl is what’s called a lossless format. Nothing has been lost when pressing a record. It sounds as good as the producer or band intended.
There’s another, much more important, reason why vinyl is better than anything else.
Vinyl, for the most part, escaped the ‘loudness war’. You see, with the rise and rise of digital music (CDs included), it has become possible to artificially engineer a track louder than it naturally should be. The problem here is that it has a massively detrimental result on audio quality.
Indeed, it causes songs to sound distorted and become unpleasant to listen to and strips them of their depth and texture. Because vinyl is an analogue format, it doesn’t really suffer from the same problems.
4. Vinyl Can Make You Money
When you buy an MP3 on iTunes, there is no way you can turn that purchase into an investment that makes you money at a later date. That’s because you don’t own that particular MP3. You merely license it.
But, vinyl? That’s an entirely different beast altogether.
There’s an entire industry of people purchasing, collecting and reselling vinyl, because overwhelmingly it keeps its purchase value, or even appreciates in value.
When you collect vinyl, you’re not just buying music. You’re making an investment you can sell on a rainy day, or even pass down to your children.
Face It, Vinyl Is Not Going Away
Vinyl is an old technology, and one that has remained relatively unchanged in the past decade. But that’s because it’s as close as we’ll get to a perfect device for listening to music. It is, to be as straightforward as possible, simply as good as it gets.
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