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IMO the vinyl resurgence is mainly hive mind consumerism. They take up more space, they sound worse, they're more expensive, and they can be used fewer times be

IMO the vinyl resurgence is mainly hive mind consumerism. They take up more space, they sound worse, they're more expensive, and they can be used fewer times before being degraded. The secret to the last one: many of the collectors aren't really playing them at all. It's an irrational trend and the end result will be future generations taking huge amounts of plastic to landfill. And that may be sooner than we think: spinning LPs give off carcinogenic gas. Suffer for fashion.

prmoustache 4y ago
It is all about the ritual. And the cover can serve as a poster in the room.
kristiandupont 4y ago
Maybe I am following the hive mind unknowingly, but my personal affection with vinyl is very similar to how I enjoy cooking even if I can get better meals in restaurants or creating furniture even though I can buy stuff pre-made that is higher quality: it's just a nice feeling. The rotating disk in the room adds atmosphere, and there is a bit of commitment -- I can't easily skip that one song I dislike, so I listen to the album the way the artist made it. Sometimes that is annoying, but quite often, I have ended up enjoying the harder-to-digest songs even more than the others.
- garciasn 4y ago
  To me, vinyl is for intentional listening. I am making a conscious choice, I am actively listening to it, and I’m interacting with the media and displaying large form artwork while it plays. I also have access to Amazon’s music service in every room on whatever devices we have. I am working my way through RS’ to 500 albums with it. I am currently building a Grateful Dead Time Machine (https://www.spertilo.net/ https://www.spertilo.net/) to have that added to the music playing repertoire. I can listen to all of those as background music or even actively. But they’re different than vinyl for me and I don’t care about what others do or how they do it, but I ENJOY this in a way I never enjoyed music before while having the disposable income to do it. To each their own and all of that but for folks to deride those who listen to vinyl with a dismissive wave of their hand because they disagree with it and generalize their feelings for those who enjoy it is a bit much.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    This is something you can get from CD too minus the large form artwork. Although you could probably put CDs in a big sleeve too.
  - derwiki 4y ago
    Love that you’re building a GD Time Machine!
    - garciasn 4y ago
      I recently built a PiPDP11 kit and had all the stuff to solder so I figured why not?! For me, the soldering was done in 10-15 mins on the GDTM and the new challenge is making the faceplate for the enclosure. Something nerdy to learn and do. :-)
tetrep 4y ago
IDK, seems perfectly inline with certain demographics aging, accumulating wealth, and business exploiting that. I don't think it's a coincidence that things from the same era, like super heroes, are also currently popular. Nostalgia is a strong drug.
timcobb 4y ago
> spinning LPs give off carcinogenic gas Only in California
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
That's like saying oil paintings are stupid because photos are better. Your "plastic to landfill" is also irrational because vinyl can be reused easily, and albums are often repurposed into decorative items before discarded entirely. And they're more valuable and collectable than e.g. CDs, people take care of them, pass them down to generations, or sell them.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  Vinly (PVC) is one of the more difficult plastics to recycle.
jason-phillips 4y ago
> they sound worse My VPI turntable could extract details from vinyl I've never heard elsewhere. Marvelous machine, that.
webkike 4y ago
Counter point: it’s just more fun
Xenoamorphous 4y ago
A lot of things we do for fun are either irrational (why pay for food at a restaurant many times what the same food would cost at home? and with drinks it’s even worse because literally the same wine/beer/soda is easily 10 times cheaper at the supermarket) or bad for the environment (traveling, for example).
comfypotato 4y ago
I think you’re missing the point. Music is an experience, and how people want to deliver that experience varies. Who are you to say the correct way for people to enjoy their experience? Someone on HN compared Emacs to vinyl the other day, and I really enjoyed the comment. There are multiple reasons why Emacs/vinyl is objectively worse. That being said, it’s fun, and there’s no reason to hate on it.
- devnullbrain 4y ago
  The manufacture of cancerous plastics has negative externalities and it's especially silly to pay these when a significant amount of them never spin.
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    Whether it’s measured in carbon footprint, health risk, or otherwise: the impact of vinyl records is small. It’s a significant source of enjoyment for many. The ratio of impact to enjoyment here is negligible. I’ll focus on caring for the world around me through other much more significant means.
peteforde 4y ago
To borrow a joke: how do you know someone doesn't listen to LPs? They'll fucking tell you. The funny thing is that most folks who need to tell everyone that listening to records is dumb because they sound bad are almost certainly listening to the vast majority of their music over streaming services. So you have albums that are being mastered to survive MP3 compression being delivered over lossy streams that 100% have not being signed by the artist and don't contain glossy, album-sized photographs and hard copies of the lyrics. Meanwhile, LPs are legitimately collectable (limited pressings absolutely accumulate value in the same way other collectables do) and are often mastered or remastered for full spectrum fidelity and pressed on extremely heavy vinyl stock. Much of the "sounds bad" critiques are only truly applicable to mass-market pop music LPs that were pressed on thin+cheap material and sacrificed quality to fit more minutes of music per side as a way to keep costs low. When you buy, for example, an LCD Soundsystem LP and A/B it with the same tracks on Spotify, it quickly becomes clear that maybe we're not so dumb after all.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  If you care about sound quality there are many streaming services offering lossless quality, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, etc. There are places you can buy lossless tracks as well. You never have to worry about them getting dirty.
  - peteforde 4y ago
    The point I was trying to make is that the folks who feel compelled to explain why vinyl is dumb (each one is the first to offer this opinion) usually start by telling us that vinyl sounds terrible. They are unaware that a) it doesn't and b) Spotify does. Which is fine, but you'll notice that you rarely see LP collectors expend energy trying to tell streaming music enthusiasts that the entire premise of their enjoyment is flawed.
    - Symbiote 4y ago
      Maybe it's changed in the last 5 years, but until fairly recently many vinyl collectors would go out of their way to tell anyone else that CDs didn't have the correct ambiance, sound quality etc.

prmoustache 4y ago

It is all about the ritual. And the cover can serve as a poster in the room.

kristiandupont 4y ago

Maybe I am following the hive mind unknowingly, but my personal affection with vinyl is very similar to how I enjoy cooking even if I can get better meals in restaurants or creating furniture even though I can buy stuff pre-made that is higher quality: it's just a nice feeling. The rotating disk in the room adds atmosphere, and there is a bit of commitment -- I can't easily skip that one song I dislike, so I listen to the album the way the artist made it. Sometimes that is annoying, but quite often, I have ended up enjoying the harder-to-digest songs even more than the others.

garciasn 4y ago
To me, vinyl is for intentional listening. I am making a conscious choice, I am actively listening to it, and I’m interacting with the media and displaying large form artwork while it plays. I also have access to Amazon’s music service in every room on whatever devices we have. I am working my way through RS’ to 500 albums with it. I am currently building a Grateful Dead Time Machine (https://www.spertilo.net/ https://www.spertilo.net/) to have that added to the music playing repertoire. I can listen to all of those as background music or even actively. But they’re different than vinyl for me and I don’t care about what others do or how they do it, but I ENJOY this in a way I never enjoyed music before while having the disposable income to do it. To each their own and all of that but for folks to deride those who listen to vinyl with a dismissive wave of their hand because they disagree with it and generalize their feelings for those who enjoy it is a bit much.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  This is something you can get from CD too minus the large form artwork. Although you could probably put CDs in a big sleeve too.
- derwiki 4y ago
  Love that you’re building a GD Time Machine!
  - garciasn 4y ago
    I recently built a PiPDP11 kit and had all the stuff to solder so I figured why not?! For me, the soldering was done in 10-15 mins on the GDTM and the new challenge is making the faceplate for the enclosure. Something nerdy to learn and do. :-)

tetrep 4y ago

IDK, seems perfectly inline with certain demographics aging, accumulating wealth, and business exploiting that. I don't think it's a coincidence that things from the same era, like super heroes, are also currently popular. Nostalgia is a strong drug.

timcobb 4y ago

> spinning LPs give off carcinogenic gas Only in California

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

That's like saying oil paintings are stupid because photos are better. Your "plastic to landfill" is also irrational because vinyl can be reused easily, and albums are often repurposed into decorative items before discarded entirely. And they're more valuable and collectable than e.g. CDs, people take care of them, pass them down to generations, or sell them.

Symbiote 4y ago
Vinly (PVC) is one of the more difficult plastics to recycle.

jason-phillips 4y ago

> they sound worse My VPI turntable could extract details from vinyl I've never heard elsewhere. Marvelous machine, that.

webkike 4y ago

Counter point: it’s just more fun

Xenoamorphous 4y ago

A lot of things we do for fun are either irrational (why pay for food at a restaurant many times what the same food would cost at home? and with drinks it’s even worse because literally the same wine/beer/soda is easily 10 times cheaper at the supermarket) or bad for the environment (traveling, for example).

comfypotato 4y ago

I think you’re missing the point. Music is an experience, and how people want to deliver that experience varies. Who are you to say the correct way for people to enjoy their experience? Someone on HN compared Emacs to vinyl the other day, and I really enjoyed the comment. There are multiple reasons why Emacs/vinyl is objectively worse. That being said, it’s fun, and there’s no reason to hate on it.

devnullbrain 4y ago
The manufacture of cancerous plastics has negative externalities and it's especially silly to pay these when a significant amount of them never spin.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Whether it’s measured in carbon footprint, health risk, or otherwise: the impact of vinyl records is small. It’s a significant source of enjoyment for many. The ratio of impact to enjoyment here is negligible. I’ll focus on caring for the world around me through other much more significant means.

peteforde 4y ago

To borrow a joke: how do you know someone doesn't listen to LPs? They'll fucking tell you. The funny thing is that most folks who need to tell everyone that listening to records is dumb because they sound bad are almost certainly listening to the vast majority of their music over streaming services. So you have albums that are being mastered to survive MP3 compression being delivered over lossy streams that 100% have not being signed by the artist and don't contain glossy, album-sized photographs and hard copies of the lyrics. Meanwhile, LPs are legitimately collectable (limited pressings absolutely accumulate value in the same way other collectables do) and are often mastered or remastered for full spectrum fidelity and pressed on extremely heavy vinyl stock. Much of the "sounds bad" critiques are only truly applicable to mass-market pop music LPs that were pressed on thin+cheap material and sacrificed quality to fit more minutes of music per side as a way to keep costs low. When you buy, for example, an LCD Soundsystem LP and A/B it with the same tracks on Spotify, it quickly becomes clear that maybe we're not so dumb after all.

goosedragons 4y ago
If you care about sound quality there are many streaming services offering lossless quality, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, etc. There are places you can buy lossless tracks as well. You never have to worry about them getting dirty.
- peteforde 4y ago
  The point I was trying to make is that the folks who feel compelled to explain why vinyl is dumb (each one is the first to offer this opinion) usually start by telling us that vinyl sounds terrible. They are unaware that a) it doesn't and b) Spotify does. Which is fine, but you'll notice that you rarely see LP collectors expend energy trying to tell streaming music enthusiasts that the entire premise of their enjoyment is flawed.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    Maybe it's changed in the last 5 years, but until fairly recently many vinyl collectors would go out of their way to tell anyone else that CDs didn't have the correct ambiance, sound quality etc.