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50% of U.S. vinyl buyers don't own a record player

274 points by ResisBey 10mo ago

nicman23 10mo ago
that is so dumb, but also buying shirts and merch that you are not going to wear at all is also dumb and i guess the vinyl is smaller size
- carbonbioxide 10mo ago
  People like to support artists or own physical media for art appreciation.
ResisBey 10mo ago
OP here. I wrote an analysis on the divergence between streaming saturation and physical media growth. Physical media has shifted from an audio format to a "token of identity" or a support mechanism for artists in an era where streaming payouts (marginal value) approach zero.
- exitb 10mo ago
  There’s also a very real utility to non-streaming media. It turns out that a system that lets you listen to anything is terrible for actually building a collection. Your „library” fills up with tons of stuff you „liked” at some point and saved as some sort of a bookmark. Over time it actually works against the goal of keeping track of the group of records you enjoy. When you introduce friction to the system, whether it’s having to buy something, or even hunt down and download an mp3, it results in better libraries.
toomuchtodo 10mo ago
I am one of these people. I buy to support the artist (usually $40-$50 for an album), but listen to the digital versions via Jellyfin and Plex (to avoid Spotify). I’ll also donate directly to artists, or buy tickets to their shows even if I cannot attend. Great analysis.
- frankzander 10mo ago
  Tbh I would like to have a donation button on a artist website so I can donate and than download the album I like where I like.
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    Same. Let me just pay you to be an artist, and keep putting art into the world (while avoiding middlemen and platforms whenever possible).
  - nemomarx 10mo ago
    Bandcamp is pretty close to this experience if they set it as "pay what you want" (which a lot of artists do)
    - Semaphor 10mo ago
      > (which a lot of artists do) And those who don’t almost always only set a minimum price, so you can still pay more if you want. And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue. [0]: https://isitbandcampfriday.com/ https://isitbandcampfriday.com/
      - embedding-shape 10mo ago
        > And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue. Bandcamp Friday is such a fun day, I always have +5 purchases lined up from the previous month, and usually keep track of the social media of the artists I buy from that day, and many of them post something really wholesome about how much they made on that day :) Such a fun time all around.
  - al_borland 10mo ago
    Wouldn’t the artist offering you to buy the album from them, DRM free, accomplish the same thing while clarifying the transaction that’s happening?
sbarre 10mo ago
I guess buying the vinyl is like buying a shirt or a poster now? I support artists I like by going to their shows and buying lossless digital copies where possible (even if I listen to their music elsewhere). But I don't want or need more physical "stuff".
- larusso 10mo ago
  I still have my old BluRay collection which I build up from the mid 2000. This already was the replacement of the DVDs I had before. They still sit in the shelve because I don’t know what else to do with the space. Same goes for books etc. I mean I really like the covers etc and the fact one has a physical token. But I simply have too much of it in my house already. And replacing the stuff yet again feels useless. I also like the feeling that if I wanted I could simply let go. Before someone asks: The unit the BluRays are located is a TV unit. And getting rid of them would mean I have an empty shelve. They also cover the cable / power cord mess behind it a bit. So removing is actually not a solution. I would either need a replacement to put there as a cover or get rid of the TV unit shelve thing :). Typical 1st world problem that is.
  - sbarre 10mo ago
    About 15 years ago I got rid of almost all of my physical media. I was moving a lot at the time (I've moved 13 times over the last 20 years, several times to different cities) and I had hundreds of CDs, DVDs and books.. It was literally a quarter of my boxes every time I moved.. So I sold and donated all of it, kept what had special value, and re-acquired a lot of it digitally. I still think I made the right decision, although every now and then I miss something specific and regret it, but I get over it pretty fast.
    - 8bitsrule 10mo ago
      I also moved many times in the past. Once CD-quality settled, I gifted my vinyls to a thrift store. (The 'art' was immaterial.) 20 years ago, I ripped all of my CDs into 192K MP3s (perfect enough for my ears) using an online metadata service. Getting rid of the 'jewel cases' (and eventually all of their non-CD content) but retaining the CDs (4 Logic cases worth, 3 sq. feet) saved a ton of room. For backup I archived the thousands of MP3s onto an 80GB Seagate which I organized by genre, then stored in a shoebox. 12 years later I copied the Seagate to two more HDs. It worked fine (but gave-up-the-ghost later that year). I've relied on those files since. Unlike several dead self-burned CD-Rs, the manu'd CDs (I never use) seem to have remained healthy in the cases at room temp.
knollimar 10mo ago
It seems like a silly cargo cult to me. It feels like ewaste compared to a poster
- oogali 10mo ago
  If it really is cargo culting, and the people buying the physical product are not keeping the manufacturers in check because they never play the vinyl, then I can see a potential situation where manufacturers ramp up to meet "demand" but at lower quality (improved profits). The secondhand market becomes saturated with inferior pressings that are inevitably bound for landfills since they don't meet the quality/expectations of the people who actually play vinyl. Hypothetically.
  - skeeter2020 10mo ago
    This doesn't make any sense; there's no craft here, where it's cheaper to press "bad" records vs "good" ones. You would literally need multiple production lines to intentionally execute this "strategy". Also a record cost next to nothing to make.
- wlonkly 10mo ago
  What's the *e*-waste from a record and sleeve?
  - creatonez 10mo ago
    PVC releases potentially harmful vapors and is difficult to properly dispose of.
    - skeeter2020 10mo ago
      records rarely end up in waste, and the relatively small amount of waste from production is not where we should be focusing our energies.
  - knollimar 10mo ago
    You're right it's probably not ewaste. I think the record is entirely wasted along with the energy to produce it. The sleeve is the only value if you don't play it
Throaway198712 10mo ago
Ive got 1300 records and I dont live in the USA. So there!
paleotrope 10mo ago
Maybe they call it a Vinyl Disc Player?
thechao 10mo ago
My dad grew up in the 50s & 60s. During COVID he purchased my daughters' the, I quote, "shittiest briefcase record players" he could find. Both girls listen to their music on their devices, but also buy vinyl. The other day, my eldest came down from her room complaining that her vinyl "sounded awful". I told her to bring it up with their Grampy. His response: "you can't appreciate good playback until you've heard awful playback on shitty record players like I had to.". My eldest is now plotting a complete hifi system, and is learning all about how to transfer "vinyl" to "digital" without losing the parts of the vinyl she likes. This was a 5 year play by my dad. Shout out.
- colechristensen 10mo ago
  “There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.” Sometimes I wonder how much INTENTIONAL engineering people's discontent for good or ill happens across the spectrum of human activity. One thing is for sure, people don't talk about it much. I can think of many examples.
  - HPsquared 10mo ago
    Nobody would work if housing and food were super cheap, for instance.
    - nkrisc 10mo ago
      There’s an equilibrium. If no one worked, housing and food would not be super cheap.
    - kingkawn 10mo ago
      Or people would do things they were genuinely interested in rather than from desperation
    - I-M-S 10mo ago
      Saving the economy by turning water into a luxury item. The op-eds basically write themselves.
tracerbulletx 10mo ago
Physical media collecting is about a lot of things but one of them is to have a physical artifact representing your relationship with an artist and the art to have in your home to touch, hold, pick up, and display. Makes sense to me.
- RajT88 10mo ago
  This. Vinyls are the most "special" of media formats, because they require the most care. They function as wall art. If you actually want to listen to them, it's a ritual - something you have to make time and space for. You don't have that with anything else - an Artifact is a great way of putting it, but I would also suggest some other words: relic, totem, effigy, charm
mattsolle 10mo ago
I was in this demographic for a log time. I wanted to support small artists in ways past just going to their shows. This seemed like a nice way to do that (not a big shirt guy for bands). It also helps that you are not only getting music but a large(ish) art piece as well with the vinyl covers. It also feels good to physically have and own something. I recently bought a Portable CD player as well. I think a lot of the Gen Z folks I talk to are starting to (if just wishfully) drift back towards physicality in some ways.
- trelane 10mo ago
  Welcome to CD ownership! You should rip the music to a lossless format (e.g. FLAC) so you can play those and keep the CD from getting scratched. This will also so let you listen to it on computers (including cell phones). You can also transcode the music to e.g. MP3 to allow easier storage.
- microtonal 10mo ago
  It also feels good to physically have and own something. I gave all my CDs (probably more than a 1000) away about a decade ago. I find physical media annoying, they take up space and require more effort to use them. All those CDs became more of a burden. I guess it's because I grew up with cassette tapes, portable tape players, then CDs, then Discman, then Discman with buffering. Having gone through all of that, being able to play music on your phone is... excessively nice. I also care more about the music than the packaging -- if I want something nice on the wall, I would get a painting, litho, etc. instead. The only thing I really miss is old-school music discovery. Reading reviews, then going to a record shop, listening a stack of records to decide, talking to record shop owners and friends for scoops, etc. was so much more fun than letting algorithms do recommendations. And after spending your monthly pocket money on two albums, you were invested in the music.
  - cm2012 10mo ago
    Surprisingly, chat GPT is amazing at recommendations. (I guess that it is also an algorithm). But it recommended me some great artists and explained why I might like them.
zkmon 10mo ago
And 50% of that are for showing off their oddity in their social networks. The WTF factor. Do something archaic.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  Or people just enjoy things. Let’s let people enjoy things.
  - skeeter2020 10mo ago
    You're both right of course, but it does seem to be an enjoyment filtered through the social media promoter lens, which makes me a little sad. Unlike say, the enjoyment I got listening to a record (and then CD) as I examined the liner notes and insert, this go-around feels like external validation by casual (or no) acquaintances. Historically this is not as valuable and can lead to some bad outcomes...
  - GaryBluto 10mo ago
    I've never seen "Let people enjoy things." used as anything other than a thought-terminating cliché. Just because something brings someone happiness doesn't mean it is immune to criticism.
    - cm2012 10mo ago
      But why feel the need to criticize something that doesnt hurt anyone?
- petepete 10mo ago
  The same thing's happening to books where being seen as 'a reader' is a much higher priority than being well read. https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/booktok-tiktok-books-community https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/booktok-tiktok...
crazygringo 10mo ago
Yup, sold my turntable a while ago but kept my favorite ~20 albums. I rotate through them, displaying them on my bookshelf. They look great. They're art, they're vibe, they're decoration. (Ultimately I went all-in on smart speakers, so I couldn't just hook up the turntable anymore, and getting a turntable/adapter that digitizes the audio to send over Bluetooth, just no...)
chollida1 10mo ago
Makes sense. Most kids I know put records up on their wall as art. or as a way to pay artists directly by purchasing their album at a concert If you want to listen to music then Spotify runs circles around vinyl as a medium. Records really suck for music quality which is why everyone dumped them when tapes came along and then even more so when cd's became a thing. If Vinyl was a good medium to listen to music then no one would have bought cd's or had a Spotify subscriptions. I can't imagine people going back to old school crt televisions to watch sports or movies either, but I do see people
- Clamchop 10mo ago
  Minor nit, cassettes were and are mostly worse audio quality than records and they coexisted for decades with their respective compromises. Cassettes replaced 8-track in the portable space and eventually enabled the Walkman. CDs killed both.
  - prmoustache 10mo ago
    CD didn't really killed cassette. They coexisted peacefully for 2 decades. CD was nice, transportable but cassette was still more convenient to carry around because a walkman was much smaller[1], wouldn't skip when running/jumping[2], a cassette was less fragile and it was simply so much easier to leave a cassette in a deck and record anything you would ear on the radio on the go. Virtually nobody could/would live burn a dj mix from the radio. Napster + portable mp3 player and smartphoned did kilómetros ll the cassette. [1] especially the late 90's early 00's ones that were barely bigger than a standard cassette case. [2] there was buffering for discmans but it wasn't 100% effective if skipping happened for longer than the buffer
- risyachka 10mo ago
  Spotify is popular because it is cheap, convenient and has all the music in the world. No one uses it because of quality or because it is the best medium for music.
  - chollida1 10mo ago
hipgrave 10mo ago
Seems relevant to bring up that I'm currently working on a device that I hope will bridge the gap between vinyl and digital for some people: https://sleevenote.com https://sleevenote.com
ajdude 10mo ago
I've been on a physical media craze lately. It's been quite a few years since I stopped using Spotify, and I've been rebuilding my collection. Usually by hunting CDs at thrift stores to rip in iTunes to Apple Lossless. I own a bunch of vinyl records, and I've also ripped several of them. After buying one vinyl album from a niche artist (djpoolboi), he actually then sent me a link to download the same tracks on flac, which I appreciated. Lately I've found myself buying the same album both on vinyl for listening to at home, and on CD to rip for my digital music collection. I work from home a lot so having to get up to flip the record gives me an excuse not to stare at my screen all day too.
stego-tech 10mo ago
Guilty party, here. I feel I can explain myself though, or at least offer context about why I own about a dozen records and no way whatsoever to play them. I’m a recovering audiophile. I got into the hobby because I enjoy technology in its myriad aspects, and had discovered that good speakers can make things sound better. As I began accruing CDs and re-ripping into lossless audio, I also began collecting vinyls via Record Store Day events of bands or artists I found interesting at the time, or the odd Collector’s Edition bundles of albums or games. The thinking was that when I finally settled into my own place, I could invest into some Hi-Fi kit to play them back. Well, I fell out of the audiophile sphere when I got into data analysis, physics, human biology, and psychology: I had become inoculated against the bullshit that permeates the space, but still recognized the value of my album collection. I’d also pivoted into preservation, and so I began accepting relatives’ collections of older formats, like 78s. I still lacked playback mechanisms, though I now had the space and budget - just more pressing projects than a record playback setup. And so here I am in 2025, in an apartment that transmits energy between units, with an upstairs neighbor that does somersaults and tumbles all day (thus shaking the space slightly). The cost of everything has skyrocketed, but it’s no longer a matter of a turntable and a phono stage to get going (need isolation as well, and that ain’t cheap). I’ve also - shockingly - got other, more pressing projects in front of me, one of which is a bedroom Hi-Fi setup that has physical controls for music streaming instead of smartphone apps - again, not remotely cheap. Right now, my meager collection sits in a crate under the sofa, languishing. One day I’ll get to enjoy them, but today is sadly not that day.
- skeeter2020 10mo ago
  >> One day I’ll get to enjoy them, but today is sadly not that day. I've got news for you: you won't. Your post reads like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. Also it's 2026, and being the first day of the new year the PERFECT time to just go ahead and do it. You could probably buy a used record player today for < $50 and be listening to a record.
  - stego-tech 10mo ago
    > Your post reads like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. As someone with OCD: guilty! In all seriousness though, I do have bigger, more important projects that consume the limited Capital I have first: finding new employment for one, replacing the sagging IKEA furniture and wobbly Amazon TV stands with something more resilient and long-lasting (eyeballing Salamander Designs for that), likely a new mattress for the bedroom, the list goes on. That said, you're right in that I should be keeping a list of components updated with pricing and watching for deals. I know what I need, I just haven't chosen it yet, and that's the first step in any project build.
michaelbuckbee 10mo ago
Analog purchases have become much more of a signaling mechanism than for direct consumption. In my family group there were a good numbers of vinyls gifted this past christmas and none of them are going to be regularly listened to as the majority of music consumption they do is "on the go" in the car or mobile. Similarly, I'm seeing them make more purchases of "trophy books" where they read the book on their phone or listened to the audiobook but liked the book so much that they want to have it on their shelf (there are also special editions with elaborate edge decorations, etc. that seem to feed into this).
tedivm 10mo ago
I think a lot of people in the comments here are missing the point in a lot of ways. The first is that even if people don't own a record player at the moment doesn't mean that they don't plan on getting one. I have multiple nieces/nephews who got record players (at their request!) this year for Christmas. Briefcase record players are becoming ridiculously more popular. The thing is there's no point in buying a record player if you don't already have some records, and artists are doing a lot more limited prints so sometimes you need to buy immediately to be sure you're going to get one. My wife and I bought a new sound system in 2024, and we decided to include a record player. We have used it way more we had expected to. We still have streaming services (Tidal) but listening to a record has a ton of benefits. There's the fact that the entire album itself is an organized experience, not just random tracks, and the tactile nature of it is really appealing. The albums themselves are like pieces of artwork in a way that a CD or screensaver would never be. It's also nice knowing that the artist I'm buying from is getting real money from the purchase, unlike the pennies they get from streaming.
HardwareLust 10mo ago
Guilty! I have bought a handful of vinyls (limited edition, colored vinyl, etc.) in anticipation of saving up to buy a good quality turntable. And these were all artists and albums I know and love through CDs or streaming, so it's not like I'm buying them blind.
999900000999 10mo ago
It's just a cool piece of merch to me. Artist make no money off streaming. This is a real artifact I get to own, keep sealed and maybe get signed. I did have the unfortunate experience of buying a D12 Devil's Night vinyl to find the cover image quality to look like some intern copied it off Google images.
falkensmaize 10mo ago
I buy vinyl for one reason - it forces me to actively listen to the music. My teen daughter does the same. I have many happy memories of getting a new record as kid, laying in the floor and listening from start to finish while poring over liner notes and album art. There was a level of connection with the music that I just don’t get from listening to Spotify while I’m washing the dishes or something. I know it’s sentimental, but I get so much joy out of watching my daughter do the same thing now. She has a blast going to our local record store, finding records from her favorite bands old and new and then coming home and just listening. No devices, no distractions, just her and the music she loves. In a sometimes horrible and depressing world, it’s a sweet escape.
rdiddly 10mo ago
It gives me hope for the future to see the young'uns recognizing instances where progress isn't necessarily progress. If you oversimplify audio history as 70s=vinyl, 80s=cassettes, 90s=CDs, 00s=MP3s, and 10s=streaming, they've parted ways somewhat with the current moment and gone all the way back to the 70s. Ironically as an older fart myself, who once owned numerous records ("vinyls" is a newer term), and later cassettes, and later CDs, I guess I eventually decided I'd had enough authenticity and converted the whole lot to MP3s and stuck with that when streaming came around. So when I parted ways with the now, I only went back to the 00s, and that was mainly to retain control/ownership rather than having yet another damn algorithm mediating my experience. It's a sweet spot for me - maximum convenience while not giving up intentionality.
jagged-chisel 10mo ago
I buy for someone who does own a player, but I do not own one.
paxys 10mo ago
Not too surprising. Most vinyl records come with a digital download code. So you can still listen to it on your phone or wheverever else, and have a nice collectable to go with it.
IndySun 10mo ago
The actual title of the article is "Why Gen Z is Driving the Vinyl Record Boom?".
basisword 10mo ago
I know a lot of people who use them as decoration. As someone who has been buying and listening to vinyl records for a long time I find it a bit odd but I understand it. Going into a friends home and checking out their book collection or record collection used to be a fun thing and tells you a bit about someone. Now that everything is digital that is completely gone so having a few of your favourite records around, even if you don't listen to them fills that void.
analogpixel 10mo ago
99% of toy collectors don't take their toys out of the boxes to play with them.
hypertexthero 10mo ago
Vinyl record covers are nicely-sized artworks for displaying in a room. Listening to an album you love, while taking the time to flip the record or tape, or taking the time listen to an entire album in your streaming service of choice, helps you to notice things and be present. Recommended film: Perfect Days by Wim Wenders - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days Recommended book: Bridge of Waves by W.A. Mathieu - https://www.shambhala.com/bridge-of-waves-288.html https://www.shambhala.com/bridge-of-waves-288.html In 02026: Slow down, and fix things. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
superultra 10mo ago
I oversee pressing for over 150k+ records a year. We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low. I wouldn’t doubt if the number of buyers who don’t own a record player is even higher tha 50%, and that the percentage of people who actually play the records is actually 10-20%. I don’t have data on that, it’s just a hunch. Many of us in the indie music industry (hip hop sustained record plants for many years, arguably until independent music started pressing in the 2000s) have mixed feelings about records. It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste. And they’re cubersome to bring on tour. But there isn’t another physical medium that sells at all as well as vinyl. Soft apparel always does well. But people want vinyl. I don’t love the Gen Z framing of this though. Vinyl purchasing at this point is multi generational. I don’t think it’s some mysterious Gen Z love of physical. I think we all know that Spotify doesn’t pay artists appropriately and we want to help sustain the music we love. Buying digitally is just isn’t the same for a lot of people (even though it arguably is the best and easiest income generator for artists).
- jen20 10mo ago
  Do they want the vinyl itself or do they want the cover art and so forth?
  - tssva 10mo ago
    Anecdotal data from my Gen-Z daughter, currently a college freshman, is that they want the cover art. Her dorm room walls are decorated with vinyl albums in frames where they cannot be listened to.
  - lucideer 10mo ago
    I'd say it's varied & most often a combination of multiple things. - They want the cover art - They want a physical token representing an artist they like - They want to financially support the artist in a direct way - They speculate they might get a player someday (much akin to book buyers leaving books on their shelves unread for years on end) 1 of the above might be the primary driver for any given buyer but I'd assume all of the above play some part in their motivations.
baby 10mo ago
It's all NFTs
joecool1029 10mo ago
So I had a year or two in the same situation, old sony turntable had door mechanism fail and the stylus I had wore out and didn't have an easy replacement. Got a sound burger for Christmas and it’s pretty great for casual use (it stows away nicely). Most of my collection I did get for the art or to support the artist more directly (there’s one I always buy the test pressings from on every album he puts out, I get to hear it like a month before release). My dad has a pretty big record collection, he didn’t play them a ton, what we would do was dub them to metal cassette and listen to those so it wouldnt degrade the records. So there’s a boomer equivalent to using streaming over playing the original physical copy.
chpatrick 10mo ago
I've been buying LPs after concerts just to have a nice souvenir, I can always listen to them on Spotify. I only just got a turntable this Christmas and it's cool to actually listen to them.
Finnucane 10mo ago
If they really want the old-school analog experience, you need a turntable and a cassette recorder so you can make mix tapes for your friends. We didn't have 'playlists', we had mix tapes. Also, to have in the car for road trips. Also, I must go and yell at that cloud now. Excuse me.
- tracker1 10mo ago
  I would be pretty happy if I could get the Android version of Winmmp back... or something very similar... my phone has as much storage open as the biggest ipod I ever had, and it's pretty much always with me. That said, it's just easier to use a streaming service... the issue is that new music discovery just sucks at this point.
pointbob 10mo ago
[dead]
827a 10mo ago
I have a handful without a record player; they make fantastic, cool wall art. That is the extent of why i buy them. I have no intention of ever buying a record player.
iainctduncan 10mo ago
Another aspect of this is that a band or label really need to hit a minimum sales quota to justify pressing albums, so people buying vinyl are actually helping them more than they would be by simply donating the profit of a vinyl purchase (which is of course not the retail price of vinyl). Bands want to release, and this helps them do it. Preordering product – whether books, vinyl, or digital – really, really helps self-funded artists and indy arts business. Keep it up, kids! :-)
weinzierl 10mo ago
What do people do with the vinyl then? Collect it like baseball cards? Funnily I'm in the complete opposite cohort. I own a record player, because stereo sets used to come with one even when vinyl was on the decline already. I have less than a handful of records which I ever only played out of curiosity.
almosthere 10mo ago
What half am I supposed to be surprised by?
anshumankmr 10mo ago
I myself am a DVD enthusiast (in so far as I have a copy of TDK trilogy and Raimi trilogy plus a few other classic movies/shows and songs from the 00s). There are a few shows that I enjoyed as a teen and the fact is I no longer have a way to even legally watch them in my country, so for me the ability to never lose those movies despite streaming platforms being around is the main motivator. (However I do not have a functional DVD player anymore which sucks). So I think lets not shame people for what they do on their own time that affects none of us really.
buildsjets 10mo ago
I make up for them buy currently owning 10 of the damn things. One for the main house stereo, 2 in a DJ setup in the basement, one for my all-tube Harman-Kardon setup in the office, 4 in the ready-to-sell stack, and 2 nostalgic display pieces that just collect dust. 880 full length albums in my 12" collection, with pressing dates between sometime in 1955 and this October 2025. 70 years... They all get fairly regular rotation, I alternate between choosing something I feel like listening to, and using the Randomize button in Discogs.com where I track my collection. A someday project is to figure out how set up an automated workflow to use ambient song detection/recognition to magically recognize when I am playing an album and scrobble it to last.fm to track my plays. It's nothing I want to do manually but it would be neat to see my own analog spotify wrapped summary.
gyulai 10mo ago
So, the advantages of physical media are much touted these days, but all the actual physical media we have are yesteryear's technology, and each come with their own unique problems, plus there is the problem of waste. Why isn't a new physical format taking hold? Something like Bandcamp-style downloads, which you put on a micro SD card. You put the card in a 3d-printable piece of plastic, resembling a cassette case. When you buy the download, the band sends you a printed piece of paper (the inlay for the cassette case thing) saying “limited edition run #1, Sequence Number 465/2000; thanks for your support”. If you want to get fancy, maybe record the transaction in some kind of ledger; perhaps put the buyer's name on the band webpage as a patron. For the software, perhaps there could be something open source based on hardware like the anbernic rg355xxsp and similar devices (multipurpose, portable, hackable by design, …) It would take very little to get it established: A critical mass of bands in some genre getting together, their fans getting on board, and things spreading from there.
burnt-resistor 10mo ago
Anemoia exists, I guess. I have 2 (and a spare for parts) tts and a DJ mixer to allow crossfading (it's a 4 channel because it was the cheapest usable thing available). I threw in moderate Audio-Technica MicroLine cartridges in both and had to get a digital scale and some other calibration crap because these tts are some relatively cheap with a bunch of adjustments lacking interchangeable cartridges. I'm at around 10 milk-crate sized storage boxes and have stopped buying almost entirely. It's not a "purist" rig at all (I'm allergic to audiophiles) considering it feeds into a Marantz NR1711 that has Tidal and a PlexAmp Pi that drives a couple of Elac Debut mains and an SVS PB16.
mcv 10mo ago
I'm not buying vinyl records, but I still have a ton of them, and my ancient record player broke down ages ago. Similarly, I've got tons of CDs I'm not using anymore. The fate of old media, I guess. But I do miss selecting a specific album to listen to. Spotify is not the same. I guess I'm in the market for a new record player. Is that market picking up again?
jjgreen 10mo ago
In a music shop a few weeks ago, I had to explain to a young man that the opening of the inner sleeve should be inside the outer cover so that the record that he'd just purchased (for a crapload of cash) did not fall out. Sweet really.
ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago
I have a USB record player in storage. I have a number of old albums; mostly for keepsakes. I have a few Tangerine Dream picture disks (including one, cut into the shape of Poland), and a few records that have been out of print for ages. I don't think of them as "investments," though. I don't think they're actually worth that much. I have the music on them as digital files that I got from Apple Music, though (I have an Apple One sub). Much better quality sound.
kypro 10mo ago
As a millennial I think I was probably in the first generation who first started buying vinyl not because we had record players, or preferred the sound of vinyl (although some claimed to), but because when most of us came of age during the time of iPods and mp3 players, if you were going to buy physical media to support an artist, vinyl was probably your best option. CDs were rapidly heading in the same direction as tape (and continue to), and both were less romantic and felt in many ways a less "authentic" format than vinyl did. The physical aspect of vinyl has a beauty that simply isn't replicated by the CDs optical storage system or the tapes magnetic storage. Another thing I'd add is that I have a craving for analog more and more in my life these days, especially in music and other media formats. Everything is so polished and so clean that the novelty of the quality has worn off, and everything around you instead feel increasingly unnatural. As an analogy, I've always thought it was interesting how awful the hologram quality is in Star Wars given they have extremely advanced technology otherwise. But if they were in perfect HD although they would be better from a functional perspective, there would also be something less romantic about them. It's hard to put my finger on why I feel that way, but I think the same is true of lots of technologies. When street lights are replaced with LED lights, they are more functional, but they're also less romantic. Or if you look at food packaging from the 50s, there's something romantic about the materials, colours and print used vs today's plastic packaging and digitally designed labels. Anyway, I guess this doesn't surprise me at all and I think it totally makes sense, although I suspect most people don't even really rationalise why they're doing it. Vinyl just feels right because there's something more authentic and real about the format.
vertnerd 10mo ago
As someone who grew up with only vinyl in the 60s and 70s, I would never choose it over a CD for audio quality. BUT I would enjoy recreating the rituals that go with playing vinyl: obsessive cleaning of the disks, the gentle manipulation of a delicate tone arm, and the soft thud when the turntable cover drops. Playing a record was a minor event to be savored. I doubt the younger generations are getting all of that right.
- ubermonkey 10mo ago
  Yeah, this. Vinyl absolutely CAN sound great. If you have a nice amp and good speakers, modern listeners will be amazed at the fidelity possible from vinyl played back on a good turntable with a decent signal chain. BUT. CD is still better. CD is simpler. You don't have to faff about with cleaning them, or treat them like hothouse flowers. The platform is incredibly portable. And yet: Vinyl is more fun. We moved last year. Our audio room can play streaming, CD, or vinyl. It's the first and third options that get by FAR the most usage. CD comes up once in a blue moon.
xvxvx 10mo ago
Lots of negative comments about vinyl here, from people who have no clue. I collect vinyl because it sounds better. Vinyl has a warmer sound that is missing from digital formats. Streaming is convenient for travel and great for previewing music, getting recommendations etc. But if I want to sit back and truly enjoy albums that I love, that’s where vinyl comes in. I have a decent sound system. Buying albums on vinyl that I’ve listened to 100’s of times and playing through the system blows me away. I’ve been unable to get the same effect or quality from digital, despite trying everything aside from a $2000+ DAC. Wired streaming. Lossless. Various services and formats. CDs. Technically better quality. My ears disagree. At the end of the day, vinyl is more enjoyable for me and many others. It’s a better experience. To quote Trent Reznor: VINYL MISSION STATEMENT IN THESE TIMES OF NEARLY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO ALL THE MUSIC IN THE WORLD, WE'VE COME TO APPRECIATE THE VALUE AND BEAUTY OF THE PHYSICAL OBJECT. OUR STORE'S FOCUS IS ON PRESENTING THESE ITEMS TO YOU. VINYL HAS RETURNED TO BEING A PRIORITY FOR US - NOT JUST FOR THE WARMTH OF THE SOUND, BUT THE INTERACTION IT DEMANDS FROM THE LISTENER. THE CANVAS OF ARTWORK, THE WEIGHT OF THE RECORD, THE SMELL OF THE VINYL, THE DROPPING OF THE NEEDLE, THE DIFFICULTY OF SKIPPING TRACKS, THE CHANGING OF SIDES, THE SECRETS HIDDEN WITHIN, AND HAVING A PHYSICAL OBJECT THAT EXISTS IN THE REAL WORLD WITH YOU. ALL PART OF THE EXPERIENCE AND MAGIC. DIGITAL FORMATS AND STREAMING ARE GREAT AND CERTAINLY CONVENIENT, BUT THE IDEAL WAY I'D HOPE A LISTENER EXPERIENCE MY MUSIC IS TO GRAB A GREAT SET OF HEADPHONES, SIT WITH THE VINYL, DROP THE NEEDLE, HOLD THE JACKET IN YOUR HANDS LOOKING AT THE ARTWORK (WITH YOUR FUCKING PHONE TURNED OFF) AND GO ON A JOURNEY WITH ME. -TRENT REZNOR
mococa 10mo ago
I have a couple of vinyls, no player too :-) I buy them because I like to see the cover & lyrics while listing to it (mp3).
iancmceachern 10mo ago
Also just in: Half of all buyers of scented candles actually burn them. Half the buyers of those fancy soap bars in the shapes of fruit or whatever actually use them as soap . Half of all shutters on houses can actually be closed to "shutter" the windows
- andrewmcwatters 10mo ago
  [dead]
bbbobbb 10mo ago
I would buy and play vinyl if the music I listen to (renaissance, baroque) was actually released on vinyl.
RAdrien 10mo ago
At least some vinyl buyers who don’t own record players may be buying them as gifts for people who have them. Last Christmas, I bought 3 vinyl records as gifts. I don’t own a record player.
H1Supreme 10mo ago
I wonder if used vinyl purchases would skew this number more towards "owns a turntable".
ranvel 10mo ago
yeah, those crazy people who gift vinyl to people and collectors who want to make a profit are craaaazy people. (this is sarcasm, these are normal things (not at all an exhaustive list) that might make you buy a vinyl without owning a turntable) also, we're probably getting some really good stats with this stuff with the folks buying at their local record store, right? by the way, what was the phrasing of the question they used to get this information?

274 points by ResisBey 10mo ago

that is so dumb, but also buying shirts and merch that you are not going to wear at all is also dumb and i guess the vinyl is smaller size

carbonbioxide 10mo ago
People like to support artists or own physical media for art appreciation.

ResisBey 10mo ago

OP here. I wrote an analysis on the divergence between streaming saturation and physical media growth. Physical media has shifted from an audio format to a "token of identity" or a support mechanism for artists in an era where streaming payouts (marginal value) approach zero.

exitb 10mo ago
There’s also a very real utility to non-streaming media. It turns out that a system that lets you listen to anything is terrible for actually building a collection. Your „library” fills up with tons of stuff you „liked” at some point and saved as some sort of a bookmark. Over time it actually works against the goal of keeping track of the group of records you enjoy. When you introduce friction to the system, whether it’s having to buy something, or even hunt down and download an mp3, it results in better libraries.

toomuchtodo 10mo ago

I am one of these people. I buy to support the artist (usually $40-$50 for an album), but listen to the digital versions via Jellyfin and Plex (to avoid Spotify). I’ll also donate directly to artists, or buy tickets to their shows even if I cannot attend. Great analysis.

frankzander 10mo ago
Tbh I would like to have a donation button on a artist website so I can donate and than download the album I like where I like.
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  Same. Let me just pay you to be an artist, and keep putting art into the world (while avoiding middlemen and platforms whenever possible).
- nemomarx 10mo ago
  Bandcamp is pretty close to this experience if they set it as "pay what you want" (which a lot of artists do)
  - Semaphor 10mo ago
    > (which a lot of artists do) And those who don’t almost always only set a minimum price, so you can still pay more if you want. And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue. [0]: https://isitbandcampfriday.com/ https://isitbandcampfriday.com/
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      > And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue. Bandcamp Friday is such a fun day, I always have +5 purchases lined up from the previous month, and usually keep track of the social media of the artists I buy from that day, and many of them post something really wholesome about how much they made on that day :) Such a fun time all around.
- al_borland 10mo ago
  Wouldn’t the artist offering you to buy the album from them, DRM free, accomplish the same thing while clarifying the transaction that’s happening?

sbarre 10mo ago

I guess buying the vinyl is like buying a shirt or a poster now? I support artists I like by going to their shows and buying lossless digital copies where possible (even if I listen to their music elsewhere). But I don't want or need more physical "stuff".

larusso 10mo ago
I still have my old BluRay collection which I build up from the mid 2000. This already was the replacement of the DVDs I had before. They still sit in the shelve because I don’t know what else to do with the space. Same goes for books etc. I mean I really like the covers etc and the fact one has a physical token. But I simply have too much of it in my house already. And replacing the stuff yet again feels useless. I also like the feeling that if I wanted I could simply let go. Before someone asks: The unit the BluRays are located is a TV unit. And getting rid of them would mean I have an empty shelve. They also cover the cable / power cord mess behind it a bit. So removing is actually not a solution. I would either need a replacement to put there as a cover or get rid of the TV unit shelve thing :). Typical 1st world problem that is.
- sbarre 10mo ago
  About 15 years ago I got rid of almost all of my physical media. I was moving a lot at the time (I've moved 13 times over the last 20 years, several times to different cities) and I had hundreds of CDs, DVDs and books.. It was literally a quarter of my boxes every time I moved.. So I sold and donated all of it, kept what had special value, and re-acquired a lot of it digitally. I still think I made the right decision, although every now and then I miss something specific and regret it, but I get over it pretty fast.
  - 8bitsrule 10mo ago
    I also moved many times in the past. Once CD-quality settled, I gifted my vinyls to a thrift store. (The 'art' was immaterial.) 20 years ago, I ripped all of my CDs into 192K MP3s (perfect enough for my ears) using an online metadata service. Getting rid of the 'jewel cases' (and eventually all of their non-CD content) but retaining the CDs (4 Logic cases worth, 3 sq. feet) saved a ton of room. For backup I archived the thousands of MP3s onto an 80GB Seagate which I organized by genre, then stored in a shoebox. 12 years later I copied the Seagate to two more HDs. It worked fine (but gave-up-the-ghost later that year). I've relied on those files since. Unlike several dead self-burned CD-Rs, the manu'd CDs (I never use) seem to have remained healthy in the cases at room temp.

knollimar 10mo ago

It seems like a silly cargo cult to me. It feels like ewaste compared to a poster

oogali 10mo ago
If it really is cargo culting, and the people buying the physical product are not keeping the manufacturers in check because they never play the vinyl, then I can see a potential situation where manufacturers ramp up to meet "demand" but at lower quality (improved profits). The secondhand market becomes saturated with inferior pressings that are inevitably bound for landfills since they don't meet the quality/expectations of the people who actually play vinyl. Hypothetically.
- skeeter2020 10mo ago
  This doesn't make any sense; there's no craft here, where it's cheaper to press "bad" records vs "good" ones. You would literally need multiple production lines to intentionally execute this "strategy". Also a record cost next to nothing to make.
wlonkly 10mo ago
What's the *e*-waste from a record and sleeve?
- creatonez 10mo ago
  PVC releases potentially harmful vapors and is difficult to properly dispose of.
  - skeeter2020 10mo ago
    records rarely end up in waste, and the relatively small amount of waste from production is not where we should be focusing our energies.
- knollimar 10mo ago
  You're right it's probably not ewaste. I think the record is entirely wasted along with the energy to produce it. The sleeve is the only value if you don't play it

Throaway198712 10mo ago

Ive got 1300 records and I dont live in the USA. So there!

paleotrope 10mo ago

Maybe they call it a Vinyl Disc Player?

thechao 10mo ago

My dad grew up in the 50s & 60s. During COVID he purchased my daughters' the, I quote, "shittiest briefcase record players" he could find. Both girls listen to their music on their devices, but also buy vinyl. The other day, my eldest came down from her room complaining that her vinyl "sounded awful". I told her to bring it up with their Grampy. His response: "you can't appreciate good playback until you've heard awful playback on shitty record players like I had to.". My eldest is now plotting a complete hifi system, and is learning all about how to transfer "vinyl" to "digital" without losing the parts of the vinyl she likes. This was a 5 year play by my dad. Shout out.

colechristensen 10mo ago
“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.” Sometimes I wonder how much INTENTIONAL engineering people's discontent for good or ill happens across the spectrum of human activity. One thing is for sure, people don't talk about it much. I can think of many examples.
- HPsquared 10mo ago
  Nobody would work if housing and food were super cheap, for instance.
  - nkrisc 10mo ago
    There’s an equilibrium. If no one worked, housing and food would not be super cheap.
  - kingkawn 10mo ago
    Or people would do things they were genuinely interested in rather than from desperation
  - I-M-S 10mo ago
    Saving the economy by turning water into a luxury item. The op-eds basically write themselves.

tracerbulletx 10mo ago

Physical media collecting is about a lot of things but one of them is to have a physical artifact representing your relationship with an artist and the art to have in your home to touch, hold, pick up, and display. Makes sense to me.

RajT88 10mo ago
This. Vinyls are the most "special" of media formats, because they require the most care. They function as wall art. If you actually want to listen to them, it's a ritual - something you have to make time and space for. You don't have that with anything else - an Artifact is a great way of putting it, but I would also suggest some other words: relic, totem, effigy, charm

mattsolle 10mo ago

I was in this demographic for a log time. I wanted to support small artists in ways past just going to their shows. This seemed like a nice way to do that (not a big shirt guy for bands). It also helps that you are not only getting music but a large(ish) art piece as well with the vinyl covers. It also feels good to physically have and own something. I recently bought a Portable CD player as well. I think a lot of the Gen Z folks I talk to are starting to (if just wishfully) drift back towards physicality in some ways.

trelane 10mo ago
Welcome to CD ownership! You should rip the music to a lossless format (e.g. FLAC) so you can play those and keep the CD from getting scratched. This will also so let you listen to it on computers (including cell phones). You can also transcode the music to e.g. MP3 to allow easier storage.
microtonal 10mo ago
It also feels good to physically have and own something. I gave all my CDs (probably more than a 1000) away about a decade ago. I find physical media annoying, they take up space and require more effort to use them. All those CDs became more of a burden. I guess it's because I grew up with cassette tapes, portable tape players, then CDs, then Discman, then Discman with buffering. Having gone through all of that, being able to play music on your phone is... excessively nice. I also care more about the music than the packaging -- if I want something nice on the wall, I would get a painting, litho, etc. instead. The only thing I really miss is old-school music discovery. Reading reviews, then going to a record shop, listening a stack of records to decide, talking to record shop owners and friends for scoops, etc. was so much more fun than letting algorithms do recommendations. And after spending your monthly pocket money on two albums, you were invested in the music.
- cm2012 10mo ago
  Surprisingly, chat GPT is amazing at recommendations. (I guess that it is also an algorithm). But it recommended me some great artists and explained why I might like them.

zkmon 10mo ago

And 50% of that are for showing off their oddity in their social networks. The WTF factor. Do something archaic.

Aurornis 10mo ago
Or people just enjoy things. Let’s let people enjoy things.
- skeeter2020 10mo ago
  You're both right of course, but it does seem to be an enjoyment filtered through the social media promoter lens, which makes me a little sad. Unlike say, the enjoyment I got listening to a record (and then CD) as I examined the liner notes and insert, this go-around feels like external validation by casual (or no) acquaintances. Historically this is not as valuable and can lead to some bad outcomes...
- GaryBluto 10mo ago
  I've never seen "Let people enjoy things." used as anything other than a thought-terminating cliché. Just because something brings someone happiness doesn't mean it is immune to criticism.
  - cm2012 10mo ago
    But why feel the need to criticize something that doesnt hurt anyone?
petepete 10mo ago
The same thing's happening to books where being seen as 'a reader' is a much higher priority than being well read. https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/booktok-tiktok-books-community https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/booktok-tiktok...

crazygringo 10mo ago

Yup, sold my turntable a while ago but kept my favorite ~20 albums. I rotate through them, displaying them on my bookshelf. They look great. They're art, they're vibe, they're decoration. (Ultimately I went all-in on smart speakers, so I couldn't just hook up the turntable anymore, and getting a turntable/adapter that digitizes the audio to send over Bluetooth, just no...)

chollida1 10mo ago

Makes sense. Most kids I know put records up on their wall as art. or as a way to pay artists directly by purchasing their album at a concert If you want to listen to music then Spotify runs circles around vinyl as a medium. Records really suck for music quality which is why everyone dumped them when tapes came along and then even more so when cd's became a thing. If Vinyl was a good medium to listen to music then no one would have bought cd's or had a Spotify subscriptions. I can't imagine people going back to old school crt televisions to watch sports or movies either, but I do see people

Clamchop 10mo ago
Minor nit, cassettes were and are mostly worse audio quality than records and they coexisted for decades with their respective compromises. Cassettes replaced 8-track in the portable space and eventually enabled the Walkman. CDs killed both.
- prmoustache 10mo ago
  CD didn't really killed cassette. They coexisted peacefully for 2 decades. CD was nice, transportable but cassette was still more convenient to carry around because a walkman was much smaller[1], wouldn't skip when running/jumping[2], a cassette was less fragile and it was simply so much easier to leave a cassette in a deck and record anything you would ear on the radio on the go. Virtually nobody could/would live burn a dj mix from the radio. Napster + portable mp3 player and smartphoned did kilómetros ll the cassette. [1] especially the late 90's early 00's ones that were barely bigger than a standard cassette case. [2] there was buffering for discmans but it wasn't 100% effective if skipping happened for longer than the buffer
risyachka 10mo ago
Spotify is popular because it is cheap, convenient and has all the music in the world. No one uses it because of quality or because it is the best medium for music.
- chollida1 10mo ago

hipgrave 10mo ago

Seems relevant to bring up that I'm currently working on a device that I hope will bridge the gap between vinyl and digital for some people: https://sleevenote.com https://sleevenote.com

ajdude 10mo ago

I've been on a physical media craze lately. It's been quite a few years since I stopped using Spotify, and I've been rebuilding my collection. Usually by hunting CDs at thrift stores to rip in iTunes to Apple Lossless. I own a bunch of vinyl records, and I've also ripped several of them. After buying one vinyl album from a niche artist (djpoolboi), he actually then sent me a link to download the same tracks on flac, which I appreciated. Lately I've found myself buying the same album both on vinyl for listening to at home, and on CD to rip for my digital music collection. I work from home a lot so having to get up to flip the record gives me an excuse not to stare at my screen all day too.

stego-tech 10mo ago

Guilty party, here. I feel I can explain myself though, or at least offer context about why I own about a dozen records and no way whatsoever to play them. I’m a recovering audiophile. I got into the hobby because I enjoy technology in its myriad aspects, and had discovered that good speakers can make things sound better. As I began accruing CDs and re-ripping into lossless audio, I also began collecting vinyls via Record Store Day events of bands or artists I found interesting at the time, or the odd Collector’s Edition bundles of albums or games. The thinking was that when I finally settled into my own place, I could invest into some Hi-Fi kit to play them back. Well, I fell out of the audiophile sphere when I got into data analysis, physics, human biology, and psychology: I had become inoculated against the bullshit that permeates the space, but still recognized the value of my album collection. I’d also pivoted into preservation, and so I began accepting relatives’ collections of older formats, like 78s. I still lacked playback mechanisms, though I now had the space and budget - just more pressing projects than a record playback setup. And so here I am in 2025, in an apartment that transmits energy between units, with an upstairs neighbor that does somersaults and tumbles all day (thus shaking the space slightly). The cost of everything has skyrocketed, but it’s no longer a matter of a turntable and a phono stage to get going (need isolation as well, and that ain’t cheap). I’ve also - shockingly - got other, more pressing projects in front of me, one of which is a bedroom Hi-Fi setup that has physical controls for music streaming instead of smartphone apps - again, not remotely cheap. Right now, my meager collection sits in a crate under the sofa, languishing. One day I’ll get to enjoy them, but today is sadly not that day.

skeeter2020 10mo ago
>> One day I’ll get to enjoy them, but today is sadly not that day. I've got news for you: you won't. Your post reads like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. Also it's 2026, and being the first day of the new year the PERFECT time to just go ahead and do it. You could probably buy a used record player today for < $50 and be listening to a record.
- stego-tech 10mo ago
  > Your post reads like you're letting perfect be the enemy of good enough. As someone with OCD: guilty! In all seriousness though, I do have bigger, more important projects that consume the limited Capital I have first: finding new employment for one, replacing the sagging IKEA furniture and wobbly Amazon TV stands with something more resilient and long-lasting (eyeballing Salamander Designs for that), likely a new mattress for the bedroom, the list goes on. That said, you're right in that I should be keeping a list of components updated with pricing and watching for deals. I know what I need, I just haven't chosen it yet, and that's the first step in any project build.

michaelbuckbee 10mo ago

Analog purchases have become much more of a signaling mechanism than for direct consumption. In my family group there were a good numbers of vinyls gifted this past christmas and none of them are going to be regularly listened to as the majority of music consumption they do is "on the go" in the car or mobile. Similarly, I'm seeing them make more purchases of "trophy books" where they read the book on their phone or listened to the audiobook but liked the book so much that they want to have it on their shelf (there are also special editions with elaborate edge decorations, etc. that seem to feed into this).

tedivm 10mo ago

I think a lot of people in the comments here are missing the point in a lot of ways. The first is that even if people don't own a record player at the moment doesn't mean that they don't plan on getting one. I have multiple nieces/nephews who got record players (at their request!) this year for Christmas. Briefcase record players are becoming ridiculously more popular. The thing is there's no point in buying a record player if you don't already have some records, and artists are doing a lot more limited prints so sometimes you need to buy immediately to be sure you're going to get one. My wife and I bought a new sound system in 2024, and we decided to include a record player. We have used it way more we had expected to. We still have streaming services (Tidal) but listening to a record has a ton of benefits. There's the fact that the entire album itself is an organized experience, not just random tracks, and the tactile nature of it is really appealing. The albums themselves are like pieces of artwork in a way that a CD or screensaver would never be. It's also nice knowing that the artist I'm buying from is getting real money from the purchase, unlike the pennies they get from streaming.

HardwareLust 10mo ago

Guilty! I have bought a handful of vinyls (limited edition, colored vinyl, etc.) in anticipation of saving up to buy a good quality turntable. And these were all artists and albums I know and love through CDs or streaming, so it's not like I'm buying them blind.

999900000999 10mo ago

It's just a cool piece of merch to me. Artist make no money off streaming. This is a real artifact I get to own, keep sealed and maybe get signed. I did have the unfortunate experience of buying a D12 Devil's Night vinyl to find the cover image quality to look like some intern copied it off Google images.

falkensmaize 10mo ago

I buy vinyl for one reason - it forces me to actively listen to the music. My teen daughter does the same. I have many happy memories of getting a new record as kid, laying in the floor and listening from start to finish while poring over liner notes and album art. There was a level of connection with the music that I just don’t get from listening to Spotify while I’m washing the dishes or something. I know it’s sentimental, but I get so much joy out of watching my daughter do the same thing now. She has a blast going to our local record store, finding records from her favorite bands old and new and then coming home and just listening. No devices, no distractions, just her and the music she loves. In a sometimes horrible and depressing world, it’s a sweet escape.

rdiddly 10mo ago

It gives me hope for the future to see the young'uns recognizing instances where progress isn't necessarily progress. If you oversimplify audio history as 70s=vinyl, 80s=cassettes, 90s=CDs, 00s=MP3s, and 10s=streaming, they've parted ways somewhat with the current moment and gone all the way back to the 70s. Ironically as an older fart myself, who once owned numerous records ("vinyls" is a newer term), and later cassettes, and later CDs, I guess I eventually decided I'd had enough authenticity and converted the whole lot to MP3s and stuck with that when streaming came around. So when I parted ways with the now, I only went back to the 00s, and that was mainly to retain control/ownership rather than having yet another damn algorithm mediating my experience. It's a sweet spot for me - maximum convenience while not giving up intentionality.

jagged-chisel 10mo ago

I buy for someone who does own a player, but I do not own one.

paxys 10mo ago

Not too surprising. Most vinyl records come with a digital download code. So you can still listen to it on your phone or wheverever else, and have a nice collectable to go with it.

IndySun 10mo ago

The actual title of the article is "Why Gen Z is Driving the Vinyl Record Boom?".

basisword 10mo ago

I know a lot of people who use them as decoration. As someone who has been buying and listening to vinyl records for a long time I find it a bit odd but I understand it. Going into a friends home and checking out their book collection or record collection used to be a fun thing and tells you a bit about someone. Now that everything is digital that is completely gone so having a few of your favourite records around, even if you don't listen to them fills that void.

analogpixel 10mo ago

99% of toy collectors don't take their toys out of the boxes to play with them.

hypertexthero 10mo ago

Vinyl record covers are nicely-sized artworks for displaying in a room. Listening to an album you love, while taking the time to flip the record or tape, or taking the time listen to an entire album in your streaming service of choice, helps you to notice things and be present. Recommended film: Perfect Days by Wim Wenders - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days Recommended book: Bridge of Waves by W.A. Mathieu - https://www.shambhala.com/bridge-of-waves-288.html https://www.shambhala.com/bridge-of-waves-288.html In 02026: Slow down, and fix things. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

superultra 10mo ago

I oversee pressing for over 150k+ records a year. We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low. I wouldn’t doubt if the number of buyers who don’t own a record player is even higher tha 50%, and that the percentage of people who actually play the records is actually 10-20%. I don’t have data on that, it’s just a hunch. Many of us in the indie music industry (hip hop sustained record plants for many years, arguably until independent music started pressing in the 2000s) have mixed feelings about records. It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste. And they’re cubersome to bring on tour. But there isn’t another physical medium that sells at all as well as vinyl. Soft apparel always does well. But people want vinyl. I don’t love the Gen Z framing of this though. Vinyl purchasing at this point is multi generational. I don’t think it’s some mysterious Gen Z love of physical. I think we all know that Spotify doesn’t pay artists appropriately and we want to help sustain the music we love. Buying digitally is just isn’t the same for a lot of people (even though it arguably is the best and easiest income generator for artists).

jen20 10mo ago
Do they want the vinyl itself or do they want the cover art and so forth?
- tssva 10mo ago
  Anecdotal data from my Gen-Z daughter, currently a college freshman, is that they want the cover art. Her dorm room walls are decorated with vinyl albums in frames where they cannot be listened to.
- lucideer 10mo ago
  I'd say it's varied & most often a combination of multiple things. - They want the cover art - They want a physical token representing an artist they like - They want to financially support the artist in a direct way - They speculate they might get a player someday (much akin to book buyers leaving books on their shelves unread for years on end) 1 of the above might be the primary driver for any given buyer but I'd assume all of the above play some part in their motivations.

baby 10mo ago

It's all NFTs

joecool1029 10mo ago

So I had a year or two in the same situation, old sony turntable had door mechanism fail and the stylus I had wore out and didn't have an easy replacement. Got a sound burger for Christmas and it’s pretty great for casual use (it stows away nicely). Most of my collection I did get for the art or to support the artist more directly (there’s one I always buy the test pressings from on every album he puts out, I get to hear it like a month before release). My dad has a pretty big record collection, he didn’t play them a ton, what we would do was dub them to metal cassette and listen to those so it wouldnt degrade the records. So there’s a boomer equivalent to using streaming over playing the original physical copy.

chpatrick 10mo ago

I've been buying LPs after concerts just to have a nice souvenir, I can always listen to them on Spotify. I only just got a turntable this Christmas and it's cool to actually listen to them.

Finnucane 10mo ago

If they really want the old-school analog experience, you need a turntable and a cassette recorder so you can make mix tapes for your friends. We didn't have 'playlists', we had mix tapes. Also, to have in the car for road trips. Also, I must go and yell at that cloud now. Excuse me.

tracker1 10mo ago
I would be pretty happy if I could get the Android version of Winmmp back... or something very similar... my phone has as much storage open as the biggest ipod I ever had, and it's pretty much always with me. That said, it's just easier to use a streaming service... the issue is that new music discovery just sucks at this point.

pointbob 10mo ago

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827a 10mo ago

I have a handful without a record player; they make fantastic, cool wall art. That is the extent of why i buy them. I have no intention of ever buying a record player.

iainctduncan 10mo ago

Another aspect of this is that a band or label really need to hit a minimum sales quota to justify pressing albums, so people buying vinyl are actually helping them more than they would be by simply donating the profit of a vinyl purchase (which is of course not the retail price of vinyl). Bands want to release, and this helps them do it. Preordering product – whether books, vinyl, or digital – really, really helps self-funded artists and indy arts business. Keep it up, kids! :-)

weinzierl 10mo ago

What do people do with the vinyl then? Collect it like baseball cards? Funnily I'm in the complete opposite cohort. I own a record player, because stereo sets used to come with one even when vinyl was on the decline already. I have less than a handful of records which I ever only played out of curiosity.

almosthere 10mo ago

What half am I supposed to be surprised by?

anshumankmr 10mo ago

I myself am a DVD enthusiast (in so far as I have a copy of TDK trilogy and Raimi trilogy plus a few other classic movies/shows and songs from the 00s). There are a few shows that I enjoyed as a teen and the fact is I no longer have a way to even legally watch them in my country, so for me the ability to never lose those movies despite streaming platforms being around is the main motivator. (However I do not have a functional DVD player anymore which sucks). So I think lets not shame people for what they do on their own time that affects none of us really.

buildsjets 10mo ago

I make up for them buy currently owning 10 of the damn things. One for the main house stereo, 2 in a DJ setup in the basement, one for my all-tube Harman-Kardon setup in the office, 4 in the ready-to-sell stack, and 2 nostalgic display pieces that just collect dust. 880 full length albums in my 12" collection, with pressing dates between sometime in 1955 and this October 2025. 70 years... They all get fairly regular rotation, I alternate between choosing something I feel like listening to, and using the Randomize button in Discogs.com where I track my collection. A someday project is to figure out how set up an automated workflow to use ambient song detection/recognition to magically recognize when I am playing an album and scrobble it to last.fm to track my plays. It's nothing I want to do manually but it would be neat to see my own analog spotify wrapped summary.

gyulai 10mo ago

So, the advantages of physical media are much touted these days, but all the actual physical media we have are yesteryear's technology, and each come with their own unique problems, plus there is the problem of waste. Why isn't a new physical format taking hold? Something like Bandcamp-style downloads, which you put on a micro SD card. You put the card in a 3d-printable piece of plastic, resembling a cassette case. When you buy the download, the band sends you a printed piece of paper (the inlay for the cassette case thing) saying “limited edition run #1, Sequence Number 465/2000; thanks for your support”. If you want to get fancy, maybe record the transaction in some kind of ledger; perhaps put the buyer's name on the band webpage as a patron. For the software, perhaps there could be something open source based on hardware like the anbernic rg355xxsp and similar devices (multipurpose, portable, hackable by design, …) It would take very little to get it established: A critical mass of bands in some genre getting together, their fans getting on board, and things spreading from there.

burnt-resistor 10mo ago

Anemoia exists, I guess. I have 2 (and a spare for parts) tts and a DJ mixer to allow crossfading (it's a 4 channel because it was the cheapest usable thing available). I threw in moderate Audio-Technica MicroLine cartridges in both and had to get a digital scale and some other calibration crap because these tts are some relatively cheap with a bunch of adjustments lacking interchangeable cartridges. I'm at around 10 milk-crate sized storage boxes and have stopped buying almost entirely. It's not a "purist" rig at all (I'm allergic to audiophiles) considering it feeds into a Marantz NR1711 that has Tidal and a PlexAmp Pi that drives a couple of Elac Debut mains and an SVS PB16.

mcv 10mo ago

I'm not buying vinyl records, but I still have a ton of them, and my ancient record player broke down ages ago. Similarly, I've got tons of CDs I'm not using anymore. The fate of old media, I guess. But I do miss selecting a specific album to listen to. Spotify is not the same. I guess I'm in the market for a new record player. Is that market picking up again?

jjgreen 10mo ago

In a music shop a few weeks ago, I had to explain to a young man that the opening of the inner sleeve should be inside the outer cover so that the record that he'd just purchased (for a crapload of cash) did not fall out. Sweet really.

ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago

I have a USB record player in storage. I have a number of old albums; mostly for keepsakes. I have a few Tangerine Dream picture disks (including one, cut into the shape of Poland), and a few records that have been out of print for ages. I don't think of them as "investments," though. I don't think they're actually worth that much. I have the music on them as digital files that I got from Apple Music, though (I have an Apple One sub). Much better quality sound.

kypro 10mo ago

As a millennial I think I was probably in the first generation who first started buying vinyl not because we had record players, or preferred the sound of vinyl (although some claimed to), but because when most of us came of age during the time of iPods and mp3 players, if you were going to buy physical media to support an artist, vinyl was probably your best option. CDs were rapidly heading in the same direction as tape (and continue to), and both were less romantic and felt in many ways a less "authentic" format than vinyl did. The physical aspect of vinyl has a beauty that simply isn't replicated by the CDs optical storage system or the tapes magnetic storage. Another thing I'd add is that I have a craving for analog more and more in my life these days, especially in music and other media formats. Everything is so polished and so clean that the novelty of the quality has worn off, and everything around you instead feel increasingly unnatural. As an analogy, I've always thought it was interesting how awful the hologram quality is in Star Wars given they have extremely advanced technology otherwise. But if they were in perfect HD although they would be better from a functional perspective, there would also be something less romantic about them. It's hard to put my finger on why I feel that way, but I think the same is true of lots of technologies. When street lights are replaced with LED lights, they are more functional, but they're also less romantic. Or if you look at food packaging from the 50s, there's something romantic about the materials, colours and print used vs today's plastic packaging and digitally designed labels. Anyway, I guess this doesn't surprise me at all and I think it totally makes sense, although I suspect most people don't even really rationalise why they're doing it. Vinyl just feels right because there's something more authentic and real about the format.

vertnerd 10mo ago

As someone who grew up with only vinyl in the 60s and 70s, I would never choose it over a CD for audio quality. BUT I would enjoy recreating the rituals that go with playing vinyl: obsessive cleaning of the disks, the gentle manipulation of a delicate tone arm, and the soft thud when the turntable cover drops. Playing a record was a minor event to be savored. I doubt the younger generations are getting all of that right.

ubermonkey 10mo ago
Yeah, this. Vinyl absolutely CAN sound great. If you have a nice amp and good speakers, modern listeners will be amazed at the fidelity possible from vinyl played back on a good turntable with a decent signal chain. BUT. CD is still better. CD is simpler. You don't have to faff about with cleaning them, or treat them like hothouse flowers. The platform is incredibly portable. And yet: Vinyl is more fun. We moved last year. Our audio room can play streaming, CD, or vinyl. It's the first and third options that get by FAR the most usage. CD comes up once in a blue moon.

xvxvx 10mo ago

Lots of negative comments about vinyl here, from people who have no clue. I collect vinyl because it sounds better. Vinyl has a warmer sound that is missing from digital formats. Streaming is convenient for travel and great for previewing music, getting recommendations etc. But if I want to sit back and truly enjoy albums that I love, that’s where vinyl comes in. I have a decent sound system. Buying albums on vinyl that I’ve listened to 100’s of times and playing through the system blows me away. I’ve been unable to get the same effect or quality from digital, despite trying everything aside from a $2000+ DAC. Wired streaming. Lossless. Various services and formats. CDs. Technically better quality. My ears disagree. At the end of the day, vinyl is more enjoyable for me and many others. It’s a better experience. To quote Trent Reznor: VINYL MISSION STATEMENT IN THESE TIMES OF NEARLY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO ALL THE MUSIC IN THE WORLD, WE'VE COME TO APPRECIATE THE VALUE AND BEAUTY OF THE PHYSICAL OBJECT. OUR STORE'S FOCUS IS ON PRESENTING THESE ITEMS TO YOU. VINYL HAS RETURNED TO BEING A PRIORITY FOR US - NOT JUST FOR THE WARMTH OF THE SOUND, BUT THE INTERACTION IT DEMANDS FROM THE LISTENER. THE CANVAS OF ARTWORK, THE WEIGHT OF THE RECORD, THE SMELL OF THE VINYL, THE DROPPING OF THE NEEDLE, THE DIFFICULTY OF SKIPPING TRACKS, THE CHANGING OF SIDES, THE SECRETS HIDDEN WITHIN, AND HAVING A PHYSICAL OBJECT THAT EXISTS IN THE REAL WORLD WITH YOU. ALL PART OF THE EXPERIENCE AND MAGIC. DIGITAL FORMATS AND STREAMING ARE GREAT AND CERTAINLY CONVENIENT, BUT THE IDEAL WAY I'D HOPE A LISTENER EXPERIENCE MY MUSIC IS TO GRAB A GREAT SET OF HEADPHONES, SIT WITH THE VINYL, DROP THE NEEDLE, HOLD THE JACKET IN YOUR HANDS LOOKING AT THE ARTWORK (WITH YOUR FUCKING PHONE TURNED OFF) AND GO ON A JOURNEY WITH ME. -TRENT REZNOR

mococa 10mo ago

I have a couple of vinyls, no player too :-) I buy them because I like to see the cover & lyrics while listing to it (mp3).

iancmceachern 10mo ago

Also just in: Half of all buyers of scented candles actually burn them. Half the buyers of those fancy soap bars in the shapes of fruit or whatever actually use them as soap . Half of all shutters on houses can actually be closed to "shutter" the windows

andrewmcwatters 10mo ago
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bbbobbb 10mo ago

I would buy and play vinyl if the music I listen to (renaissance, baroque) was actually released on vinyl.

RAdrien 10mo ago

At least some vinyl buyers who don’t own record players may be buying them as gifts for people who have them. Last Christmas, I bought 3 vinyl records as gifts. I don’t own a record player.

H1Supreme 10mo ago

I wonder if used vinyl purchases would skew this number more towards "owns a turntable".

ranvel 10mo ago

yeah, those crazy people who gift vinyl to people and collectors who want to make a profit are craaaazy people. (this is sarcasm, these are normal things (not at all an exhaustive list) that might make you buy a vinyl without owning a turntable) also, we're probably getting some really good stats with this stuff with the folks buying at their local record store, right? by the way, what was the phrasing of the question they used to get this information?