7 years ago
4
Vinyl is having its best year since 1985. Shame no one is listening to the records
A survey last year, though, found that many vinyl buyers don’t actually play their purchases or own turntables. So those records sitting untouched in the living room of hipsters all over America are most likely an expression of identity—of belonging to a particular generation, culture, and sound.
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I wish we still had all our old records my parents had collected in the '70s and '80s, who knew one day they'd be "cool" and valuable. Personally, when I was little I always preferred my parent's albums to cassettes, they have their own sound that digital and the like don't replicate. Then we went CD and forgot about it.
If it weren't for the cost of a good player I'd gladly switch to albums, their cost is a bit steep but nostalgia says it's my favorite sounding music, it may not be what I remember though in reality.
I am trying to find the relevant articles, but when it popped up in other discussions, there was proof that people actually prefer the flaws/artifacts that different music formats introduced. Vinyl and turntables had very specific flaws that listeners would not clue into consciously, but still prefer, the same way that the compression in mp3 formats sounds comfortable to newer generations. Subjective Fidelity and Problems of Measurement in Audio Reproduction and Subjective audibility of MP3-compression artefacts in practical application are two articles I have cued up in terms of going down this rabbit hole.
Sound bias is definitely an interesting thought on this and very believable.
Not discussed in the article are used record sales. Speaking of personal experience, the college town I live in has a small but booming subculture of young people who collect used records and most certainly spend a lot of time listening to them. I think prohibitively high cost of brand new vinyl is probably the cause of these records not getting played