CDs.
CD’s. Already have a sizeable collection in storage and honestly never got the fascination with vinyl.
large format cover art, lyrics on back. It was part of the experience, plus cost. You did a lot more research into an album when it was that expensive. Today, people just collect a lot of digital crap.
How about a new format: large optical media. That way, we get the cover art, lyrics on back, without degradation or wearing out.
Audio laser discs.
Nothing can beat a wall of a CD/Cassette/Vinyl collection.
Nothing can beat making a mix tape/CD.
I was in the record business from the 70s through the early 2000s, and oversaw the transition from LPs to CDs. I had a huge LP collection (50% classical), which I transitioned to a huge CD collection, and got rid of most of the LPs. I still have the entire collection.
CDs were the better format by a long ways, but I totally understand why people love vinyl. For one thing, the large format cover. I remember working for a classical record label, and we were looking at the final cover proof of the last LP we were releasing before going all CD, a particularly beautiful photo of the Alps, and my boss saying “Aren’t you going to miss the big cover art?” And all of us nodded solemnly. It really felt like a funeral, like I was saying goodbye.
I also remember wondering how people were going to clean their weed, and roll proper joints without an LP with a gatefold cover.
Properly keeping a vinyl collection is a chore. First of all, if you are doing it right, ALL of your LPs are in a poly sleeve for protection, so the process for playing an LP is this:
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Remove the album from the shelf, where it is properly stored upright and tight.
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Remove the LP from the poly sleeve
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Remove the inner sleeve/ dust cover from the cover.
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Remove the LP from the inner sleeve/ dust cover, carefully using fingertips on the edges and label only.
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Hold the LP, and look at it from the edge, to see if there are any obvious warps or kinks. Of course there aren’t, you store it properly, but you look anyway.
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You blow off any obvious hairs or dust.
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Set it carefully on the turntable, trying to put the spindle through hole on the first try, without rubbing it around, making nearly invisible, but bothersome, marks around the hole, that will irk you every time you see them.
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Carefully clean the surface with a Discwasher or some other cleaning device.
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Use a stylus brush on the needle to remove any schmutz.
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Carefully place the needle on the surface, and relax for the next 20 minutes as you listen to your music. Or dance. Or my personal favorite: Air Guitar (I play for real, I’m allowed).
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Flip the record, repeat the entire cleaning process, and drop the needle.
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Reverse the process, put the LP back into the inner sleeve, put that in the cover, put the album back in the poly sleeve, and slip it back into its proper place on the shelf.
That’s a lot more complicated than simply dropping a CD into a drawer and pushing a button.
The psychological result of all those steps, EVERY time you want to play music, is that it starts to feel like a ritual, and takes on a feeling of importance. The music you listen to, the LPs that that you fuss over, that you preserve, and collect, take on a personal and cultural significance, that you feel a need to protect.
As new formats came along, CDs, then Digital Downloads, the ritual was removed, and music stopped feeling important. In the 60s and 70s, music was a significant factor in ending the Vietnam War, but it is hard to imagine today’s music industry mobilizing against the government. Most people don’t take their music as seriously as they did back then.
Yet some have rediscovered the satisfaction in having such a strong, PHYSICAL relationship with their music collection, and are collecting LPs again.
I get it. Music has ALWAYS been important to me, so I don’t need the ritual to remind me anymore anymore, or maybe doing the ritual 100,000 when I was young wove it into my DNA. Either way, CDs have the durability, combined with the punchier sound quality, ease of use, and longer duration, and I was hooked the first time I saw one. I’ll take the advantages of the CD over The Ritual any day.
I am so grateful to see someone write it out like this in ritual sense so that someone who didn’t have any records would understand. It’s downright reverent of the music. Thank you for that.
Very true. Many hobbies have rituals. Cyclists assemble their gear, clean their chain, and choose their wardrobe before their ride. Card collectors and collectors of all kinds of things often have detailed ritualistic organization of their collection. Potheads might pack and burn their bowl the exact same super optimized way every time. Gardeners might walk meditative paths and talk to their plants. Those descriptions are outside observations of people and their hobby rituals that anyone can make. OP has given us an inside look into their hobby, which is pretty damn cool and insightful!
Reverence is the perfect word for how performing the ritual makes you feel about the music.
What’s your favorite purely classical LP to air guitar to
Andres Segovia playing Bach’s Partita #3 for Solo Violin. I heard it first when I was a teen, and now I’m trying to learn it on electric guitar, as an oldster.
My family had discwasher but not needle cleaner. You are supposed to use it EVERY time???
My Discwasher came with a little stylus cleaning brush that fit over the top of the little bottle of cleaning solution.
You probably didn’t have to clean it every time, but it wasn’t a bad idea to give it a quick swipe and remove any grit that accumulated from the last playing.
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If I was doing it as a way to acquire music to listen to, CDs, it’s easier and more convenient to rip them to a computer, they take up less storage space, and are more tolerant of a bit of neglect.
If I’m just looking to collect something for the sake of collecting something, probably vinyl.
Hard no. Hauling this shit around and finding a spots for it is not something I would’ve chosen if I didn’t already have the nostalgic attachment.
That being said! Can’t lie I do still love it.
If I ever need to move…I might just donate most of my things. I love things and I have too much.
Same as I do now.
CDs.
You can rip CDs to digital easily. You can get them cheap at resale shops and garage sales.
I buy and listen to vinyls, but also I moatly only buy them for my top 5 artists, partly for display. I do buy some if Infind them cheap or they are special, but I don’t really collect vinyls. They are impractical.
CDs have caught on again, and it’s getting harder to find them. I used to go out on a Saturday, and hit 2 or 3 Goodwills, and come home with 20-30 great CDs, at only $.50-$1 each.
These days all they have are bad religious albums, vanity projects, old software, etc. Garbage.
Man, what a way to find out so many people hate Bad Religion and Garbage. D:
Oh god the religious albums everywhere.
You are awakening some PTSD here…
I’ve got both and prefer vinyl. If I was starting from zero now I would focus on CDs. Not everything is available in every format but I think CDs have the most coverage.
Vinyl is cool and cozy but I couldn’t be bothered. It’s a bad tech / product overall.
Too much space, too clunky of a tech to not lose interest in a few months and I don’t believe there’s an audio difference a human ear can notice. So you’re just having a bunch of square posters that you sometimes look at - might as well just do posters then.
crack…pop…pop…skip…crack …pop…pop. Pretentious media.
I still buy music CDs, and rip them to digital media. CDs are a lot easier to rip to digital media, but vinyl is cooler, but I listen to local music mainly through strawberry media player (or USB stick in a car)
I collect both but have begun focusing more on CDs for their portability, price, and their ease of digitization. I’m actually in the middle of extracting CDs I recently picked up at the thrift store as I type this. I have an MP3 player and I load them on there, keep them on my hard-drive AND a separate back up. I still have CDs from the 90s and have had no issues with them playing or being digitized.
Vinyl is trash coming back to sell to collectors.
If you want to put covers up in a room or something go for it. But for listening to music they are the dumbest shit imaginable.
Preach. I am so fed up with vinyl. I hope more artist will continue releasing their music on CD instead.
Por que no los dos?
Some people like collecting vinyl records, others like collecting music on CDs.
To each their own, live and let live.All things being equal sure, but vinyl is a severely outdated audio format that is both a lot more environmentally taxing as well as being a poor medium for music. Both in production and for shipping around the world.
I’ll take CDs over vinyl any day.
Vinyl doesn’t appeal to me personally compared to CDs, and it’s generally less technically capable, but…I mean, people like what they like. As long as they aren’t being misled as to the characteristics of what they’re buying…shrugs
Some of it is opinion. It’s like saying “which is better, chocolate or vanilla”?
If what you want is big album art, a neat mechanical gizmo to watch, and a playing experience that triggers nostalgia, then, hey, who am I to say “no, longevity, compactness, and audio fidelity are more important characteristics”?
I mean, some people like live audio. Some people like retro boom boxes.
End of the day, what you’re doing is picking the thing that makes you personally happy.
So exactly what I said?
If I weren’t allowed to stream or pirate, then CDs.
If I am, then Vinyl.
My wife is totally into vinyl but I keep telling her, the best it will ever sound is the first time you play it and it degrades just a little bit every time the needle hits it.
CDs are consistent. The same data every play, and it’s easier to rip them to digital.
I personally dislike vinyl for how damaging they are for the environment during production, but from the testing I’ve seen, they don’t really degrade in any meaningful way just from playing them.
I knew guys who were so weird about their LPs, that they wouldn’t play something because they didn’t want to wear it out, which is stupid.
I also had customers (I worked at n record stores back in the day) that would play certain records EVERY day, and would buy a new copy once a year. Dark Side of the Moon, Rumors, Led Zeppelin 4, and Lynyrd Skynyrd were common ones.
People back in the days would copy their vinyls on cassettes in order to not wear them out to quickly.
Then the cassettes would wear out, but cheaper to replace…
