Why Vinyl Is the Only Worthwhile Way to Own Music

On any given Tuesday in the 90s, I would hustle to the record store after school to gawk at the new releases. Occasionally, I would take a CD home, greedily tear it open, pop it into my boombox, and listen while I pretended to do my homework. This wonderful experience has no value any more. It's obsolete.

Listening to music is still amazing today, it's just that you'd be crazy to buy a CD. That's not me saying that: That's what the whole world is saying. CD sales have been declining every year for more than a decade because CDs are effectively useless in a world where digital music files are so easy to play and transfer, legally or otherwise.

That doesn't mean there's no worthwhile way to buy a real-world physical album. Even as the recording industry flails, vinyl is seeing a comeback. Maybe you've noticed this resurgence in the living rooms of pretentious friends who keep a crate full of ragged record jackets next to an old Technics turntable. At the very least, you've probably stumbled upon a small selection of shrink-wrapped records in trendy big city boutiques, and if not, maybe while Googling the meanings of Taylor Swift lyrics, you stumbled upon an Amazon listing for her latest record, Red, cut on 140 gram vinyl.

The renaissance of the long play record isn't just an anecdotal trend. Even as physical record sales decline, people are buying more vinyl than they have in decades. In 2013, sales increased 31-percent to about 6 million units year-over-year. It's not a single-year bump either, either. Sales have climbed to 6 million from after having been at about a million in 2007.

Why Vinyl Is the Only Worthwhile Way to Own Music

I'm not the first person to point out that vinyl is on the rise after having been considered dead. The "why" behind it, though, is a little more elusive. People don't have to buy vinyl, and yet, they're increasingly choosing to do so. It seems that in a world where CDs are obsolete, and digital files are intangible, the vinyl record still has a physical value that gives you your money's worth. If the music industry wants to survive, it better pay attention to why people are buying records.

Why buy music at all?


I'm not just talking about piracy. For a few years people were buying digital music because for some, the convenience of online stores like iTunes outweighed the inconvenience and legal risk of file sharing. But subscription music services like Spotify, Rdio, Beats Music, et al, are so easy and affordable to sign up for, that "owning music" is more complicated than just listening to whatever you want wherever you are on whatever device you happen to be using.

Yes, Spotify doesn't have everything, but it does have pretty damn close to everything, and for most people, it's a single, small, monthly expenditure that will satisfy the entirety of their music listening desires. And, of course, there are people out there who like buying things, especially from smaller artists. For them buying a CD means putting money in the artists' pocket. But even these magnanimous souls will admit that in the best-case scenario, the CD gets ripped to digital storage of some kind. Or worse, it's never played, and you just listen to the thing on Spotify anyway until it ends up in a landfill.

Convenience over audio quality


For those people who do care about these things, online stores like HD tracks offer audiophile quality downloads. And yet, last year digital music sales took a dip for the first time since iTunes started selling tracks a decade ago. It shouldn't surprise you that in 2013 streaming music consumption increased by 32 percent, and now accounts for 16 percent of recording industry revenue. This would seem to confirm evidence that people who want to go digital really don't care about audio quality.


Some people choose to dispute science and instead trust their easily deluded senses, or maybe they just like the sound of a record scratching on the surface of a record. These fans only help prove my point: People are turning to vinyl because they enjoy it more.

The case for vinyl







The future of music is selling an experience





Lead image: Jan T. Sott, used with permission

This post originally ran on March 21st, 2014. We're bumping it today in celebration of Record Store Day. Go support your local shop!