By Hunter Drake
In my days as a child, I always remember going to my grandparents house and watching my grandpa put one of his old Beatles records on the turn table in what seemed to be a massive living room with green carpet and off white curtains on the big windows. Staring at that big record sleeve for what felt like forever. Watching the record spin and wobble ever so slightly. That soft crackle in the background of the music was so pleasing but not distracting. It amazed by how music could be on a big disk.
Records are just about as physical music can get other than being there at a concert or in the recording studio. Sure, CD’s and tapes are “physical” but the grooves in the record are literal physical evidence of the music unlike CD’s and tapes which are just digitally put on to a physical object. You may ask the question, “Why not just listen to music digitally? It’s convenient.”
Don’t get me wrong, I will listen to digital; it is very convenient. But that’s just the thing. Sometimes convenience isn’t so nice. When it comes to records, it’s so much more immersive, from the process of going out to a record store, finding the right record, taking it home, placing it on the turn table, moving the needle over the record and hitting that play button. It takes work but that’s the appeal. You go out to do so much for this one thing that when you finally get to listen to the record, it’s so much more rewarding than just going to Spotify, finding a playlist, and forgetting the music in the background.
Everything from staring at the cover art for the entirety of the music’s duration to flipping the record over to the B side, something about that experience is unlike anything else. Not even CD’s provide that same experience.
There’s an argument that records sound better as well. In that regard, for all intents and purposes, it’s really only something I notice if I’m actively listening for that. According to Tom Villar from MUO, “In order to fit as many tracks as possible into your 256MB MP3 player, your music needed to be compressed, losing some detail in the process to the detriment of sound quality; all in the name of practicality, of course,” (Vinyl Outsold CDs…). In the name of convenience, listening to digital might be worth an ever so slight change in quality.
Sure, you can’t listen to a record in a car -well, not easily- but when everything becomes so easy in the world of digital, it’s nice to have a little “challenge” sometimes and to immerse yourself into an experience rather than just flipping through your phone. Holding a physical object and caring for it feels so much nicer than telling Google to play your favorite song; it’s like fine china, it’s delicate and beautiful in a way. You can’t observe the grooves on digital, you can’t immerse yourself in the cover art, you can’t care for digital like you do with vinyl.
Is it really a big deal? Probably not but that’s the thing. In a stressful world nowadays, sometimes immersing yourself in something as simple as a Pink Floyd record is all it takes to forget the stress of the world. The simple things are what we enjoy best so why not take your grandpa’s old records and have a spin every once in a while?
Works Cited
Villar, Toin, and Toin Villar (11 Articles Published) . “Vinyl Outsold CDs in 2020: What This Means for the Future of Music.” MUO, March 15, 2021. https://www.makeuseof.com/vinyl-outsold-cd-what-this-means-for-music/.
