Late December, I decided to pull the trigger on a purchase I’ve been toying the idea of for quite a while: a record player. Along with the turntable, I bought four vinyl records. These weren’t vintage 60s albums but albums released in the last two years. To tell you the truth, they each album has been in regular rotation in my Spotify plays ever since each was released.
Shit, what’s the point then?
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I can’t speak for the countless other collectors who have collectively put the vinyl industry on pace to become a billion dollar business, but I can say I decided to collect music because, quite simply, I love music and I especially love the albums that resonate with me and, hell, have even shaped who I am.
I’ve been collecting physical copies of music even before I bought my turntable. I grew up listening whatever sparse CD’s my parents had laying around, including a Beatles compilation that would push me to start my own collection when The Beatles’ 2009 album remasters were rolled out. Of course, I had a healthy iTunes library that was continually growing, but every once in a while I’d step into a music store or Best Buy and buy an album I particularly liked at the moment.
The fruits of that CD collection are now displayed on my dorm wall, spanning The Black Keys to the soundtrack of Rom-Com (500) Days of Summer to Kanye West. Aesthetically, it’s pretty neat to see the art of the music I grew up with somewhere other than a two square inch box on my iPhone. Yet, what I think is most significant is how these albums represent landmarks of where I was when I couldn’t stop listening to them. I’ll see Lorde’s Pure Heroine and I think of how it comforted the anxious kid who was a year into high school and still had no idea what his teenaged years had in store for him. I’ll see Earl Sweatshirt’s I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside and I still remember the awe of hearing it for the first time and how much it just captured the feeling of adolescent depression. I’ll see Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange and get to experience how it feels to be head-over-heels in love again and I’ll see Beach House’s Depression Cherry and I’ll be comforted by the melancholy and nostalgia of having experienced it all.
Music, like for many of us, has shaped who I am today and all I really want to do is show some reverence to it. Having a physical copy of an album for me allows me to draw a tangible line between the art I truly love and the digital bullshit that constantly floods our lives. After CD’s, collecting vinyls seemed like a natural next step. It’s true that records are expensive in comparison to digital albums, streaming services, even CD’s, but if people can drop hundreds of dollars on Yeezy’s I don’t see why I should get flack for spending $25 on music that will last me a lifetime every couple of weeks. Admittedly, I like the thought of having a collection to hand down to my kids that will help shape them.
From the couple of weeks of using the record player, I’ve already noticed that it's a ton more laborious way to listen to music than, say, unceremoniously hitting play on a Spotify playlist, which is the heart of the appeal for me. The end result is the same (honestly, I find it pretentious when people talk about vinyl’s “audio fidelity” and “warmth of sound”) but the process of going through a stack and picking out a record, taking a record out of it sleeve, placing it on the turntable, gently letting down the arm and needle, and having those couple seconds of anticipation for the music to start playing just adds this element of conscious choice and ritualistic deliberateness that makes the experience of listening music that much meaningful.
I am actually really glad I pulled the trigger on getting into vinyl. I’ve been listening to the timeless jazz-rap sound of A Tribe Called Quest’s We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, the affecting soulfulness of Solange’s A Seat at the Table, the ecstatic pandemonium of Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition, and the love-stricken, heart-broken ethos of The Internet’s Ego Death. I really suggest giving these albums a listen, and if it sounds like your kind of thing, give record collecting a try. Just don’t try to get me talk about “warmth” or whatever the hell they mean.
