[mushufasa]

Eh, I see this more as a shift in consumer design patterns overall.

At the launch of the iphone, everything was skeumorphic. The cover flow clearly emulated flipping through a stack of records or CD books.

Now that people don't have physical media, the metaphor changes. The new design treats the cover art like an avatar on a forum or social media site -- a small thumbnail to identify the music.

Additionally, the original iPod/iPhone typically used internal storage in your Library. Under the Apple Music era of streaming, this may be a decision to shave a few % off of bandwidth costs by only pushing lower-resolution images. And then the choice being made to not upscale low-res to screen-width and incur blurriness.

[amelius]

Meanwhile lots of folks are going back to vinyl.

[barnaclejive]

Not "lots". In terms the entire music consuming industry, "more than previously (which was nearly 0)" at best

[efsavage]

Every music store I've been in lately has a larger vinyl section than CDs, so as far as physical media goes, it's a pretty big shift.

[plorkyeran]

That mostly reflects how much CD sales have plummeted.

[cpeterso]

Vinyl record sales in 2020 surpassed CDs for the first time since the 1980s:

"Vinyl records accounted for $232.1 million of music sales in the first half of the year, compared to CDs, which brought in only $129.9 million. ... Since 2005, sales for vinyl have grown consecutively. In the first half of 2020, vinyl revenue was up 4%, while CD revenue was down 48%, according to the RIAA."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/13/tech/vinyl-records-cd-sales-r...

[TheRealDunkirk]

It seems like an opportunity for Apple to create a "vinyl filter" for Music, like a photo filter, to simulate the slight EQ profile and the physical scraping of playing a song on a turntable. I mean, if you really want it to sound worse, go ahead. It's no different than applying a "Polaroid" filter to a modern digital camera snapshot.

[Cthulhu_]

For reference, that same article mentions that streaming is a $4.8 billion market, so about 20x the size of the vinyl industry.

[echelon]

The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. You don't have to hate streaming to enjoy vinyl, and vice versa.

I happen to enjoy both and treat them as different experiences. I'm fine if the expectations around digital change as long as it's still accessible.

[crocsarecool]

I do the same thing! I find that with vinyl I’m more likely to listen to the whole album. With streaming, I’ll hear a song I like, remember another song, hop around all over the place.

[rory]

This was (is?) the idea behind Paper & Plastick Records [0] in the MP3 heyday. The "paper" is a download code, and the "plastick" is a vinyl record along with it. Pretty fun concept IMO.

[0] http://www.paperandplastick.com/

[marvindanig]

Besides, what in the digital realm is not skeuomorphism to begin with?

Every single item in the digital world down to a pixel (off of the `pt` points system) we see online is skeuomorphic inspiration off of something! Typesetting and the alphabet is skeuo off the typewriter systems/foundry, buttons––of course skeuomorphism, web-page and scrolling follow from pulp and physical scrolls, header, footer, body inspire off of letterheads.

Anyone who claims 'skeuomorphism this, but !skeuomorphism that' is a digital noob and doesn't quite understand where the world has been and how it got here.

[playpause]

There is a difference between (1) being able to trace design inspiration back to something non-digital, and (2) skeumorphic design. The latter is more about making a nostalgic leap back to a specific pre-digital aesthetic, painstakingly hiding the interim steps.

The difference may be subject to nuance and debate, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

[mdoms]

A small number of very noisy folks.

[austhrow743]

https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/

Absolute dynamo of a medium.

[j0057]

Wow, that page is spectacularly broken on Chrome mobile: it disables zoom so that I can't see the whole graph, and if I view it using 'Desktop version' the page becomes unresponsive due to either too much Javascript, or due to CSS hacking.

[jp555]

Only if by "lots" you mean "almost no one".