[superultra]

I oversee pressing for over 150k+ records a year. We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low. I wouldn’t doubt if the number of buyers who don’t own a record player is even higher tha 50%, and that the percentage of people who actually play the records is actually 10-20%. I don’t have data on that, it’s just a hunch.

Many of us in the indie music industry (hip hop sustained record plants for many years, arguably until independent music started pressing in the 2000s) have mixed feelings about records. It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste. And they’re cubersome to bring on tour.

But there isn’t another physical medium that sells at all as well as vinyl. Soft apparel always does well. But people want vinyl.

I don’t love the Gen Z framing of this though. Vinyl purchasing at this point is multi generational.

I don’t think it’s some mysterious Gen Z love of physical. I think we all know that Spotify doesn’t pay artists appropriately and we want to help sustain the music we love. Buying digitally is just isn’t the same for a lot of people (even though it arguably is the best and easiest income generator for artists).

[bartread]

I’m increasingly conscious of being an outlier here. I prefer physical, for a variety of reasons (ownership being one of them), but also prefer CD to vinyl. Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it. I own vinyl, I like vinyl, but CDs are objectively better and somewhat easier to store.

[bayindirh]

I love both for different reasons. CDs sound better, they can be ripped and archived and can be carried around without any loss in their digital form.

On the other hand, vinyl is great for intentional listening. Putting that hour aside to brew a nice cup of coffee and listen to something while exploring the feelings the album evoke, then get a break to flip/change the record and continue.

It's a kind of personal care for me. I even recently showed a little love to my old record player (an Akai AP-D210) so it can regulate its RPM better and play smoothly as it can.

I can argue that CDs are for listening to the music, and vinyl is for listening to yourself.

[silverlake]

This resonates with me. I have a hobby where I transform classic books into hand-written papyrus as the author intended. There is something almost meditative in unspooling a 10kg scroll where the sometimes illegible ink allows me to wonder what that sentence even was.

[quietsegfault]

So glad to see my people. I have a hobby where instead of a modern synthetic ball, I play soccer with a severed goat head. There is something positively transcendent about the resonating thunk of a kick that you just don’t get with a standard ball.

[MonkeyClub]

In my community, we use the head of the defeated chieftain of the nearby tribe instead, and keep goatheads for soup. The lack of horns makes for a better roll.

Funny how there are minor variations the world around.

[topranks]

Love me some old school goat ball

[drzaiusx11]

I love the associated rituals and the physicality of vinyl records. The large format album art, liner notes & inserts are great as well. As for sound quality I'm no audiophile so I won't pretend to make any claims of vinyl being better or worse than any other music medium, but I will say I don't get the same intentionality of listening with the streaming services I've tried: Google music, Amazon music, Spotify, etc which all seem to mess with your library by injecting ridiculous things like AI DJ interludes or "enhancing" your playlists by injecting songs into your carefully curated playlists at random. That and I have some really old shit that I haven't been able to find on other mediums.

Both Google music (before it turned into YT Music) and Amazon Music briefly allowed uploading your own music to stream which significantly helped with my use-case, but they both removed that feature during their inevitable enshitification. I toyed with self hosting and doing my own rips of CDs and vinyl, but I find throwing on a record more relaxing than futzing with lossy encoder parameters or patching streaming servers.

[catgirlinspace]

I’ve never had Apple Music add random songs to my library and the closest thing to an AI DJ is AutoMix which is easily disabled and I’ve never had it re-enable itself. Can also add your own music to iCloud Music Library with the Apple Music app on Mac and (I think) Windows. Think this requires iCloud+ though but I’m not 100% certain. Annoyingly can’t do it on the web app or an iPhone :/

[tanjtanjtanj]

I don't think it requires an additional subscription. Apple music started as solely an "upload your music to play anywhere" service. I use apple music over the other offerings solely for this feature and for a large portion of it I didn't even have any apple devices and so didn't have iCloud+.

[drzaiusx11]

Good to know there's at least one sane streaming service option left out there, although at this point I'll stick to my physical media. I've been burned by music providers enough times to think that Apple will eventually follow the same path as the rest.

[ragall]

Vinyl is also better for all the old ones still around that haven't been republished as CD.

[bifftastic]

> CDs are for listening to the music, and vinyl is for listening to yourself

This is amazing

[bayindirh]

> This is amazing

This is not a reply I was anticipating. Can you elaborate a little? =)

[threethirtytwo]

He’s reacting to an implication in your phrasing. “CDs are for listening to the music”. frames CDs as rational and objective. “Vinyl is for listening to yourself” reframes vinyl as something more inward and identity-driven. For many people, vinyl already sits in an intentionally irrational space compared to modern formats, worse fidelity, more friction, more ritual. So that line can be read as quietly calling vinyl navel-gazing or performative rather than about the music itself. Some readers find that observation insightful or funny, which is likely what prompted the “this is amazing” reaction, even if it wasn’t how you intended it.

these types of people used to be called “hipsters.” I don’t know if there’s a more modern term for it.

That’s what I guess he meant by “amazing” and also why it spawned the goat head and papyrus mockery.

[bayindirh]

Well, I interpreted the comment I responded in good faith. On the other hand, I respect and understand people who choose to mock me directly. Actually I'm pretty used to be mocked.

Being more serious, I think it depends on one's relationship with music itself, and I don't expect everyone to have the same relationship with it. Personally, I met with music at a very young age, and funnily I started with CDs and open-reel. Vinyl came into my normal rotation pretty late, after its availability started to increase.

I worded my comment exactly like that intentionally, because the unwritten context here is my vinyl collection is solely composed of albums I already love to listen, and dedicate some time listening to. As a person who also performed in the past, I also understand that my relationship with music is a bit different when compared to today's consumerism-centered approach.

So, if spending some time with a favorite album, enjoying it and respecting the effort went into its production is worthy of mockery and being labeled as a hipster or being backward, let it be. I don't personally care.

Same goes for pen and paper, actually, but it's a subject for another day.

[reaperducer]

Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it.

Anecdotally, I see more and more stores that sell music now carry CDs.

Just yesterday I saw an entire wall of new-release CDs at a Barnes and Noble bookstore.

[bartread]

Yeah, I’m sort of hopeful it’ll experience a similar resurgence to vinyl.

Despite being terminally online for literally decades now I never got out of CDs just because it always bugged me that I could buy a physical copy with better (or, nowadays, usually equivalent) sound quality for the same or less money than the MP3 (or whatever format) album.

I’d then invariably rip to a compressed format for convenient on the go listening but, in 20 odd years, I’ve bought maybe half a dozen albums digitally, and half of those have been simply because no other format is available. (For context, I have maybe 700 albums on CD but I lost accurate count some years ago so it could well be more.)

[eptcyka]

CDs are great for ripping into FLACs and then playing them from Jellyfin.

[topranks]

For me there is no point storing digital music on optical discs. Easier to steam it or listen from a hard drive.

On the other hand the larger format of vinyl and rather peculiar way it works scratches the “tactile” part of what makes physical attractive a lot more.

Each to their own of course but that’s me.

[dredmorbius]

The discs are your backups.

(You can of course also back up the rips, but you have the disc as origin, and as an option for re-ripping at higher or lower quality, etc.)

[autoexec]

> Nobody loves CDs any more and I don’t get it.

I loved CDs, but I was forced to stop buying new CDs decades ago because I can't stomach supporting the RIAA. That said, it is still my preferred physical media for music (followed by minidisc) even though ultimately my CD collection was digitized and stored.

[bartread]

> RIAA

I get you but there’s also an element of pick your poison. Not all the online options are great either, particularly not on the streaming front (cough, Spotify, cough[0]) in terms of their treatment - and payment - of artists. I think Bandcamp might be decent, and is generally the place I go for FLAC.

I buy a lot of pre-owned CDs as well: upside, less hard/impossible to recycle waste (discs), and less plastic waste (cases), doesn’t support the RIAA; downside, it also doesn’t support the artists. Somewhat regularly I find pre-owned is the only option though, at least if I want a physical copy.

[0] One could perhaps argue that the RIAA set the standard for turgid money grabbing scumbaggery that modern services have chosen to adopt, I think.

[autoexec]

Yeah, I'll sometimes pick up used CDs. When it comes to supporting artists though it's hard. Occasionally you can support them directly online, but it's best to email to make sure that some percentage of that doesn't go to the label. Handing cash to artists in person at shows hasn't always worked either, and I get how that might make them uncomfortable. Merch sales (outside of albums) at concerts can work if you check with them first about where the proceeds go.

[RAdrien]

CDs are annoyingly delicate to handle. Vinyl does not care about your finger tips. Vinyl sleeves are also more attractive than CD cases and easier to store on a shelf or bucket.

[retrodaredevil]

That's simply not true. If you scratch a vinyl record, you've introduced a defect to it. If you scratch a CD, it's probably fine. Some CD players don't like scratched CDs, but for the most part CDs are very durable.

Plus if you damage a CD, simply rip it and burn it to a CDr. (did I mention that ripping a damaged CD usually works?)

You are right about vinyl sleeves being more attractive, though. I think that's its main selling point.

[bartread]

You can usually polish scratches out of CDs as well.

Where they’re actually much more vulnerable is on the printed side because the data layer sits just beneath that. Still more resilient than vinyl though, unless/until they get the dreaded rot.

They can also crack if dropped but that’s just as true of vinyl, if not moreso.

[coldtea]

>It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste.

Compared to the plastic waste produced daily it's a drop in the ocean. And at least this is kept and collected.

>even though it arguably is the best and easiest income generator for artists

Digital is nowhere "the best and easiest income generator" for musicians. A common complain from musicians is how, with the advent of online music, sales craterred, and musicians despite having the same or more fans, and be able to fill the same venues, have lost the living they could make by selling even 50K records (with a favorable indie label split).

[sehansen]

During the entirety of the 90's 11883 records sold at least 50 000 units[0]. If we assume $3 royalty each[1] that's ~1200 artists making $150 000 or more in an average year. That's ~$300 000 adjusted for inflation.

In 2024 1450 artists got over $1 000 000 in royalty from Spotify.[2] Additionally 2.3% (~276 000) earned at least $1000 and 100 000 earned at least "almost $6000".

It seems to me that there now is a long tail of artists making a few thousand a year on Spotify that assume they would have sold tens thousands of records each year in the 90s. E.g. the 100 000th most popular artist on Spotify assuming they would have sold as well as the 1200th most popular artist in 1998.

The more likely case is that the top ~10 000 artists would have made less back then than they do now and the rest would have made essentially zero dollars from selling records back in the 90s.

0: https://bestsellingalbums.org/decade/1990-238 1: https://dailybruin.com/1998/09/27/paying-the-price 2: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/03/12/spotify-loud-and...

[TheOtherHobbes]

You're not comparing like for like.

The $1m is gross income, pre-royalty slicing. The actual payout to artists on a label will be much lower.

The $3/album is post-royalty at the other end of the telescope, and the actual number varied by territory. The gross income to labels would be much higher.

So the final premise is incorrect. The real winners - the household name bands, artists, and soundtracks - made incredible numbers from their royalty slices which are impossible on Spotify today, especially once labels take their cut.

Drake may be getting lifetime sales of $400m, but a chunk of that goes to UMG for distribution.

Meanwhile there were vital scene subcultures around indie/rave/dance/hiphop where niche artists turned DIY music production, pressing, and distribution into a workable fairly well-paid full-time career. Those numbers mostly weren't logged.

Spotify dilutes the scene effect because everyone is competing with everyone else, globally, so it's harder to get exposure, even in a specific niche.

[dale_glass]

I think that makes sense and was in a way unavoidable.

Compare a physical shop with Spotify. A physical shop has limited space, so old stuff has to be pruned out to leave room for the new releases. So sales for old stuff gradually stop, and there's a small selection of current releases you can buy.

Spotify and the like aren't like that. It's an infinitely growing amount of music you can play. New releases may be completely unnoticed by users who follow recommendation algorithms. You can trivially follow impulses like "So what else did the the band that made Video Killed the Radio Star make?".

Since digital is infinitely reproducible and not perishable this will keep getting worse and worse. Any new artist competes against all of the music that was released before them.

[AlecSchueler]

> Compared to the plastic waste produced daily it's a drop in the ocean. And at least this is kept and collected.

Basically anything taken individually is a drop in the ocean. Problem is all those drops add up and that's what creates the ocean.

[coldtea]

The ocean of plastic waste isn't just lots of drops aggregted.

There are massive "water bodies" that make 10% and 20% and 30% of the ocean of plastic use. Packaging is about 30-40%, for starters. Clothes (synthetic crap clothes) and shoes are about 15%.

[no-name-here]

1. At least packaging and clothes have more clearly defined utility. 2. There are notable movements to reduce wasteful clothes/packaging. I’ve previously heard people point to the amount of plastic used for commercial shipping, although personally it seems likely that companies use such packaging to avoid even costlier possible product damage? I’m all for reducing waste in each possible area. I guess it’s a similar discussion to the banning of plastic bags/utensils – does that cause people to think more about plastic use in other areas, or does it cause more people to be wasteful in other areas now that they don’t have their plastic forks, etc.

[altacc]

Perhaps they meant digital download sales such as Bandcamp & Beatport and less so for iTunes, Amazon, etc... as there are still real revenues to be made from selling digital music. It all depends upon how many middlemen between purchaser and the artist but vinyl adds in unavoidable production costs, risks of unsold stock, etc... versus Bandcamp where there is little upfront cost, low risk and low transaction costs.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> And at least this is kept and collected.

Just to expand on this, there is a reasonable distinction made between multi-use and single-use plastics. Things like a shampoo bottle, plasticware, drink bottles, etc. are considered single-use. (Yes, even the shampoo bottle despite being in your bathroom for weeks because its thrown out when it's empty.) As the parent comment mentions, purchasing a vinyl record does little—practically nothing—to contribute to daily plastic waste, especially with how few customers there are (compared to shampoo bottles).

[eptcyka]

I will spend more in a month on a digital download at times than what I would've paid Spotify in years.

[j4nek]

>I think we all know that Spotify doesn’t pay artists appropriately and we want to help sustain the music we love.

not a big fan of all music streaming services, but they only keep about 30% of their revenue. the rest goes to the labels, and this is where most of the problem is. before the 2000s, very small artists hardly earned any income from the sale of (physical) media. I don't like the new platforms such as Spotify, Tidal, etc. either – but this kind of discussion often just distracts from the mafia-like structure of the major labels.

[danmelnick]

This is part of the problem for sure, but it's also how the revenue is split between back catalog vs new music.

In the physical media era, when you bought a record/CD you owned it forever and your marginal cost of listening to a song approached zero over time. Most dollars went to new music.

Now, it's close to a 75/25 split of dollars going to back catalog vs new music on streaming services.

If you're a new musician, you're not competing against new music, you're competing against the entire history of recorded music. You're fighting for a piece of a pie that the Beatles are still taking a chunk of.

And the labels are a part of the problem there, they made the deals with the streaming services that allows back catalog to dominate.

[mrguyorama]

This is a problem with all of copyright, not just music.

You need to let things become public domain so people can make new. You need it to be unprofitable to just keep selling the exact same bits in perpetuity.

[capncleaver]

This redistribution of revenues from new to old has also taken place in games: ~90% of time in games on PC is spent in games older than a year, ~50% in games 5+ years old like Fortnite, CoD, Roblox etc. Around half of revenues are 'free to play' [1]

This is why making a new game is probably a terrible idea... but hey, world is casino!

[1] https://newzoo.com/resources/trend-reports/the-pc-console-ga... and widely reported e.g. [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1je98mm/pc_gamers...

[finghin]

It’s labels plus the limited revenue available due to competition.

15$ or so just doesn’t reflect the work that goes into a month’s worth of music listening.

[onion2k]

It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste.

It's only waste if it's being discarded. If someone wants to keep it and cherish it, even if they're not playing it, then it's not waste.

[itake]

At some point in the future, the owner will pass and their children will have a mass of plastic to manage.

Perhaps their children will cherish it for generations, or perhaps their children will have different musical tastes from their great great great grandpa and the plastic ends up in a landfill, forever un-played.

[onion2k]

At that point it becomes waste. That doesn't mean it's waste now.

[leogao]

in the grand scheme of things, this is a very small amount of plastic waste, and as far as resources go, one of the less scarce ones. at some point, the cost of the hand wringing to avoid waste is more of a drag on society than the actual wasted material itself.

[tonyedgecombe]

It's all waste eventually.

[xorcist]

Then buy it used! That's one of the advantages of physical objects!

[compiler-devel]

> It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste.

And yet again customer demand and financial gain supercede environmental concerns. There’s no hope for a better, less consumer-oriented culture if even the indie creatives among us acknowledge the problem yet succumb to it.

[anovikov]

Less consumer-oriented culture demands brainwashing, totalitarianism and terror, to force people to not do things they naturally want to, when there is a capability for doing that (if there's no capability, a nation will be physically overwhelmed by other nations and cease to exist/replaced)...

[sorushn]

>> Less consumer-oriented culture demands brainwashing

It simply requires putting a stop to the constant brainwashing campaigns for inducing demand.

>> do things they naturally want to

collecting Stanley tumblers is not a "natural" tendency.

[anovikov]

Well... if we had a constant stream of inventions so that people will always have things they'd love to have but struggle to afford, then there won't be a need to induce demand. But we don't have nearly enough: people have more spare cash than inventions they want, are produced every year.

If we don't induce demand by brainwashing, what will people do? They will keep inflating bubbles buying up stocks (making economy even more unstable, and eventually undermining themselves), houses (making sure new generations can't buy theirs, depressing birth rates and giving rise to political radicalism), and crypto (which is absolute insanity). People need to be given ways to spend their spare cash, and nudged to do it as opposed to "investing" that cash (which is, in the true meanin of this word, mostly impossible because there aren't enough inventions to invest into).

[throwway120385]

This is a pretty cynical take. It's also possible people would find meaningful things to do with their money.

[fragmede]

Stanley tumblers, no, but even magpies like collecting rocks and buttons and things. Seeing a checkmark on an online digital widget just really doesn't scratch the same itch.

[compiler-devel]

> It simply requires putting a stop to the constant brainwashing campaigns for inducing demand.

Unfortunately, there are C-suite level roles for this so it will never stop.

[danielbln]

Is this some libertarian/randian take?

There are many things people naturally want to do that we regulate and steer away from via many different means (smoking bans, traffic laws, etc.).

You do realize we don't live in an objectivist society, right?

[thih9]

Technically they could get some paper stating “you own one vinyl” and we would use less plastic and storage (and we’d get an alternative monetary system perhaps).

[justarandomname]

> We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low.

Oh. my. gosh. This has been driving me NUTS recently. Please please please here me out. The first dozen or so records I bought were of albums I already owned digitally, as FLAC so I was one of those kinds of people that didn't redeem the downloads. I wanted to buy my faves, stuff that I knew I'd love to listen to on vinyl forever. Now that I'm buying brand new stuff, that I don't have digital copies of I've noticed they rarely, rarely, if ever include a download link and so I had to renew my dang apple music subscription to listen to albums I already own when I'm away from my record player and its started to really turn me off from buying any records outside of bandcamp (where you always get the digital version too.)

[ta988]

A lot of plastic? less than a couple takeout orders no?(sure that's less of a toxic plastic in food containers but still)

[RileyJames]

I’ve been buying vinyl for the sake of collecting it, with limited intention to ever play it.

And I’ve been wondering why would anyone buy the cassette or CD? (And I own more cassette players than the zero vinyl players)

I recently found out that some of my favourite vinyls, that I’ve been collecting, ONLY include the art/lyrics booklet in the CD version. These are from the early 2000’s (peak cd?).

I reckon I’d buy an art / lyrics booklet over a physical medium of the music itself. Particularly if it included flac download of the music.

[bentley]

> And I’ve been wondering why would anyone buy the cassette or CD?

I have no interest in cassette or vinyl. I love CDs because they provide the highest music quality, uncompressed audio that’s trivial to rip to lossless FLAC files, complete with metadata.

[masklinn]

Sure, but on the whole I’d take getting FLAC directly over CDs. Not that I don’t have CDs, even deluxe editions with picture books and stuff, but I pretty much never get them out.

I can understand people preferring vinyls as physical artefacts, the full frame jackets of my father’s albums are gorgeous in a way that’s distinct from and superior to CD album art, even if the music bit is markedly inferior technically (although that technical inferiority has led to better musical end results in some cases, you can’t compress the shit out of a vinyl, then again hopefully that time is long on the past).

[Uvix]

I'd take getting FLAC files directly, but they're not available most of the time.

[masklinn]

Yeah. But my point is mostly that the CD remains nothing but a transmission vessel for the audio, I don't know anyone and have seldom heard of people who value CDs for their physicality as a CD. Unlike vinyls which they very much do.

[Alconicon]

So you go to work, earn money, then you buy yourself some object to put it in a shelf?

And thats basically it?

You are not even playing it?

To do what with it? Letting your kids/family sell your collection with a loss?

Is it background decoration for you? Couldn't you just buy bulk of Vinyl no one wants to use it for your decoration purposes?

That feels like consumerism at the peak.

[bigmadshoe]

Is it consumerism to walk around the beach collecting pretty rocks to go home and put them on a shelf?

[Alconicon]

A rock is not a consumer good, so no.

And a rock is unique, nice to look at, did not cost you anything and kind of an appreciation of nature.

Enjoy your rock! (i'm sincere)

[bigmadshoe]

Naturally since people are buying things, technically they are consuming.

I mean that collecting a relatively small number of durable and visually pleasing objects isn't really the worst flavor of consumerism, even if it seems pointless to some people.

I agree we have a massive problem with over-consumption (most glaringly with things like fast fashion), but I'm not sure record collectors are a big problem.

[coldtea]

>And I’ve been wondering why would anyone buy the cassette or CD?

Many people I know buy the CD because they prefer owning a physical medium, and the CDs they actually play and have a collection of them.

As for cassette, I don't know about buying regular releases on it, but there's a small but very passionate music community around cassette releases for experimental and indie music (same as a demoscene using old computers or people making new 8bit games).

[exitb]

I buy cassettes. Mostly old, period-correct ones, but some new. I also have a fairly high end tape deck, that these days can be had for rather good price. Our perception of cassettes are mostly warped by the experience of badly recorded tapes played on horrible, unmaintained players, but inherently the tape is much less of a limiting factor to quality than most of the things people use to play music nowadays. In fact, when comparing my vinyl and cassette purchases, I have higher change of getting a bad sounding vinyl than a bad sounding cassette.

Notably, tape decks with separate play and record heads let you listen to the recorded signal, while it's being recorded and quickly switch between the tape and source signal. Even on a good pair of headphones, when correctly dialled in, vast majority wouldn't be able to recognise which signal is the tape.

[im3w1l]

> I oversee pressing for over 150k+ records a year. We eliminated download cards a while ago because the redemption rate was so low.

Maybe you are right, but I wouldn't discount the possibility that people are willing to pay for the idea that they could some day download it even if it never ends up actually happening. Kinda like getting an insurance policy you probably wont need you know?

[conartist6]

35. My record player is in storage, but I still buy records sometimes because they're beautiful art and I want people to keep making them. For now I lend/give them to my friend who has a proper player set up. Spotify's max-blandness shuffle algorithm is like having a wank compared to letting an artist give you a full performance

[godzillabrennus]

My wife and I both own vinyl, and neither of us has ever owned a record player. We put them on display for the most part. We have a song we got married to, and we bought a couple of album variations (each with different artwork) with that song; we also like the cover art on some vinyl releases as wall art.

[onion2k]

I'm curious - does the music content actually matter to you? Would you buy an album from an artist you've never heard just because the cover art was great?

[bkanuka]

Not who you're replying to (but I'm in the same camp). I use the album art as decoration, but the music is the first selection criteria. The music has to mean something to me first, and then the album art just needs to "pass".

I have young kids also, so I try to stay away from violent or scary album art.

[freetanga]

Why not just buy the cardboard cover?

[mrWiz]

Where can you buy just the cardboard cover?

[microtherion]

If you use the records as a display (and though I don't do that, I empathize; CD covers just don't generate the visceral reaction that LP covers do), wouldn't it make sense for publishers to offer record covers without the actual records?

[jen20]

Do they want the vinyl itself or do they want the cover art and so forth?

[lucideer]

I'd say it's varied & most often a combination of multiple things.

- They want the cover art

- They want a physical token representing an artist they like

- They want to financially support the artist in a direct way

- They speculate they might get a player someday (much akin to book buyers leaving books on their shelves unread for years on end)

1 of the above might be the primary driver for any given buyer but I'd assume all of the above play some part in their motivations.

[DavidPiper]

Makes me wonder if bands produced something like a Displate wall hanging (no promotion intended) whether that would satisfy the same itches.

For my part, there's something visceral about owning a piece of "physical music", as it were, even if I never play it.

[lucideer]

While I'm sure there are plenty of vinyl collectors out there with some Displates up, I feel like vinyl has a lot of elements that make its audience significantly broader (even excluding player owners) - mainly that it has a cultural history associated with it.

I also think people generally underestimate "potential playability" or aspirational record player ownership as factors in buying vinyl. A LOT of people who may never own a record player in their lifetime still think they might, & even if they don't their kids or grandkids might. Vinyl collections are heirlooms.

[vr46]

They want the expense without the inconvenience?

[tssva]

Anecdotal data from my Gen-Z daughter, currently a college freshman, is that they want the cover art. Her dorm room walls are decorated with vinyl albums in frames where they cannot be listened to.

[garciasn]

Gen X. Own a record player.

Listen to vinyl as “intentional listening” and love the album cover art.

My daughter (Gen Z/A) could play her albums but doesn’t. She puts them on display in her room. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Loughla]

I own a very nice record player. Absolutely love listening to vinyl while looking at the cover art (Jethro Tull has the best album art and I'll fight anyone who disagrees).

For me it's a time machine back to my childhood. We grew up poor and couldn't afford tapes and then CD's. We had thrift store vinyl albums.

For my kids, vinyl was this weird thing that sounded scratchy. Then they grew up and found that the plethora of selection was both a blessing and a curse. They now frequent local record stores and invest in physical media like vinyl specifically because it forces intentional choice.

There really is nothing as good as finding an amazing album you didn't expect, and there's nothing as crushing as realizing the album you just bought based on one song only has that one good song on it (any album by The Police, I'm looking at you).

[thaumasiotes]

> and there's nothing as crushing as realizing the album you just bought based on one song only has that one good song on it (any album by The Police, I'm looking at you)

Why call out The Police? This is the norm for all studio albums. That's why the popular albums are greatest hits collections instead.

[taejavu]

By any measure, both of your statements are patently false. You’re almost making a valid point somewhere in there but the hyperbole buries it.

[thaumasiotes]

What hyperbole?

[taejavu]

If you can’t see the hyperbole in claiming that all studio albums only having one decent song is the norm then I can’t help you

[samiv]

I'll bite... Slayer - Divine Intervention

[Loughla]

I assume you're saying that's an album that surprised you with its quality.

[tracker1]

Also Gen X... though don't own any vinyl or a record player... mostly ripped CDs through the later 90's up through 2010 or so. Since then, mostly just use online streaming.

That said, I did once consider getting a record player only to rip/archive my grandmother's collection of vintage vinyl that wound up going to my niece on her passing.

I just prefer convenience/portability. Of course, as far as purchasing goes... I bought far more music when original Napster was around... it lead me to discover a lot of music that lead my to outright buy/rip full albums myself. It's the one thing that is significantly worse today without actual DJs in control of music at radio stations in favor of automated industry garbage controls.

I have no good way to discover new music any more. At least nothing I actually find myself using.

[jghn]

Also Gen X. Stopped purchasing physical media altogether ~2010 after trailing off once the iTunes store opened up. My old physical media are all down in the basement somewhere. I don't own anything that'd be able tp lay any of it.

Instead, all of my music is digital, mostly purchased on Bandcamp. I have a full archive on my NAS, also in the basement. I use iTunes Match so that i'm able to stream any of my music on demand to any of my devices. I have 0 desire to ever go back to physical media. It's far more convenient and space efficient to do it this way.

[analog31]

While I haven't seen vinyl at performances, I've seen plenty of CD's. My family enjoys attending shows given by smaller indie acts in areas such as folk, jazz, and classical. There's often a merch table with CD's to buy. We often buy them, then I take them home and rip them onto an NAS.

I've asked some of the musicians flat-out: Which way of buying your material will get the most money directly to you? The answer is always: Buy the CD. Of course I can also make donations, and have done so.

[GauntletWizard]

I buy vinyl for the album cover. If somebody were to sell me a digital download which also ships me an empty slipcase, I would buy it, for almost the same price that I pay for vinyl. I do have the record player, but I don't think I've used it more than a dozen days in my life.

There's a lot of value to the physical artifact, but the precise nature of the physical artifact is up for playing with.

[throwaway777x]

The best example to me why I buy vinyl without a record player is the Flying Lotus - Your Dead album art. It is an incredible work of art:

https://www.turntablelab.com/products/flying-lotus-youre-dea...

More and more though I would rather just buy merch to support the artist.

[Symbiote]

A friend was selling a parent's vinyl collection on eBay, and a couple of times buyers asked to be sent only the slipcase to save weight and therefore postage costs.

[b00ty4breakfast]

>It’s a lot of plastic. A lot of waste.

I don't know all the nitty-gritty, but the last Shellac record was "pressed" using an injection molding process that utilized recyclable PET (I can't find the interview with Albini[RIP] where this was discussed but if I find it I'll edit it into the comment).

[alnwlsn]

Confused by this until I realized you meant "Shellac (band)" and not "Shellac - resin secreted by the female lac bug" which was used to press records in the 1920s.

The last shellac record was indeed made from shellac. And shellac is a natural (or at least non-manmade) material; does this make it more environmentally friendly than vinyl or PET?

[obrhoff]

At this point its mostly a merchandise/ collectable which I also think is okay.

[knowitnone3]

if they don't play it, what do they do with it - toss it under the bed? If people wanted to pay artists, a t-shirt is way more practical or just send them money.

[e-neko]

Playing vinyl is a bit like making espresso on a manual machine: a small ritual. Bit without the machine, it's a cargo cult.