5 ms·

I collect a significant amount of new vinyl and listen to it relatively frequently, but digital music is so much more convenient. That can be a detriment though

by ndeast 3y ago

I collect a significant amount of new vinyl and listen to it relatively frequently, but digital music is so much more convenient. That can be a detriment though, I find a lot of the value I get out of listening to vinyl is the "intentional listening" experience. I think Henry Rollins called it carbohydrate listening or something to that effect, listening to things you like that you've heard a million times and isn't exactly stimulating in the same way a new album or artist would be. Music feels a whole lot more consumable and disposable when its just on constant instant playback. Forcing yourself to flip the record and drop the needle keeps you more engaged I feel. All that to say I mostly just like collecting colored vinyl, and supporting small bands and artists you like by buying a product significantly more profitable than millions of Spotify streams is pretty cool.

Rincon15 3y ago
[flagged]
endorphine 3y ago
It's exactly the same for me. Yes, vinyl is more inconvenient, expensive and may even sound "worse" unless you have an expensive audio setup. That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  > That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation. Just imagine if you could do that with a CD or even an album of MP3s! But that's just not possible, it can only be done with vinyl records.
  - kdksrnrb 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - endorphine 3y ago
    You're right, it's not vinyl that makes it possible, so I believe there's more to this than my original comment implies. I think it's the physical aspect of the vinyl compared to streaming services. Some people do that with CDs, but I like vinyls more since they feel more "analog" to me. Also I like the warmth of their sound. Also GP has a point about the turntable engaging you more. > Forcing yourself to flip the record and drop the needle keeps you more engaged I feel.
    - jackstraw14 3y ago
      It's a physical process/ritual that a number of people still do and reinforce among each other. It's fine to call it what it is, and it's fine that it makes you feel more connected to the music. But it ain't the music.
  - pacifika 3y ago
    A nice vinyl album with artwork shows a lot of care has gone into making it, where as an album in Spotify has been stripped of all uniqueness and identity in all but the sound itself. A vinyl without sleeve and artwork and a carefully curated Spotify playlist sit somewhere inbetween.
    - ChatGTP 3y ago
      Also the smell, I love the smell of old record covers.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      "Spotify has been stripped of all uniqueness and identity in all but the sound itself." There is at least the cover picture left, but yes, I would not recommend Spotify for mindful listening. It is designed for "engagement", I still have not found out, how to tell it to stop, after that one song I want to hear. It insists on playing something else. Very rarely something interesting shows up, but usually I just get annoyed for it playing radio, when I wanted ONE song, nothing more. So I love my own digital music collection and player that remains under my control. I have a shuffle there as well, but conscious listening remains possible, even though surely the experience would be more powerful, combined with the ritual of going through the physical records, holding the artwork in my hands and putting the one record in. But for convinience, I stick to my digital collection. (I don't think all my music is on vinyl and I would need extra rooms then)
      - tekla 3y ago
        How to get Spotify to stop playing music: Take headphones off. Its fucking wild to imply that Spotify prevents mindful listening to music, what the hell does it mean that its designed for engagement? I dont think I've ever listened to a song I didn't want to listen to on Spotify.
        hutzlibu 3y ago
        "How to get Spotify to stop playing music: Take headphones off." And when the sound comes from the boxes? Then yes, I have to hurry back to the laptop to stop the not fitting next song (e.g. something fast, after I choose something chill). This is ridiculous. The feature "stop after song" is avaiable in every serious music player I used (and also the one I programmed myself). But it is not in Spotify, even though it is trivial.. This is what I call "designed for engagement". I have to click more and find new things etc. "I dont think I've ever listened to a song I didn't want to listen to on Spotify. " So how do you achieve that? Do you only use custom playlists, or do just mostly don't care so much? Because if I have one song in my head, then sometimes I just want this exact song and if I tell spotify to play this song - then afterwards it plays something totally different, even though it tries to fit the same genre, but this works badly. And even if it would be the same genre, some songs are just deep. And you want silence afterwards to process them - if you are consciously listenting in the first place. For some background noise spotify works great, no doubt about that.
- eru 3y ago
  > Yes, vinyl is more inconvenient, expensive and may even sound "worse" unless you have an expensive audio setup. Well, the objective sounds quality is always _worse_ than eg CDs. (In the same sense that lower mp3 bitrate is always worse in some objective sense.) But often the sound engineering and mixing is done more carefully for vinyl; and aesthetically you can prefer whatever you like.
  - 64operator 3y ago
    [dead]
  - lloeki 3y ago
    A '63 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT is objectively worse than the latest VW Golf GTI by every measurable metric. The driving experience, though, is completely different. There's some "grin factor" raw-ness, some analog-ness to the former that makes the latter comparatively feel like a muted couch-on-wheels.
    - ummonk 3y ago
      Not really analogous. No matter how much you tune the GTI's ECU, throttle curve, ESC, etc., you won't be able to precisely replicate the handling of the classic car, though you might get close. By contrast, one can digitally capture the output of a turntable + phono preamp and then store it, share it, and replay it with all the crackle and warmth of the original in perfect fidelity without ever having to touch the record again.
      - voldacar 3y ago
        Vinyl isn't about crackle or warmth. Good vinyl rigs are usually not warm. It's about the fact that vinyl physically cannot support a super compressed mix.
        strangetortoise 3y ago
        Forgive my ignorance: I thought it was the other way around, and you needed some relatively high amount of compression on a vinyl master, since otherwise the grooves would swing too wildly, and the needle would have a higher chance of "skipping". Is this an incorrect understanding of mine?
- nend 3y ago
  >It's like meditation What you're describing is mindfulness meditation.
- papito 3y ago
  Well, it's not LIKE meditation :) It is meditation. The process of the ritual focuses the mind on the task at hand.
- matwood 3y ago
  > That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation. This is what we did with cassettes and then CDs. I had dates where we sat on the floor and just thumbed through our CD catalogs and played music for hours. Even today, I still prefer to listen to whole albums.
  - conductr 3y ago
    Me too to all. Listening to full albums and not using infinite playlist is why, for me, Spotify is not really any different than the older tech and I don’t feel the need to jump on the vinyl train. I’m not a collector/hoarder of physical objects, I know I’d actually listen less if I had to search the shelf and drop a needle. Maybe because I developed these habits earlier in life, well before streaming or even Napster. It is interesting to see how the younger digital natives are interested in analog music now. “Supporting the artist” is a commonly cited reason. In the part, we bought posters, shirts and concert tickets to to accomplish this.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  This is exactly why I have a turntable, too. Just buying the records of my most loved albums, setting aside some time to listen them intently and enjoy the process. It’s not like meditation. It is meditation. As a meditation teacher, I can definitely say that.
hungryforcodes 3y ago
Good points. Just to expand, I find with instant on digital music I never really listen to it with as much attention as vinyl. In fact I love everything about vinyl except the sort durarion of each side, but even that makes me focus more closely on the experience. I know I'll have to turn it over shortly...
- kdksrnrb 3y ago
  [flagged]
- HellDunkel 3y ago
  Vinyl is a completly different experience: the smell, the look(!), the age(!), the masting and care for the production, the cover(!)- these things matter.
  - zeristor 3y ago
    I loved the ceremony of taking out a record, and putting on a turn table.
    - HellDunkel 3y ago
      Yes. People think vinyl is for snobs (especially the silicon valley type) but they don’t seem to realize a) music went digial before the iphone (CDs) and b) most of them don‘t even know much music.
      - qwery 3y ago
        That is a good example of an elitist (or snobbish) viewpoint.
        HellDunkel 3y ago
        Really? You can appreciate playing, touching, looking at vinyl or watching vinyl beeing played out without beeing a collector or owning some. But it is hard for me to imagine somebody not appreciating vinyl and all the things attached beeing a true pop music lover. With classical music it may be a completely different story.
WalterBright 3y ago
Sometimes I prefer the original vinyl sound compared to the digitally remixed version of the old songs. But most of my vinyl is of old albums that nobody bothered to re-release on CD. It's fun to buy them cheap at the thrift store, wash them, and see what's on them.
manaskarekar 3y ago
Thanks for making the Henry Rollins' carbohydrate reference. It's a great way to label these two modes of listening that we all experience. ---- "I have two basic food groups of music: protein and carbohydrate. The protein listening is new music, where it’s unfamiliar to me so I’m listening, sometimes taking notes, researching the band while the music is playing. I do quite a bit of this, usually during the week. On the weekends, I will allow for some carbohydrate listening, which would be records I’m familiar with, that I’ve been playing for years. This music is not exactly background, but more of an environmental asset for elevation of mood." https://www.discogs.com/digs/music/henry-rollins-food-groups-seasons-of-listening-to-music/ https://www.discogs.com/digs/music/henry-rollins-food-groups...
TheCondor 3y ago
I call it “appointment listening.” Dedicating time to listen to a specific album. My kids may never understand it. An album is an interesting art form, it captures a few pieces of time: when it was made and then then it was consumed. The cover art and liner art. The order of the songs. All assembled with intention. There are albums I’ve heard hundreds of time and I will still hear little new bits I never quite noticed before. I do love digital music and having it everywhere, but it is special to just listen and take it I’m.
- kasey_junk 3y ago
  Why would your kids not understand it? My son certainly has no problem exploring album art and reading liner notes while he enjoys one of his favorites. It seems like a fairly universal human quality to want to intentionally listen to music.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    Because the comment makes the assumption that it'll conflict with their apparent low attention spans from years of skipping through songs on their music streaming platforms of choice, rendering them unable to sit down to consume an entire album.
    - Zircom 3y ago
      I think both if you are reading too much into his comment and seeing things that aren't there. I don't think it was a jab at younger generations inability to appreciate things due to short attention spans, but more expressing sadness that streaming has killed the traditional experience/concept of an album and that it's probably never coming back.
      - hammyhavoc 3y ago
        It might not have been intended as a jab, but journalists frequently repeat that x songs on Spotify are skipped after y time, and the conclusion the journalists arrive at is that between this example, and the likes of TikTok and Snapchat, the younger generations have short attention spans.
HellDunkel 3y ago
Digital music resparked my interest in vinyl. With streaming you have a great tool to figure out what you really love and need to have on vinyl. Less is more.
topranks 3y ago
Fully agree with everything. Except I hate coloured vinyl. But hey each to their own :)

by ndeast 3y ago

Rincon15 3y ago

[flagged]

endorphine 3y ago

It's exactly the same for me. Yes, vinyl is more inconvenient, expensive and may even sound "worse" unless you have an expensive audio setup. That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation.

giantrobot 3y ago
> That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation. Just imagine if you could do that with a CD or even an album of MP3s! But that's just not possible, it can only be done with vinyl records.
- kdksrnrb 3y ago
  [flagged]
- endorphine 3y ago
  You're right, it's not vinyl that makes it possible, so I believe there's more to this than my original comment implies. I think it's the physical aspect of the vinyl compared to streaming services. Some people do that with CDs, but I like vinyls more since they feel more "analog" to me. Also I like the warmth of their sound. Also GP has a point about the turntable engaging you more. > Forcing yourself to flip the record and drop the needle keeps you more engaged I feel.
  - jackstraw14 3y ago
    It's a physical process/ritual that a number of people still do and reinforce among each other. It's fine to call it what it is, and it's fine that it makes you feel more connected to the music. But it ain't the music.
- pacifika 3y ago
  A nice vinyl album with artwork shows a lot of care has gone into making it, where as an album in Spotify has been stripped of all uniqueness and identity in all but the sound itself. A vinyl without sleeve and artwork and a carefully curated Spotify playlist sit somewhere inbetween.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Also the smell, I love the smell of old record covers.
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    "Spotify has been stripped of all uniqueness and identity in all but the sound itself." There is at least the cover picture left, but yes, I would not recommend Spotify for mindful listening. It is designed for "engagement", I still have not found out, how to tell it to stop, after that one song I want to hear. It insists on playing something else. Very rarely something interesting shows up, but usually I just get annoyed for it playing radio, when I wanted ONE song, nothing more. So I love my own digital music collection and player that remains under my control. I have a shuffle there as well, but conscious listening remains possible, even though surely the experience would be more powerful, combined with the ritual of going through the physical records, holding the artwork in my hands and putting the one record in. But for convinience, I stick to my digital collection. (I don't think all my music is on vinyl and I would need extra rooms then)
    - tekla 3y ago
      How to get Spotify to stop playing music: Take headphones off. Its fucking wild to imply that Spotify prevents mindful listening to music, what the hell does it mean that its designed for engagement? I dont think I've ever listened to a song I didn't want to listen to on Spotify.
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        "How to get Spotify to stop playing music: Take headphones off." And when the sound comes from the boxes? Then yes, I have to hurry back to the laptop to stop the not fitting next song (e.g. something fast, after I choose something chill). This is ridiculous. The feature "stop after song" is avaiable in every serious music player I used (and also the one I programmed myself). But it is not in Spotify, even though it is trivial.. This is what I call "designed for engagement". I have to click more and find new things etc. "I dont think I've ever listened to a song I didn't want to listen to on Spotify. " So how do you achieve that? Do you only use custom playlists, or do just mostly don't care so much? Because if I have one song in my head, then sometimes I just want this exact song and if I tell spotify to play this song - then afterwards it plays something totally different, even though it tries to fit the same genre, but this works badly. And even if it would be the same genre, some songs are just deep. And you want silence afterwards to process them - if you are consciously listenting in the first place. For some background noise spotify works great, no doubt about that.
eru 3y ago
> Yes, vinyl is more inconvenient, expensive and may even sound "worse" unless you have an expensive audio setup. Well, the objective sounds quality is always _worse_ than eg CDs. (In the same sense that lower mp3 bitrate is always worse in some objective sense.) But often the sound engineering and mixing is done more carefully for vinyl; and aesthetically you can prefer whatever you like.
- 64operator 3y ago
  [dead]
- lloeki 3y ago
  A '63 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT is objectively worse than the latest VW Golf GTI by every measurable metric. The driving experience, though, is completely different. There's some "grin factor" raw-ness, some analog-ness to the former that makes the latter comparatively feel like a muted couch-on-wheels.
  - ummonk 3y ago
    Not really analogous. No matter how much you tune the GTI's ECU, throttle curve, ESC, etc., you won't be able to precisely replicate the handling of the classic car, though you might get close. By contrast, one can digitally capture the output of a turntable + phono preamp and then store it, share it, and replay it with all the crackle and warmth of the original in perfect fidelity without ever having to touch the record again.
    - voldacar 3y ago
      Vinyl isn't about crackle or warmth. Good vinyl rigs are usually not warm. It's about the fact that vinyl physically cannot support a super compressed mix.
      - strangetortoise 3y ago
        Forgive my ignorance: I thought it was the other way around, and you needed some relatively high amount of compression on a vinyl master, since otherwise the grooves would swing too wildly, and the needle would have a higher chance of "skipping". Is this an incorrect understanding of mine?
nend 3y ago
>It's like meditation What you're describing is mindfulness meditation.
papito 3y ago
Well, it's not LIKE meditation :) It is meditation. The process of the ritual focuses the mind on the task at hand.
matwood 3y ago
> That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation. This is what we did with cassettes and then CDs. I had dates where we sat on the floor and just thumbed through our CD catalogs and played music for hours. Even today, I still prefer to listen to whole albums.
- conductr 3y ago
  Me too to all. Listening to full albums and not using infinite playlist is why, for me, Spotify is not really any different than the older tech and I don’t feel the need to jump on the vinyl train. I’m not a collector/hoarder of physical objects, I know I’d actually listen less if I had to search the shelf and drop a needle. Maybe because I developed these habits earlier in life, well before streaming or even Napster. It is interesting to see how the younger digital natives are interested in analog music now. “Supporting the artist” is a commonly cited reason. In the part, we bought posters, shirts and concert tickets to to accomplish this.
bayindirh 3y ago
This is exactly why I have a turntable, too. Just buying the records of my most loved albums, setting aside some time to listen them intently and enjoy the process. It’s not like meditation. It is meditation. As a meditation teacher, I can definitely say that.

hungryforcodes 3y ago

Good points. Just to expand, I find with instant on digital music I never really listen to it with as much attention as vinyl. In fact I love everything about vinyl except the sort durarion of each side, but even that makes me focus more closely on the experience. I know I'll have to turn it over shortly...

kdksrnrb 3y ago
[flagged]
HellDunkel 3y ago
Vinyl is a completly different experience: the smell, the look(!), the age(!), the masting and care for the production, the cover(!)- these things matter.
- zeristor 3y ago
  I loved the ceremony of taking out a record, and putting on a turn table.
  - HellDunkel 3y ago
    Yes. People think vinyl is for snobs (especially the silicon valley type) but they don’t seem to realize a) music went digial before the iphone (CDs) and b) most of them don‘t even know much music.
    - qwery 3y ago
      That is a good example of an elitist (or snobbish) viewpoint.
      - HellDunkel 3y ago
        Really? You can appreciate playing, touching, looking at vinyl or watching vinyl beeing played out without beeing a collector or owning some. But it is hard for me to imagine somebody not appreciating vinyl and all the things attached beeing a true pop music lover. With classical music it may be a completely different story.

WalterBright 3y ago

Sometimes I prefer the original vinyl sound compared to the digitally remixed version of the old songs. But most of my vinyl is of old albums that nobody bothered to re-release on CD. It's fun to buy them cheap at the thrift store, wash them, and see what's on them.

manaskarekar 3y ago

Thanks for making the Henry Rollins' carbohydrate reference. It's a great way to label these two modes of listening that we all experience. ---- "I have two basic food groups of music: protein and carbohydrate. The protein listening is new music, where it’s unfamiliar to me so I’m listening, sometimes taking notes, researching the band while the music is playing. I do quite a bit of this, usually during the week. On the weekends, I will allow for some carbohydrate listening, which would be records I’m familiar with, that I’ve been playing for years. This music is not exactly background, but more of an environmental asset for elevation of mood." https://www.discogs.com/digs/music/henry-rollins-food-groups-seasons-of-listening-to-music/ https://www.discogs.com/digs/music/henry-rollins-food-groups...

TheCondor 3y ago

I call it “appointment listening.” Dedicating time to listen to a specific album. My kids may never understand it. An album is an interesting art form, it captures a few pieces of time: when it was made and then then it was consumed. The cover art and liner art. The order of the songs. All assembled with intention. There are albums I’ve heard hundreds of time and I will still hear little new bits I never quite noticed before. I do love digital music and having it everywhere, but it is special to just listen and take it I’m.

kasey_junk 3y ago
Why would your kids not understand it? My son certainly has no problem exploring album art and reading liner notes while he enjoys one of his favorites. It seems like a fairly universal human quality to want to intentionally listen to music.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  Because the comment makes the assumption that it'll conflict with their apparent low attention spans from years of skipping through songs on their music streaming platforms of choice, rendering them unable to sit down to consume an entire album.
  - Zircom 3y ago
    I think both if you are reading too much into his comment and seeing things that aren't there. I don't think it was a jab at younger generations inability to appreciate things due to short attention spans, but more expressing sadness that streaming has killed the traditional experience/concept of an album and that it's probably never coming back.
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      It might not have been intended as a jab, but journalists frequently repeat that x songs on Spotify are skipped after y time, and the conclusion the journalists arrive at is that between this example, and the likes of TikTok and Snapchat, the younger generations have short attention spans.

HellDunkel 3y ago

Digital music resparked my interest in vinyl. With streaming you have a great tool to figure out what you really love and need to have on vinyl. Less is more.

topranks 3y ago

Fully agree with everything. Except I hate coloured vinyl. But hey each to their own :)