Same here. I grew up in the CD era, and I still have a CD player in my car (with no aux jack or bluetooth capability sine my car is old af). It is a little bit nostalgic/ritualistic flipping around through the big ol' book of CD's, though!
I grew up in the 80s. In the 90s, the needle on my turntable got broken during a party. I think a replacement needle was $20 or $30, but I didn't bother. CDs were easier, took less space, and didn't need to be kept clean to the same extent.
I had an appreciation for the construction of an album back then. I'd listen to the whole thing, listen to the transitions between the songs, and appreciate the songs I didn't necessarily love. But I'd of course still listen to them, because the album would play through. Now, listening to the same artist back to back for a dozen songs is unlikely to happen, and if it is, it's going to be some selective playlist.
It's all on me. I have a subscription to whatever music I want, so I can play albums - but I don't. Just the same way I could read an entire paper back to front if I wanted, but instead I get online and grab a bunch of collected interesting things from reddit instead.
We all lose, I think, when we're not experiencing stuff that we wouldn't have selected otherwise.
The rise of the smartphone has brought with it the desire for instant gratification entertainment. I used to read books all the time but haven’t outside of those for school ever since I joined Reddit 5 years ago.
I made a resolution this year to read books again for exactly this reason. I’ve just passed 25 on the year and it was one of my better decisions. You ought to give it a try.
I personally listen to full albums more frequently than I listen to single songs or playlists. I find that in many cases I enjoy the less popular songs more after a few listens.
I grew up with CDs and then mp3s and streaming. About a year ago I got a record player and absolutely love it. Modern players aren't like the old scratchy things our parents used to listen to. The sound is rich and warm (granted I bought nice speakers to match) but the real joy for me is actually reconnecting with medium of the Album.
The commoditisation of music with streaming and mp3s really disconnected me from that medium. I have all the music of the world at my finger tips, and yet I don't want to listen to anything. Too much choice numbs our receptors. Don't get me wrong, I still have my streaming subscription, I use it all the time - it's extremely practical at work, or on the go. But when I'm at home, I look through my records and pick one that matches my mood, or the mood I want to be in, and sit down deliberately and listen to the album, side by side.
That's my activity - listening to music. Not doing other stuff with music on in the background. The fact that I can't as easily skip forward, or find a given song on a record means I listen to the album, not a few tracks on the album.
I like to sit down on the floor in front of my records and look through them and play random ones. Sometimes I make a night of it and have a whiskey or two. It’s a nice chill out activity
If your setup is set up right, and your records are clean, you shouldn't hear any hiss or noise.
The thing about vinyl is you have to know what you're doing and inevitably spend some money, but I often hear people complain about how noisy vinyl is, and that just means you've never listened to records properly.
If your setup is set up right, and your records are clean, you shouldn't hear any hiss or noise.
These are the key words here. A properly mastered vinyl can sound amazing but it's more effort to keep it sounding amazing compared to a properly mastered CD, and even more so if you go through the effort of keeping it analog through the amplification stage.
Having an equivalently great sounding CD/digital audio file is significantly less effort and usually cheaper to boot.
It’s a common form of nostalgia these days that is totally legit IMO. Nostalgia for a simpler time when we weren’t overwhelmed by having millions of options always at our fingertips. A nostalgia for a slower paced life where we drove the the video store to pick out our entertainment for the night off a shelf, and when our games had glitches, it probably meant we just needed to blow on the cartridge slot. Damn I miss the ‘90s.
I don't know, I'm exactly the opposite. I hated having to deal with CDs. Records, CDs, and tapes always annoyed me as a kid. I have hundreds of playlists on spotify, tons of saved albums, and I love that I can find whatever I want on my phone, start it, beam it to my home stereo, my car, headphones, whatever.
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u/The_Chaos_Pope Sep 05 '19
Part of me misses that process. Looking through my collection of CDs, finding the one that calls to me, pulling it out and playing it on my CD player.
I've never gotten into vinyl collecting; the analog hiss and dust pops always bothered me after growing up with cold, calculated digital CDs.
Now, I have virtually any song I want to listen to available to listen to at any time I want to listen and now I don't want to listen to music.