"I Swapped Spotify for Vinyl and It Changed My Life"

[NiagaraPete]

I got rid of vinyl after 60 years and it changed my life.
I look at vinyl now as a waste of time, aggravation, money, and space.

 

[TBone]

Did promise but you had to pull me back...
Not being pedantic but...
Convenience is not a function, it is an attribute. Streaming' function is to deliver music (and some other media), and it acquits itself of such, with a level of convenience unmatched in human history.

Really out this time...

Peace.

... semantics aside, after auditioning a friends pi/topping e30dac ... totally agree "convenience unmatched in human history" ... my motive as i melt into my listening chair, every control at my fingertips, may never a need to move again ...

certainly not adopting streaming/pi/dac into my system based on SQ. just a new kinda radio to me ...

Nothing wrong with it at all...have fun. But there's nothing intrinsic to any specific format that makes it more "musical" and any suggestion that vinyl is a better way to enjoy music than any other way would be pretty silly...

Again, attaining superior mastering quality is not a silly reason ... but what is silly ... is someone suggesting mass compression, delivered by any medium, is equal or better, than an uncompressed master, again, delivered in any medium.

luv my digital systems, listen 99.9 % digital.

even listen to vinyl 99% thru 16/44 ...

absolutely no bias, no need for me to pump or preach 1 format over the other ... got the best both worlds, understand both worlds ...

 

[Galliardist]

"I listen to music every single day—it’s one of my favorite things in life. I also bought my first turntable a few months ago and have wondered what it’d be like to only listen to vinyl for an entire week. So recently, I did just that and I have a lot of thoughts about the experience.

My history with music is lifelong. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had some means of listening to it within arm’s reach. I even shamelessly toted around one of those ridiculous binders full of CDs. I was thrilled when I could finally upgrade to an iPod, and I’m pretty sure I actually cried tears of joy when streaming music services were first announced.

But as I’ve spent more and more time with Spotify (and eventually, SiriusXM, Tidal, and YouTube Premium), I think I slowly started to take music for granted. It eventually became background noise to me, like an accessory I had to have yet never paid much attention to anymore. I was thinking about all of this recently, and it hit me how desperate I was to do something about it and reconnect with music."

I Swapped Spotify for Vinyl and It Changed My Life

I listen to music every single day—it’s one of my favorite things in life. I also bought my first turntable a few months ago and have wondered what it’d be like to only listen to vinyl for an entire week. So recently, I did just that and I have a lot of thoughts about the experience.

www.reviewgeek.com

The author has gone from one poor relationship with music to a different way that I say is still a problem. Firstly, she used music in a way that separates it from being appreciated. The typical iPod user was someone who had music as a kind of companion, but only ever background noise, maybe spotting the odd tune, probably collecting a large quantity of music, but never really listening. I've watched a lot of people have that relationship with music. She admits it herself - taking music for granted.

The answer to this is to get out to concerts, to make time to actually listen to music at home, anything that gets you a relationship to the music. The best thing I ever did was not to go down the iPod road. It was bad enough that I listened to some once-favourite music back in the 1990s when working on my degree assignments,. I was doing something other than relating to the music. Carrying music everywhere with you as a cocoon is a mistake, if you ask me.

The second bad move is to fetishise a form of playback which, when compared to others, restricts listening in a number of ways. It limits to music in particular size blocks. You have limitations that, really, get in the way of listening - critical imperfections in the sound, the need to maintain pieces of mechanical engineering and fragile discs that require their own cleaning and maintenance. It's not using that method (I know plenty of non-audiophiles who continue to play their records but don't assign a special value to it - it's just what that piece of music is on, not a matter of veneration).

It is still a big improvement on the iPod way of doing things. Now she's taking time with the music,, and that's a good thing. My attitude to music is that you have to pay attention and work at the relationship to get the most out of it. That may not be just listening - dancing and playing an instrument are also ways to actively relate to music, which is what I'm getting at here. Of course, as a 61 year old I spent the first chunk of my hifi life with vinyl, because that was what we had. It's not vinyl that is the problem, we find many other things to get in the way. That's the true problem with rampant subjectivism - listening to the system not the music, and looking for the answer to your problems in the equipment.

It's a paradox I see here, and in myself - the medium shouldn't be the message but we make it so. That article - we see it just as espousing vinyl - but it's not really about that. It's about someone's problematic relationship to music and showing that the relationship can change.

Watchnerd got it right with the quotes pulled out in the OP. Thanks.

 

[Eggs Ackley]

A Raspberry Pi and a cell phone changed my life just a little bit but in a very good way.

 

[TBone]

I got rid of vinyl after 60 years and it changed my life.
I look at vinyl now as a waste of time, aggravation, money, and space.

yeah, yeah, yeah, hear that all the time, many peeps couldnt last nearly 60 years within the vinyl world ... so ...

totally understand why ... no problem with anyone abandoning vinyl or cd for that matter.

but that doesn't change my motive 1bit(pun intended).

... my collection/playlist is filled with albums purchased from collections sold on the cheap... luved it when peeps sell of collections of lp and/or cd, so i could cherry pick the best masterings to + my playlist.

remember so many mass sells in the 80's ... 1 peep had a super expensive analog system, suddenly sold his entire lp collection for digital, than 30 years later, asking me if i still had the orig lps and could he get em back.

loop ...

A Raspberry Pi and a cell phone changed my life just a little bit but in a very good way.

yes, especially get that ... luv my limited time with the Pi/dac/android combo ...

 

[TBone]

The author has gone from one poor relationship with music to a different way that I say is still a problem.

This is not a "problem" unless you make it one. why cant u allow her relationship with music to be her preference without that having to be justified or adhering to your own specific standards?

 

[ahofer]

I had hundreds of LPs. When CDs came out I switched pretty fast. To me, the difference in noise floor was the key, plus I didn't have to worry about cleaning, avoiding warping, isolating the turntable in my college dorm room, etc.

 

[TBone]

I had hundreds of LPs. When CDs came out I switched pretty fast. To me, the difference in noise floor was the key, plus I didn't have to worry about cleaning, avoiding warping, isolating the turntable in my college dorm room, etc.

I luv vinyl, but hate cleaning lps, no let me rephrase ... i dread with a passion having to clean lps ... certainly my least favorite task in all audio.

but argghh ... its just so important, esp when archiving vinyl ... such a pain ...

I have long stated that if i was into classical music only, prob. have abondoned lp long ago. but that said, know many, some with thousands of classical lps ... who would offer a very different opine ...

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

This is not a "problem" unless you make it one. why cant u allow her relationship with music to be her preference without that having to be justified or adhering to your own specific standards?

Nobody is saying she can't have "her relationship." We're saying it ain't the vinyl that makes the relationship.

 

[TBone]

Nobody is saying she can't have "her relationship." We're saying it ain't the vinyl that makes the relationship.

You assume ... u dont really know her connection or "relationship" with music as much as you would understand my personal sonic preferences or motives ... with any format.

no reason to interject your own bias and reasoning into the fold as some sort of standard / "problem" ...

 

[Shiva]

Thanks for the write up, it was an enjoyable read. One of the things she touched on was going to a record store and perusing the racks. As a teenager that was a big part of the fun, going on the hunt for the perfect discs, hitting your favorite record store and there were quite a few of them back in the day. The vinyl's cost , 50 cents to a buck fifty back in the 70's made building a collection fairly easy for most. Checking the albums for scratches. Then joyfully taking your stack home. She also touched on the pain of flipping albums. My hand me down system back in the day, included a Gerrard turntable, in which you could stack 5 albums on it. The ritual was not about the checking out the vinyl packaging, it was about stacking the 5 sides you wanted to listen to prior to your diminished eye hand coordination, getting high, hitting the play button and getting immersed in the music, through my Fisher 30 watt tube receiver into my Altec 604's, I believe. It was a lot of fun, though I'm a streamer now.

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

You assume ... u dont really know her connection or "relationship" with music as much as you would understand my personal sonic preferences or motives ... with any format.

no reason to interject your own bias and reasoning into the fold as some sort of standard / "problem" ...

No, you assume. Unless you are suggesting that her (or your) relationship to her music is fundamentally different from my relationship to my music because she is listening on vinyl and I'm not. The point is that the relationship to the music is not defined by the medium. I've been a music lover since the late 70s and have listened to music on everything from 8-track to vinyl to now mostly digital files on my laptop. My relationship with the music is no different now than ever.

 

[Snarfie]

I enjoy reading the song lyrics in a cd booklet or vinyl sleeve while listening to an album front to back. I sit in my lazy chair and do nothing else. No other distractions. When I'm working behind my PC I fire up Spotify. There's room for both.

Since i bought the Vandies an correct them with DSP/room correction I rediscoverd my music again (physical & ripped CD's, LP's). But i 'm not missing sleeves booklets etc. A nice evening spent with my gear an music is sitting in my listening chair consume the music an if i need more info i take my phone an browse the internet to find specific information regarding the album/artist . The information found is so hugh an informative you never ever could find that on the sleeve or booklet.

 

[TBone]

The point is that the relationship to the music is not defined by the medium.

exactly ... perhaps we r debating the same debate ...

... grew up w/brother, phenomenal guitar player, hated his guitar bc it got him all the pretty girls, but i digress ... all those years of him practicing and playing solo in bedrooms, leading to bands in basements then exiled to garage, leading to school concerts ...

the sound of dynamic live music & guitars, live & recorded, ingrained in my head, forever. which prob. explains my "relationship" with this hobby more than anything else, including format.

 

[Sgt. Ear Ache]

exactly ... perhaps we r debating the same debate ...

... grew up w/brother, phenomenal guitar player, hated his guitar bc it got him all the pretty girls, but i digress ... all those years of him practicing and playing solo in bedrooms, leading to bands in basements then exiled to garage, leading to school concerts ...

the sound of dynamic live music & guitars, live & recorded, ingrained in my head, forever. which prob. explains my "relationship" with this hobby more than anything else, including format.

the sound of live music from concerts and band practices certainly plays a part in my relationship to music, and in my hearing damage!

 

[TBone]

the sound of live music from concerts and band practices certainly plays a part in my relationship to music, and in my hearing damage!

1 thing about recording over all those years ... was relatively easy to hear any decline in hearing w/higher freq. content using test tones ...

Id say my desire to fish back in the day ... using loud two stroke motors, potentially impaires hearing more than audio ...

 

[MattHooper]

But there's nothing intrinsic to any specific format that makes it more "musical" and any suggestion that vinyl is a better way to enjoy music than any other way would be pretty silly...

Agreed. That's why I've been careful to say it depends on the individual. I think everyone on this thread seems to understand that.

in fact, the only thing vinyl really has in it's favor is the artifact appeal and nostalgia. It certainly isn't convenient or portable and the sound quality is demonstrably not better than any other format except maybe cassettes.

Well...again...are you talking about the appeal it would have for you or trying to explain the "only appeal" it could have for others? If the latter, then you are still missing some of the elements expressed in that review and in what I and others have written about why we find vinyl appealing. (And another one: Buying vinyl is a way of better financially supporting many artists. Touring as well as selling merch and vinyl is part of how they make a living. Many people buying vinyl have cited this as an additional reason they like buying records).

 

[MattHooper]

Hi.

Hope this is not construed as crapping on a thread but rather of a , very , contrarian view:

Interesting experiences. Very , very personal. I understand the singing paeans to Vinyl and the ritual associated with playing it ... These however don't, can't reflect the view of the majority, I would guess 99.999999%, of the world population. This is not because of the lack of fidelity of the medium. No! It is because it no longer accomplishes itself as well of its primary function, as the now commonly available digital alternatives: Music is an art form enjoyed by the world population, for so many societal and human functions. Vinyl was an intermediary steps into bringing Music to the people. We are past it/them/LP... just like we are past mechanical watches... I for one, love my mechanical, inaccurate watches and have a few, whose value for me, is certainly not into what should have been their primary function, which is to tell the time. Same with Vinyl.
If it floats someone's boat.. then fine, but it doesn't do much for music reproduction or in bringing it to most.
Since making of Spotify my primary music source, I have never enjoyed so much music (and enjoyed music so much) in my 5 decades of very passionate music listening .
Sorry.

peace.

Nice take on the subject Frantz!

Vive la difference!

Though I still think the above take doesn't quite account for the surprising resurgence of vinyl. Of course not everyone is buying records but a surprisingly large number are and it's still growing. It does seem to speak to a certain commonality, some aspect of human experience, it's drawing upon (similar to why books have persisted in this digital world). I see descriptions just like that author's repeated over and over in newbie vinyl forums.

Until maybe 2012 or so I had one record store nearby. A dusty old hold out not far from me - sold CDs and records. Now, I just searched record stores around me on google maps and within a couple kilometers, I count 14 record stores! And all the record stores I go to are usually fairly busy.

And as for bringing music to people, among the most common themes in young people exploring vinyl is the mad enthusiasm for the music they are discovering that they feel they'd never otherwise have known existed or searched out. Much of it is WAY out of the path they would have been guided to via the usual streaming or youtube algorithms.

 

[MattHooper]

I got rid of vinyl after 60 years and it changed my life.
I look at vinyl now as a waste of time, aggravation, money, and space.

I get that. I'm starting to feel that way about my large blu ray movie collection. I'd frankly like to ditch it all for the reasons you give, and would move to just streaming. (My main issue is the poor selection of movies on streaming - many in my physical collection aren't available on streaming).

 

[MattHooper]

The author has gone from one poor relationship with music to a different way that I say is still a problem. Firstly, she used music in a way that separates it from being appreciated. The typical iPod user was someone who had music as a kind of companion, but only ever background noise, maybe spotting the odd tune, probably collecting a large quantity of music, but never really listening. I've watched a lot of people have that relationship with music. She admits it herself - taking music for granted.

The answer to this is to get out to concerts, to make time to actually listen to music at home, anything that gets you a relationship to the music. The best thing I ever did was not to go down the iPod road. It was bad enough that I listened to some once-favourite music back in the 1990s when working on my degree assignments,. I was doing something other than relating to the music. Carrying music everywhere with you as a cocoon is a mistake, if you ask me.

The second bad move is to fetishise a form of playback which, when compared to others, restricts listening in a number of ways. It limits to music in particular size blocks. You have limitations that, really, get in the way of listening - critical imperfections in the sound, the need to maintain pieces of mechanical engineering and fragile discs that require their own cleaning and maintenance. It's not using that method (I know plenty of non-audiophiles who continue to play their records but don't assign a special value to it - it's just what that piece of music is on, not a matter of veneration).

It is still a big improvement on the iPod way of doing things. Now she's taking time with the music,, and that's a good thing. My attitude to music is that you have to pay attention and work at the relationship to get the most out of it. That may not be just listening - dancing and playing an instrument are also ways to actively relate to music, which is what I'm getting at here. Of course, as a 61 year old I spent the first chunk of my hifi life with vinyl, because that was what we had. It's not vinyl that is the problem, we find many other things to get in the way. That's the true problem with rampant subjectivism - listening to the system not the music, and looking for the answer to your problems in the equipment.

It's a paradox I see here, and in myself - the medium shouldn't be the message but we make it so. That article - we see it just as espousing vinyl - but it's not really about that. It's about someone's problematic relationship to music and showing that the relationship can change.

Watchnerd got it right with the quotes pulled out in the OP. Thanks.

Interesting points. Except it seems to me you are battling against the norms built in to human psychology - e.g. "the medium shouldn't influence our experience or relationship to the music." But it DOES. That's how humans are built. It's almost like saying "if a recipe is turning out too sweet, don't attempt to balance it by adding acidity - you shouldn't have to do that, just re-orient your attitude towards the sweetness." Except that's how we are built: adding acidity will influence our perception of the sweetness. Hence good cooks work with this, exploit how our perception works, in cooking.

Same with physical media like records. It's just a fact that for some the physical aspects of the media enrich and enhance their attention and attraction to some of the music. It's not something to get rid of (unless it's deleterious somehow), it's something to enjoy. Just like how reading a real book can, among other things, allow one to unplug from digital life which for some can enhance the feeling of relaxation and escapism from "life being online."

Similarly, you seem to imply that limiting options is automatically a bad thing. But "too many options" aren't always the best thing for everyone.
Limiting options...at least by curating them...can have a salutary effect. Just as I (and that author and plenty of others) found out once we experienced having "limitless" options at our fingertips that diluted our attending to those options. With my LPs they are of necessity carefully curated purchases of music I really love. So my music listening experience is helped in this way. But it doesn't mean the options for music on vinyl is terribly limiting. Far from it: you could spend a lifetime and never explore all of it. As I mentioned in an earlier reply, many young people getting in to vinyl extol music they would never have come across or been driven to discover if left to streaming (and the way algorithms tend to guide one's streaming habits).