All the rage these days for the younger set: "I collect experiences rather than things." That's a subtext of the article linked in the OP--listening to vinyl records has an experiential quality that listening to streaming does not. Whatever floats the author's boat. But this notion of "experiences" versus "things" interests me, especially when those things are physical recordings and books.
I have been to hundreds and hundreds of live orchestral performances. I've sat in small, smoky clubs listening to jazz on hundreds of occasions. I've been to rock concerts. I've danced the night away hundreds of times in country-western ballrooms. I've roadied for one such ballroom band. I have participated in thousands of musical performances. I spend hours each week playing music with others, and more hours each week preparing to play music with others by playing music at home. Those are experiences.
But how do I access my "collection" of experiences? How do those experiences have value to me as my collection of them grows? This is the question I do not see answered by the younger set--they are like retirement investors still in the accumulation phase. But at some point, they are going to depend on that accumulation to feed them, because collecting new experiences will become increasingly difficult.
Notwithstanding the obvious convenience and clear sonic quality (or at least potential quality) of digital streaming, will that provide a tool for accessing a life of experiences?
I use my library of LPs and CDs not so much as fetish objects, but rather the same way I used my library of books. Just seeing titles on the shelf reminds me of the journey contained in those books, and my own treading along the path they create. See photos on the wall or in albums (yes, we actually keep photo albums), or in photo books and portfolios I have created, allows me to access those experiences afresh. And, often enough, they allow me to access experiences I never had or can't remember and make them my own (even if I'm making them my own again.)
Sure, I could assemble playlists in a streaming service, or let them mine my current preferences to predict what they think I would like; it might spark a memory, which is how we access our collection of experiences. But every one of the CD's in my collection brings me back to the journey I was on when I acquired it, and the medium is as important a part of that access mechanism as is the content. When I pull out Maynard Ferguson's MF Horn 4, 5 Live at Jimmy's, on two vinyl LPs, I'm taken back to the La Bastille Club in Houston in the middle 70's, hearing Maynard Ferguson live in that small room, and then the next day going to the store and buying the album. When I listened to Philip Glass's Glassworks, I'm transported back to the small recital hall at Southwestern University where I heard him live, entering the event rolling my eyes as a skeptic, and leaving it as a committed fan. I bought the album the next day at a record store in Austin. I have hundreds of such experiences. I bought my LP of Glazunov's 5th Symphony, on the Melodiya label and performed by the USSR Symphony Orchestra, in the foyer of the Lila Cockrell Theater in San Antonio, during the intermission of the concert in which the San Antonio Symphony played it. That was maybe 1982, and I'm transported back to that sound even just seeing the album on the shelf. And on and on.
But then I've reached the age when I expect my accumulation to start paying me back. In no way do the obvious weaknesses of vinyl playback prevent me from fully enjoying either the music or the memories they evoke.
That said, I still buy CD's but I don't still buy LP's unless something cheap and unusual comes along that would be difficult to get another way. LP's are mementos to my thinking worth preserving, but they are not imbued with any particular intrinsic value beyond the satisfaction of making them work as well as they can, given the limitations. I suppose we have to include that disclaimer in every post.
Rick "thinking lots of younger folks are learning that mementos and experiences go hand in hand" Denney