A short documentary asking the simple question- Why Vinyl?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUIMbwvYVOI
A few viewer comments:
- Buying a CD is like throwing money away. The CD is a dying medium, the sales decline since many years, while downloads, streaming and vinyl sales are growing strong. Who needs a physical copy of digital data anyway and even pays for it? Furthermore, a CD has a limited lifetime, between 50 and 100 years. The CD won't survive, that's for sure. Vinyl on the other hand is the only music medium worthwhile collecting...
- I love vinyl, but I'm not one of those purists who thinks that digital is terrible. Certainly, when CD's debuted in the early 80s, they were awful. The record companies would merely digitize the vinyl master and slap it on a disc, and the results were predictably horrendous. Today, however, with advanced mastering techniques, the CD has caught up...just in time for it to go the way of the dodo bird as digital downloads become the predominant format. MP3 (or whatever lossy equivalent you want to mention) has sent us back to the stone age in terms of sonic fidelity, which is, in my opinion, the main driving force behind the move back to vinyl for younger listeners. In addition, everyone wants to HOLD something tangible while listening to music, and there's nothing to hold onto while listening to an MP3. Personally, I listen to vinyl at home and FLAC in the car and at work - it's really the best of both worlds.
- I think surface noise on records is what keeps you reminding that it's right there, a living thing, spinning around that's had/has a life of it's own. It's lovely to hear the well-loved crackle of an album that someone's adored and played over and over - like a well-loved book on a shelf. I think that's what MP3s, and CDs to an extent, will always lack.
