The lifeblood and passion of many cultures and people is music. Despite the enigma of modern music streaming companies like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music changing the name of the game, many people are continuing to buy physical copies of music.
Over the years, there have been different ways to listen to music on demand and to specific artists. Beginning with vinyl in the 1980s, the market later shifted towards compact discs (CD), which took over vinyl’s throne in 1987. CDs reached their own peak in the 2000s after climbing for many years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which helps represent record labels and the ins and outs of the music industries.
Just like CDs overtaking vinyl, streaming services like Napster and then later Spotify. Birthing the digitalization of much of society, and its passions around the early 2000s. Meaning that online streaming would become the more mainstream way of listening to music on demand.
(The RIAA helps represent record labels (and keep track of sales), giving gold and platinum records along with choosing what to give the Parental Advisor stickers to for music.)
The experience that Spotify— and other online streaming platforms —has fostered is one that some complain about but many love.
One of the complaints was about how you can’t connect to albums the same as you could before. Through the process of having to listen to other songs in the album to get to your favorite.
During an interview on “triple j,” Earl Sweatshirt, a large artist on Spotify with 2.9 million monthly listeners, said, “When I was little you’d come and interact with an artist like ‘let me get this body of work by them’ and then you can grow with it… and then you start learning the album.”
Spotify has made a positive change in the music industry. This is through the discovery of new upcoming artists being increasingly easy. Instead of needing to hand out mixtapes on the street or playing in small venues and outside of establishments, you can simply stay at home and record it with an easy upload to the Internet just at your fingertips.
The quality of music is often much better on the physical piece of vinyl because of the more direct connection of how vinyl is made without having to be compressed multiple times through the internet. “It sounds better physically than maybe if you were to stream it digitally,” said Chris Woodard, a student at Ida B. Wells with a sizable collection himself.
Another reason people are buying these physical alternatives is because of the act of physically owning the music along with an ensemble of easter eggs surrounding the album or Extended Play (EP). “CDs and vinyl have a lot of extra [things] like liner notes that provide a closer view of the artists’ thinking process when they were actually making the album,” said Woodard.
Going out on a mission for a specific CD is another aspect of the fun of collecting. Rifling through the packed shelves of vinyl hoping to find something that’s been evading you for years because of its exclusivity. “There’s definitely albums that I’ve wanted for a long time, but they’re super rare,” said Woodard.
In recent years there’s been an increase in the number of purchases of older, physical ways to listen to music. Since 2010 there’s been a small incremental rise in the purchases of vinyl. This spiked in 2020 and has since stayed there.
As of 2022, for the first time since 1987, vinyl record sales have surpassed CDs. Besides being a monumental statistic, this shows that as of now we could be entering another “golden era” of physical media.
Music is extremely important to so many people and the way you experience it is equally important. Listening to music has greatly changed throughout the years from vinyl to CDs to on the internet which has greatly changed how music is consumed.
In recent years people have begun to flee back to these older form factors of music like vinyl and CDs for the better quality, deeper connection with the album and experience of going out on the hunt for a specific piece of work.
