The record store near me has a slogan…
Seems to be some modern horseshit
Yay! I’ve always been modern!
(never heard “vinyls” outside of a band name before now, honestly)
In a classic case of things escalating quickly, about six weeks ago, my wife was saying “You know, someday when we have more room I wouldn’t mind getting a turntable”, to “I’m with my friend just looking at this record store” to “I bought three albums… oh, and I’m ordering this player” in about a five day span. I found her a decent player and she’s up to a couple dozen albums. She actually does play them, pretty much on rotation while she’s working all day and says the music helps her concentrate. She enjoys the physical act of it all and being “forced” to listen to an entire album is soothing. Since it’s “her” player, and in the room she hangs out in the most, I haven’t used it much but there is an enjoyable quality to it. I’d say there’s a slightly different sound to it but I’d be hard pressed to claim it’s better and, really, much of the sound difference beyond the slight hiss and pops is probably down to the better speakers it’s attached to versus my cheapo Bluetooth speaker for my phone.
I do find it a little frustrating to find music for the few albums I’ve bought myself. Vinyl’s been back well long enough that cheap finds are long snapped up and you’re paying luxury priced on older albums or luxury prices on new albums that get a limited release and bought up by resellers. Unless you’re around for the window where a new album comes out and/or it’s big enough to get carried by Target and Walmart, you either need a lot of disposable income or a strong want for that album. Add in nonsense like there being six different versions with different colored vinyl or different versions with unique bonus tracks, etc all in limited quantities and it feels more like very expensive Pokemon cards than a way to listen to music. She’s still in love with it though.
Well, for one thing, one can actually wash vinyl (that’s right, with water), and if it has a skip, you don’t have to throw it out or try to use toothpaste or whatever the gimmick was back then. Still sucks, but you don’t always have to throw the whole medium away.
In the second place, a lot of music has never been released on youtube, much less any other form digital. Granted, some of it can be found on Letube, but we don’t like them and their compression, and we don’t have a million hours to spend transferring data in real life.
In the third half, it can be fun to spin an album or a dozen at home. Being a nerd staring into some screen is cool and all when trying to relax or enjoy a given performance, but some of us get enough computer time elsewhere in life.
3+ years later and Kid Cheesesteak now makes a weekly pilgrimage after school to 2 stores that sell vinyl in our town. He has access to 100,000,000 songs through spotify, and still loves having music in a restrictive physical format.
Well, 226 posts into this discussion hasn’t changed my mind. “My mind” is that this “craze” doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me for the same compelling reasons I had in October of 2021. That being said, we have to acknowledge that “Pet Rocks” were actually a craze long ago so, in comparison to that, it makes a lot of sense. LOL
Hey, “Each to their own.” I think it’s a good motto to live by.
There’s a tiny bit of that for me, because it is a different medium. If I’m listening to stuff on digital then I am in a situation where I am used to skipping tracks, plus occasionally having shuffle set and so I do not get the expected track I am conditioned to hear. I wouldn’t call it so much “soothing” as having more confidence that I am playing and will play the entire side.
(for the ones I have) My albums are vinyl, or CD.
Forget vinyl for a sec: do “albums” even exist anymore, as a thing? Meaning, like 40 minutes of songs usually composed and recorded at the same time.
The two of them. The Di-vinyls. 
Back in the day, before this^ was such a thing, Led Zeppelin had six different covers for In Through the Out Door, and as far as I could tell, it wasn’t publicized. And they were wrapped in brown paper. You paid your monies and you tooks your chances. I eventually found them all.
With you there.
Now, I do remember the ritual of listening to albums, just listening. I had this idea for a sci fi time travel story. I was thinking how, among all the albums I have, I usually listen to Dark Side of the Moon in the dark. So I was thinking that every time I played it, I saw the same thing, sat in the same position, thought the same things. So, because of the brain similarities, I could open a portal and could just close my eyes in the present and open them in, say 1982.
Behold the power of VINYL!
Neither does leaving your warm dry house to go sleep in the wilderness, cook over a campfire and carry 30lbs of stuff with you there and back, but people do it. Sometimes doing things the old way is comforting, fun, or worth doing just because it’s different than the everyday.
Well, if you get stuck there, don’t say I didn’t warn you! 
They’re getting ready for the apocalypse. 
Sure they do. I’ve always been an album listener, from vinyl to CD to MP3s and now streaming, and most artists still release albums all the time. In the last few years, somehow Friday has been established as the day of the week almost all labels release their new stuff, and I use to check allmusic.com for the new releases every Friday, which include hundreds of albums each week in any genre.
Cool. I’m an olde farte, I figured everything was streaming singles, usually with “feat.” in the title.
Don’t forget, if you actually buy an album, besides the record itself (which might be interestingly decorated), the sleeve might be awesome, perhaps there is a poster, could be anything.
Nah, plenty of full albums especially by established artists. There’s probably a lot more singles/EPs by ratio than in the olden days just because it’s a lot easier for a small-time group to distribute three songs via streaming than trying to find distribution for a retail physical album.
Well, even in those cases songs are often bundled as a single/ep/lp package on download sites such as Bandcamp. That’s what I plan to do with the recordings I’m making at the moment. If we start to play a bunch of shows, we may actually press some for the merch table.
Does it fit some definitions of “album”? I dunno. Most albums really are just a set of songs recorded around the same time.
The dirty secret is a lot of classic albums had bad songs, fillers, and “contractual obligations” (which always sounded like a euphemism for turd to me). Which makes transferring albums to something like iTunes a benefit. So long, bad songs!
I still download whole albums regularly. (From iTunes, yes I’m a dinosaur.) If I really like a song I’ll often download the whole album. I figure, if I love that one song, there’s bound to be at least a couple more on the album I also like. It usually works out. Yes, there’s often filler, but my philosophy is that finding more songs I like is well worth getting past the crap.
Um…Yes? Look at Taylor Swift for one big example. My favorite album of last year was Olivia Rodrigo’s “Guts.” Yes, they are cohesive works that go together. It ain’t all singles.