I Hate Vinyl

I hate vinyl.

I was an adolescent in the 1970s. All we had was vinyl and cassettes.

I have positive memories of vinyl LPs—I’m talking about the material aspects, not the music on them—but they’re all about the jackets: cool cover images (sometimes) and above all, liner notes. You could read the liner notes as the music played, which was highly practical, a real boon.

But I also remember that in 1979 there was an epoch-making oil crisis. Vinyl is made using petroleum, whose price sky-rocketed. They started making records with cheaper vinyl.

What did this mean? It meant that records in the 1980s warped very easily. The slightest lean to one side of your vertically stored LPs and they would start to warp. It also meant that you would hear snap-crackle-pop as of the very first spins. It got so bad that I would buy an LP and immediately record it on a cassette, then listen to the cassette to preserve the cheaply made, fragile LP.

I also remember all kinds of paraphernalia needed to dust and clean the grooves of these vulnerable artefacts. Some people—geeky people—loved these fussy rituals, as well as adjusting the weight of the needle arm (according to who knows what arcane calculations), just as pipe smokers love to spread out their tools to lovingly clean and prepare their pipes. Or just as torrent jockeys today scrupulously track and describe the transformation of bootleg FLACs from soundboard or radio or stealth recorder through various devices and conversions to the final files distributed (and then there’s the metadata).

I mentioned the needle arm. Jesus, needles. There were always those friends who were aghast that you might buy a substandard needle (read: one you could afford as a broke young person) instead of some holy grail that would presumably change your whole listening experience from night to day.

When CDs started, I resisted. I was already carting around crates of LPs every time I moved from one place to another. I had numerous LP-specific storage units. I’m not a technology geek. I wanted to be left alone and not have to re-engineer my whole listening life to accommodate new and unfamiliar hardware. So it wasn’t until the new releases I was interested in were no longer being released on vinyl that I made the switch.

There followed an uneasy transition period. In those early days, CDs, especially reissues, didn’t sound good. They often sounded flat, dull, cold. This was alarming. But what were you going to do, just not buy music?

But that initial period passed. CDs came to sound just fine. (Let me specify that I am not an audiophile, just a normal listener. I look on audiophilia as an unfortunate, quasi-pathological condition for whose sufferers I wish a prompt recovery.)

AND—no warping. No snap-crackle-pop. No dust in the groove, no scratches, no needles to replace. With random access to boot!

Of course, CDs suck as packaged objects. They’re impractically shaped: you can’t pick up a bunch under your arm and carry them. Jewel boxes are a cheap, easily broken nightmare. CD booklets, when you can pry them out, have type you need a magnifying glass to read. This is undeniable: LPs have far better packaging.

But... after getting physically worse, they went away for years, decades, as the vehicle for newly released music. We adapted. I came to appreciate the digital convenience of CDs, despite their other drawbacks. I gradually replaced my LPs with CDs. I haven’t owned a turntable since the 1990s. And all was well. Well enough.

But CDs themselves then began to disappear, replaced not by new hardware but by software: streamed and downloaded digital files. This upset the livelihood of artists, no longer able to earn money from selling physical objects, but also the landscape for listeners. Young people in particular grew up not having to worry about music storage. It just comes from their devices, either free or dirt cheap. Music discovery, that once involved going to the record store and reading magazines and talking with your friends, lapsed into the algorithmic push of streaming platforms.

Then vinyl returned, with a huge marketing push. It was suddenly super cool and hiply retro to listen to LPs. Especially for young people who had never been required by market forces to abandon vinyl in the first place.

I understand there are positive aspects to the current trendiness of vinyl. They provide some sorely needed sales for artists, but have to do mainly, I believe, with the social aspects of fandom. Music lovers can differentiate themselves from the mass of casual, thoughtless streamers by their shared devotion to the listening rites, involving the care and handling of the ritual objects and their playing, first one side, then the other. Or the careful dropping of the needle to a specific track, or even a special moment within a track!

And it encourages people to discover music by gathering around the record player with friends, reacting together in real time and sharing impressions.

Exactly as everyone did, had to do, back in the 1970s and 80s. Before vinyl, having already deteriorated, coldly abandoned us to the clutches of digital technology.

And now we’re supposed to welcome it back, like a faithless spouse who shows up at the door years later, flashing a seductive smile? Buy a damn turntable again? Worry about needles and dust? Find the room in our homes to rebuild another LP collection?

All you young folks out there, all you geeks and hipsters of all ages, go wild. But not me. I won’t get fooled again. I hate vinyl.