> pretty much anything that most people want to listen to is on music streaming sites

If that were true, then vinyl sales wouldn't be growing.

First of all, vinyl is still relatively niche in absolute terms. Second of all, the popularity of vinyl, such as it is, has absolutely nothing to do with availability. It's largely driven by a kind of retro nostalgia (as the technology itself is, of course, inferior from a technical sense of faithful reproduction) plus a desire for personal physical ownership of something.

▲

otabdeveloper4 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> It's largely driven by a kind of retro nostalgia

Incorrect. The reasons why vinyl specifically is still relevant (as opposed to any other "retro" audio format) are technical.

Vinyl avoids compression issues by design. (Compression both in the computer science sense and in the audio engineering sense.)

	▲	bugufu8f83 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		This is complete bullshit, sorry. Digital is more capable of faithfully reproducing sound than vinyl is. Vinyl does not have technical advantages when it comes to faithful sound reproduction. I mean, it literally degrades over time, for chrissake! I don't know what kind of "compression issues" you're talking about but I strongly suspect you'd be well served by learning about the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem.

▲

ButlerianJihad 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I was a zealous collector of records when we made the switch to digital audio. And let me tell you, there was a significant artistry to the thing: a vinyl record was a standardized work of art. Every album cover was the result of careful design, photography, layout. The inner sleeve oftentimes contained more art, or if we were lucky, all the lyrics we wanted to sing along with. The record label itself, a masterpiece of design. All the smells and all the feels of merely collecting vinyl--even without playing it--are indescribable today.

When CDs came into the market, they were horribly clacky and just clad in layers of tacky plastic. The album art was shrunken, misshapen... and the objects themselves stank of polycarbonate, rather than delicious vinyl. Sure, they sounded great and they lasted a long time, and maintenance was dead simple. But so much artistry was lost. I was still collecting lots of CDs when purely digital distribution hit us, but by then, the smells and feels and experience of collecting vinyl were distant memories.

And that entire experience may be why people argue for the technical superiority of vinyl recordings, and analog tube amplifiers. Because it was all self-reinforcing, and it all fell apart once the clacky, tacky, plasticky CDs took over.

▲

bugufu8f83 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, that's all part of what I meant by "a kind of retro nostalgia". People enjoy the experience of buying vinyl and of putting on vinyl records. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, for what it's worth. I'm just claiming that this is what's driving vinyl's popularity right now, rather than because people are turning to it due to music availability issues (which is much more of a factor for DVDs/Blu-rays right now).

▲

otabdeveloper4 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

There's a shitload of valuable vinyl records that don't have any art at all or even any cover. Paper and cardboard doesn't last as long as the record itself.

No, the reasons for this are entirely technical.

	▲	ButlerianJihad 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		de gustibus non est disputandum Look, I am telling you about my own lived experience with collecting vinyl. You can speak for yourself, but I carefully stored all my items in archival sleeves, and the jacket, art, and inner sleeve were often just as important as the disc and the music encoded on it. There was a real thrill and reward that came from collecting LP albums in particular, and that meant 12" discs, and I also had a particular specialty in finding 12" remixes and DJ versions of singles. Yes, there were shaped discs, and colored vinyl, and white-labels and acetates that came with no art or plain sleeves, and I collected those with just as much alacrity, but it really was a pleasure to flip through my collection, or someone else's, and drink in that large-format album art.