I was wondering what this board's general stance was on them. I considered framing this as a poll, but I'm more interested in hearing peoples' thoughts on the medium than in the actual numbers.
So vinyl's been having a revival recently; sales of LPs last year went up 52% in a world where other forms of music sales DROPPED. I bought myself a record player around Thanksgiving and have been building up a collection since then, so I guess I'm technically a part of that increase.
So I personally buy vinyl for a couple reasons.
The biggest one is that with vinyl versus digital download, there's physical matter involved, and I'm more likely to listen to something new. I can download a song, put it into a playlist, set my itunes to shuffle and literally not even hear that song while I'm sitting there. I buy a record, there's the whole ritualistic process of getting it out, putting it on the player, pressing play, flipping it when the side ends, maybe changing to the second disc. It's more work, but it's not exactly difficult, and it adds to the enjoyment.
I'm more likely to listen to it, since I've had shopping sprees in the past with downloads, getting three, four albums at once, and a week later, I'll have listened to probably eight songs a hundred times, and the rest of what I got just the once. With vinyl, it's possible to skip songs on records, but it's not worth it, really, so I hear the entire thing every time. Deep tracks, man, sometimes the best songs on an album aren't the hits, or the ones that caught your attention the first time around. You hear them again though because they come before your favorite, and something in them just hits you and suddenly you have a new favorite.
Suffice to say, I am very much pro-vinyl records. I'll be at the record store on April 18th for Record Store Day, picking up the new Built To Spill and anything else that catches my eye that morning.
What about the rest of you? Vinyl good, vinyl bad? I'm curious!