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| I don’t need to play my vinyl to love it | I don’t need to play my vinyl to love it |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Vinyl sales may be on the up, but according to an ICM poll, almost half of people who bought a vinyl album last month have yet to listen to it. And of people who buy records, the poll found, 41% have a turntable they never use – and 7% don’t even own a record player. | Vinyl sales may be on the up, but according to an ICM poll, almost half of people who bought a vinyl album last month have yet to listen to it. And of people who buy records, the poll found, 41% have a turntable they never use – and 7% don’t even own a record player. |
| So as a buyer of vinyl that I no longer play, I have to ask: what’s in it for us? The romance of owning a physical object? Having to go to a particular place and spend cold hard contactless money to buy it? That’s certainly more rewarding than idly downloading a song while you’re sitting on the loo. Or is it just about hanging a copy of Adele’s latest album, last year’s biggest selling vinyl album, on the wall of your lounge to look cultured? | So as a buyer of vinyl that I no longer play, I have to ask: what’s in it for us? The romance of owning a physical object? Having to go to a particular place and spend cold hard contactless money to buy it? That’s certainly more rewarding than idly downloading a song while you’re sitting on the loo. Or is it just about hanging a copy of Adele’s latest album, last year’s biggest selling vinyl album, on the wall of your lounge to look cultured? |
| As a DJ and music journalist, I used to own a lot of vinyl. It’s not an exact measurement, but I’m talking two full Ikea Expedits’ worth. After moving in and then out of a fifth-floor flat with no lift, I decided that perhaps it was time to reconsider my situation and weed out some of the lesser-played records in my collection. As it turned out, it would probably be the last time I played a record. This was five years ago. My eye-wateringly expensive record player now sits with it’s two output cables forlornly dangling down the back. On top of it are, among other things, a spare dog collar and a recorder. | As a DJ and music journalist, I used to own a lot of vinyl. It’s not an exact measurement, but I’m talking two full Ikea Expedits’ worth. After moving in and then out of a fifth-floor flat with no lift, I decided that perhaps it was time to reconsider my situation and weed out some of the lesser-played records in my collection. As it turned out, it would probably be the last time I played a record. This was five years ago. My eye-wateringly expensive record player now sits with it’s two output cables forlornly dangling down the back. On top of it are, among other things, a spare dog collar and a recorder. |
| Related: Vinyl sales may be rising, but have you seen who’s buying it? | Bill Brewster | |
| But that’s not to say that I don’t have a strong emotional connection to the vinyl I have hung on to. I can pretty much remember where each and every record came from. That time I bought the seven inch for Hard to Love, Easy to Lay by Leeds-based band Black Wire in a store called Feeling Groovy in Peoria, Illinois; the occasion I found a mysterious album by a band called Ex-Hole in the street at 1am, only to discover their strange, minimal Belgian new wave would present me with one of my favourite songs, about someone dying of boredom at their own party. | But that’s not to say that I don’t have a strong emotional connection to the vinyl I have hung on to. I can pretty much remember where each and every record came from. That time I bought the seven inch for Hard to Love, Easy to Lay by Leeds-based band Black Wire in a store called Feeling Groovy in Peoria, Illinois; the occasion I found a mysterious album by a band called Ex-Hole in the street at 1am, only to discover their strange, minimal Belgian new wave would present me with one of my favourite songs, about someone dying of boredom at their own party. |
| The meditative quality of that warm, dusty crackle of vinyl. It made me feel safe and loved | The meditative quality of that warm, dusty crackle of vinyl. It made me feel safe and loved |
| Is it a waste of records to keep them and not play them? Is it like those drawers in the National History Museum that are full of bugs, pinned to card, that you can’t even see unless you’re a bug geek? Maybe. But for me each one holds a memory: of a person, a time, a place. Or the smell of the carpet when I found Talking Head’s Naive Melody in 7” at the bottom of the 25p bin in the East Dulwich branch of Sense. | Is it a waste of records to keep them and not play them? Is it like those drawers in the National History Museum that are full of bugs, pinned to card, that you can’t even see unless you’re a bug geek? Maybe. But for me each one holds a memory: of a person, a time, a place. Or the smell of the carpet when I found Talking Head’s Naive Melody in 7” at the bottom of the 25p bin in the East Dulwich branch of Sense. |
| When it came to getting rid of some (reader, it was loads) of them, I went over those memories, like a flashback in a film. I can’t say I had the same emotional engagement when I deleted 3,900 MP3s from my computer. | When it came to getting rid of some (reader, it was loads) of them, I went over those memories, like a flashback in a film. I can’t say I had the same emotional engagement when I deleted 3,900 MP3s from my computer. |
| So why do I keep buying vinyl, if I never play it any more? I’ll admit that on some level, as with the ownership of many physical things, it’s a status symbol. No one knows that I’m listening to Mariah Carey at the back of the bus – but they do know, because I’ve shared it on Instagram, that I bought the Björk re-issue of Post on pink vinyl not all that long ago. And to my utter shame, it’s still in the plastic. | So why do I keep buying vinyl, if I never play it any more? I’ll admit that on some level, as with the ownership of many physical things, it’s a status symbol. No one knows that I’m listening to Mariah Carey at the back of the bus – but they do know, because I’ve shared it on Instagram, that I bought the Björk re-issue of Post on pink vinyl not all that long ago. And to my utter shame, it’s still in the plastic. |
| The fact is that I am not the only person who buys but never tries. But it’s certainly no bad thing for the economy - this weekend marks Record Store Day when vinyl will be flying out of independent shops around the land – or for the music industry. At a time when everything is disposable, going out and buying a record is a real commitment. If you don’t ever listen to it, so be it. | The fact is that I am not the only person who buys but never tries. But it’s certainly no bad thing for the economy - this weekend marks Record Store Day when vinyl will be flying out of independent shops around the land – or for the music industry. At a time when everything is disposable, going out and buying a record is a real commitment. If you don’t ever listen to it, so be it. |
| When I first started DJing, not many places would have a CDJ (compact disc jockey) – so I had to carry my records around with me. Listening to them I’d think about the meditative quality of that warm, dusty crackle of vinyl. It made me feel safe and loved. | When I first started DJing, not many places would have a CDJ (compact disc jockey) – so I had to carry my records around with me. Listening to them I’d think about the meditative quality of that warm, dusty crackle of vinyl. It made me feel safe and loved. |
| I can’t get rid of all my vinyl, they’re old friends. But I should probably do the right thing, plug my record player in and show them some love back. | I can’t get rid of all my vinyl, they’re old friends. But I should probably do the right thing, plug my record player in and show them some love back. |