Saturday 21 April 2018

Vinyl Records Were Ditched For A Reason

For some reason, despite most people consuming music digitally these days, sales of vinyl records are up with an increase of 26% in the UK last year and one in 10 physical music purchases are now vinyl, with high street stores and online retailers both stocking it in greater numbers.
It's renaissance has puzzled me because those of us who had been there in our teenage years know that vinyl records are not a patch on CDs.
My memories of vinyl records are them scratching and once scratched you are forever consigned to your song jumping at the same part forever or even more annoying, keep repeating the same line over and over and over until you nudge the needle. 
Then you have to tiptoe around your room while the record is playing or else the record player arm will jump and you will go from track 1 to track 3 in one swift movement and risking a dirty great scratch.
Vinyl records playback quality was questionable with constant crackling and hissing in the quiet bits of songs and the discs themselves warped and enough of a warp would annoyingly lead to the song playing slightly quicker and slower as the needle in parts navigated the ups and downs of the slab of vinyl.
Almost every cardboard sleeve i owned had sellotaped edges as the disc would cut through the sleeve edges and if your collection got large enough you would need to set aside half a room for storage.
Finally downloads and CD's are portable so you can hear your music anywhere you go, try that with a record player and see how far you get.
Vinyl was ditched in favour of digital versions of music for a reason so going back to a less superior version doesn't make sense to me because i for one was happy to see those warped and hissy vinyl discs consigned to history.

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