Why I Listen to Records

The resurgence of vinyl in an age of iPods, mp3s and Spotify appears to some as a baffling anachronism. Why anyone would forego the convenience and affordability of portable devices and digital formats and instead opt for a bulky and archaic system for listening seems quite bizarre to some, and understandably so. In the last few years, like many of my peers, I’ve dusted off my old LPs and started adding bags of new vinyl to the collection. And often when I speak to people about it I feel that there are a few assumptions about why one would listen to vinyl in 2012 that need to be cleared up. Many assume that people buy vinyl because they are obsessive about sound quality, or because of the enormous artwork, or to support the artists, or even just to look cool when your friends come around. All of these are certainly valid reasons, but I don’t think they get to the crux of the issue. I think it’s simpler than that, but maybe less obvious. So I’d like to explain here why I listen to vinyl.

I think it has to do with content vs. media. Back in the ‘60s, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message,” trying to make the point that when we are confronted with a new medium, we are often too dazzled by its content to pay attention to the enormous effects of the medium itself. But the effects really are enormous, and it’s easy to cite examples of this. We often think that news is news, but the ways news is delivered massively changes how we respond to it. In the 1930s families sat together around the household wireless - it’s hard to think of something more removed from that than scrolling through related stories of interest on an iPhone, alone on a bus. Our social behaviour, our cognition, and the range of stories we are exposed to is completely different.

We can see the same sort of thing in the difference between cinema and DVD, between ebooks and audiobooks and ye olde paper books, between radio and podcasts. When tapes were replaced by CDs, moving from fast-forward to skip influenced the way we listen. So it’s hard to argue with McLuhan’s proposition that despite our tendency to get wrapped up in the content of a transmission, the medium is the real game-changer.

Getting back to vinyl, I feel that a few years ago when I started listening to records again, it was for more superficial reasons - I loved the big artwork and I was a fan of the idea of vinyl. I was reading a lot about the negative effects of digital compression and quantization, and this really glorified analogue media in my mind. So initially I just went about trying to get all my classic favourites on vinyl. I found albums by The Books, Mogwai, Massive Attack, etc., and I loved displaying the 12" square cover art on the shelf, and having a large tangible plastic disc inscribed with this music that had meant so much to me for so many years. After I while I was buying local releases at shows, then I just started buying whatever new records I liked on vinyl, and at some point along the way, I realised that it was no longer about coolness or sound quality or visual aesthetic - it became about the activity of selecting a record, putting it the turntable, and listening to it. Then turning it over and listening some more. There is still an important place in my life for iTunes and iPhones, but the ritual of listening to records has become central to my consumption of music.

Things that become a ritual can sometimes fly in the face of the great march forward of technological progress. There is a pervasive notion that faster, newer, and more convenient things means happier human beings. I think it’s become clear over the last century that this is illusory. When I got sick of my old dumbphone, the very idea of a powerful and versatile handheld computer made the smartphone extremely attractive. And it’s pretty cool - I can do lots of cool stuff with it, but I would definitely stop short of saying it makes me happier. The idea that an everpresent connection to the web is making our lives better is emphatically debunked in Nicholas Carr’s awesome book, The Shallows, where he discusses some of the less obvious effects of the web’s monopoly over our attention.

One of these effects is the cognitive overload created by the constant need to reassess whether we want to be here or somewhere else. You may not realise it, but as you read this blog post, you are not retaining as much as you could, because a portion of your brainpower is devoted to deciding whether or not it is worth your time, whether you should follow up the new email notification that just popped up, and whether you should follow this link or keep reading. Carr draws on solid research when he explains how “the need to evaluate links and make related navigational choices… requires constant mental coordination and decision-making, distracting the brain from the work of interpreting text or other information.” This argument against relentless freedom of choice is taken further by Barry Schwartz in this TED talk, where he makes the controversial point that too much choice is actually making people miserable.

It’s weird how completely this contradicts our intuitions. When I first put on a CD in the early 90s and skipped ahead to my favourite track, I thought it was the greatest thing. And when I bought my first iPod, I was dazzled by the fact that I could be anywhere at any time and select any one of the thousands of songs in my entire music collection, and listen to it immediately. But after a while the choice became overwhelming, and so I would avoid it by selecting shuffle. And when shuffle presented me with a song that didn’t satisfy the wild expectations of awesomeness that were trumped up by this magnificent new medium, I would feel the urge to skip ahead. The whole listening experience gradually started to get suffocated by an overabundance of choice.

Any advance in convenience or novelty in technology has this sugary effect which blinds us to any negative impact it might have. And yet it seems abundantly clear that new technology doesn’t inherently make life more enjoyable. As technology advances, we have a lot to gain, but it’s naive to think that more advanced is always better.

Many of us have already arrived at this realisation, and we make personal decisions to regulate the unstoppable march of progress for ourselves, in order to preserve something in our lifestyle which is important to us. Some of us train ourselves to select an album on our iPod and stick with it rather than flitter from song to song, as is encouraged the technology. Some people choose to not have a television in their house, not because they are luddites or because they can’t afford one, but simply because they’ve decided it’s not a distraction that they want to have around. Amongst the various media that entertain and inform us, the television has an influence on our behaviour which is different to the radio or the web, even if the content it carries is largely the same.

So when the content we are talking about is music, the medium through which we listen does make a profound difference to the experience. I have come to enjoy vinyl listening above and beyond my enjoyment of any specific album or artist, because the experience is different. Firstly, I have to make a commitment by purchasing the record and affording it a privileged place within my collection, and in a way this process connects me to it. I have given a value and it sort of becomes part of who I am, in the same way that avid readers consider their bookcase to be an external reflection of themselves. Secondly, if I want to listen to music, I have to select a record and stick with it - the constant flittering tendency of digital listening is out of the question. Thirdly, I have to deal with the high maintenance of the format; I remove the jacket, put it on the platter, and place the needle but I can’t go too far away, as I have to keep an ear out for when the side ends. The need to turn the record over and change it when it’s done ensures a base level of engagement which isn’t required when listening digitally. The physicality and attentiveness gives meaning to the process.

As Nicholas Cook writes, “Audibility… is not everything in music.” There are always a multiplicity of social, cultural, and semiotic factors beyond sound, which make music what it is. I believe that media is one of these factors, and listening to music on vinyl is not just a hipster oddity or a stubborn luddism, it’s an act of prioritizing a certain kind of listening experience over convenience. There is no doubting the benefits of digital media’s ease of access and portability, and I do resonate strongly with the argument that physical formats are just adding more rubbish to our already trashed-up environment. I haven’t yet reconciled this part of the equation. And I will probably always still have mp3s and listen to my iPhone on the bus. But when it comes to the experience of music listening, I mean really listening, vinyl’s my medium of choice.

Addendum: Why You Needn’t Listen to Records

After reading over this I felt I should add a little personal clarification to take the edge of my perhaps preachy tone. In following McLuhan’s insight that the medium is the message, it’s also important to acknowledge that media work their magic differently on different people, depending on how our brains are wired. We all have vastly different tendencies and dispositions, and our choice of media needs to address what works best for us individually. 

For me, I am extremely absent-minded and very easily distracted. For this reason, media which allow me to pre-commit to consuming something in-depth are far more satisfying than those that allow me to flit freely from one thing to the next. Sometimes I get caught in the snare of YouTube, and after watching 3 hours of meaningless 5-minute videos, I suddenly awaken from the daze feeling like my brain has been sucked out through my nose, and wondering why I would persist in consuming content from a medium that gives me so little enjoyment and satisfaction. If I’d spent 3 hours watching a good movie I would have felt much better. I find things like meditation really difficult and I’ve learnt never to go and start something when I am waiting for a pot to boil on the stove.

So this is my brain, and I don’t think I’m the only one, but I’m certainly not speaking for everyone. A lot of people use shuffle on their iPod, and I’m sure there are many people who have never experienced that urge to sabotage their own enjoyment by constantly skipping forward. So if that’s not a problem for you, that’s excellent. But if you do relate to this sort of problem, then I hope this blog post has been helpful. Even if just to say that you don’t have to be an audiophile or a hipster to make the switch to vinyl.

My intention is not to preach that everyone needs to listen to vinyl, but just to explain my own choice and muse on the fact that we don’t have to let technological advancement define our lifestyles - we can consciously make choices about media which may help us to enjoy our lives a little better.