Why are records making a comeback?

I think part of it is that we live now in a world with a sharing economy (uber, airbnb, etc.), where all your purchases have DMCA clauses limiting your usage and you only get a license of use not actually ownership. Where everything is, though convenient/easy, all just data through their phones...

People are drawn to something they can physically hold, something that a faceless corporation can't arbitrarily take away their capacity to enjoy at any given moment with little to no recourse of arbitration. Something that they have direct actual ownership of. You don't need to update drivers to play these. No record has to check for compatability. No player needs to update its firmware to ensure the latest releases will play on them.

They're a throwback. Some people find a heartwarming comfort in a simpler time. And some probably just like the "cool factor" enough by itself to warrant their purchase. Even if digital FLAC files are arguably audibly better than records. Which is irrelevant because 99.9% of people will never be able to accurately tell the difference. So the "vinyl sounds better" argument is bullshit.

Personally I rather enjoy my lack of capacity to simply push "skip" on the thing. Vinyl makes me slow down and enjoy the music a bit more. And with its insane cost (financial, physical space requirements, and cleanliness/maintance) , I don't have a massive collection of mediocre albums cluttering everywhere because they might have that 1 good song on the whole fucking album. So I feel less need to hit skip as the quality of my music is better even though far less quantity.

/r/vinyl Thread