A Resurface of Vinyl: Why Analogue Music Still Matters
By Lily TattersallI DON’T THINK I have ever understood how a piece of plastic with grooves in it can encode and play recorded sound. The science behind vinyl is so complicated but on the flip side, there's also arguably beauty in the simplicity of it all. This is why we have seen Gen Z lead a vinyl revival movement in the past few years, showing that analogue music really does still matter, but why?
Vinyl and analogue music provide a return to tangibility in the digital world. In an age where quite literally everything is online, its so easy with music listening to click a button and have access to music. But vinyl changes that. By having to go out and buy the record, admiring the lyric sheets, and placing the needle on the vinyl for example, is part of a more interactive experience that can't be replicated with digital music. This deliberate listening experience forces you to sit down and listen to an album the whole way through, which is a breath of fresh air in the age of immediate gratification.
It also might be part of a wider cultural movement that helps supports artists more than big music streaming companies do. As it has been spotlighted more in recent years, big music streaming apps like Apple Music and Spotify don't pay their artists enough for streams. The average payout per stream is £0.003-£0.005. That's why here has been a call by artists like Angie McMahon and Los Campesinos for listeners to buy vinyl's and CD's instead of streaming on apps. This is a more sustainable and direct way to support smaller artists and creates positive consequences like more vinyl making jobs. In fact, Scotland's Sea-bass Vinyl, which opened in 2023, was the first carbon-neutral plant and created many jobs.
We have also seen the emergence of 'Bring your own vinyl events' at pubs, which has been popularised online. For example, Cafe 1001 in Brick Lane in London is a vinyl DJ bar by night, and has events encouraging people to bring their own vinyls to be played. This encourages people to get out there and share their music taste- which turns the record into so much more.
To finish, a little bit about why analogue music is so pertinent to my life. I used to hear my sister's record player through the dividing wall of our rooms growing up, and I used to trawl through the dozens of records trying to find what I had heard. Again, this tangible experience of trying to find the music expanded my music taste in a way free from algorithms, made me closer to the music itself, and also closer to my sister as a result. Maybe a couple of records got scratched along the way (I still don't think she's forgiven me for scratching 'Punisher' by Phoebe Bridgers), but analogue music helped shape how I viewed music and fostered a deep interest in the simplicity of music- which is why a piece of circular plastic, which may seem expendable, still matters.