Modern technology has done amazing work for music. Anyone with a phone and internet
connection is able to listen to almost every song ever recorded, and mix and match them together into playlists of favorites.
While many may take this luxury for granted nowadays, it’s only been a few decades since said luxury did not exist. Instead, most music listening was done through vinyl records, devices which most teenagers are aware of, yet few use often due to more convenient avenues of listening.
“They get heavy, and you’ve got to find places to house them, which are both problems,” English teacher Jennifer Hallowell said. Ms. Hallowell has been collecting records her entire life, and she and her family have thousands of records between them that they listen to frequently.
She enjoys listening to records because of the physical steps required to listen to them.
“I like the manual experience of records, the same way I like reading books over ebooks. It’s tactile,” Ms. Hallowell said. Around the world, more and more people are agreeing with Ms. Hallowell’s preference for physical copies.
Variety reported that vinyl sales went up by over 20 percent since the start of this year, the 17th year in a row that vinyl sales have increased.
Modern artists play a major part in this growth, such as Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” album being the highest selling vinyl record of this year, selling over 251,000 copies. But most record listeners prefer to listen to bands that were around for the first wave of vinyl production, being cheaper and more common than modern records.
“I’d say my favorite record is ‘Tim’ by The Replacements, a very good ‘80s punk band,” junior Ewan McMahon said.
McMahon is a great example of younger generation getting into records, having approximately 200 or so sitting at home that he listens to. He gets most of his records for cheap at thrift and antique stores, such as
Tumbleweeds and Past to Present, both of which are on Main Street in EL.
“They still sound really good, and hold up these days in terms of audio quality,” McMahon said.
Record players themselves are also a fairly inexpensive investment, being as low as $80-$100, making it relatively easy for anyone to start using them. For a new way to listen to music that’ll give a different and unique perspective on the sound, people might want to get themselves a record player and go down to their nearest thrift store to enjoy music the good, old-fashioned way.
