iTunes will never replace a brick and mortar cool neighborhood record store.

well...hard copies of images, music, art, etc...doesn't crash, the more you upgrade the more you have to spend on backing up larger and larger files, is more economical in the long run (i'm poor, so i know), and even tho media companies are trying to be more green replacing electronics every two years to keep up with the rest of the world is still pretty darn enviromentally unfriendly and expensive.

My brother preferred the physical media of a printed photo until a flood in his basement — while on vacation — left him without his candid wedding photos. Mine are backed up digitally in multiple locations. My kids ruined their copy of a few DVDs. Scrathed beyond playing. Digital copies of Harry Potter are watched over and over and over again.

That pining for old physical media is just emotional nostalgia — not common sense.

@Khurt Yeah, I also agree with you that most of it is nothing more than emotional nostalgia, which will probably go away as generations go on. I mean, despite how fun it is to use a Polaroid camera, it's not very green, it degrades over time, and makes it easier for media loss than anything - but maybe that's why people value it more. Because it can get destroyed?

I believe that vinyl actually does more faithfully reproduce more octaves than digital media is able because analog sound waves are not truncated the same same way that digital sound waves are.

Any vinyl-philes out there know anything about this? Basically, I think that for the more-than-casual listener, there is more to this decision than nostalgia.

The problem is that we are trying to take a real-world analog experience, digitize it, and then experience it in analog form. Not only are physical components lost (hues, octives) but the emotional depth is truncated. While technology is getting better with the process, producers aren't giving us quality media to work with (i.e. the "loudness war" from many of today's mastering engineers). The format (digital or analog) isn't the factor that's limiting the intimate relationship with our media.

1) pride of ownership

2) paying for something physical that you can bring to a friends house, your car, share, whatever vs. paying the same price for digital content and having limited ownership over it

3) artform, packaging, presentation also tells a story

there are good points about collectivism and about the things we cherish. I think a nice library or presentation of media can say a little or lot about you and your space.

The BF and I get up in arms over this one.

I'm pro-digitizing, he's a collector. He doesn't just want to own something to experience it, he wants to physically have it in his hands, or on a shelf. His biggest "pro" for physical media is that if ever you decide you tire of it, you can re-sell it; with digital media, you're out 100% of your money if you decide to get rid of it. My counter-argument is that you typically don't NEED to get rid of any digital media so long as your hard drives have the capacity to store it (and even then, move particular files from one drive to another).

I like to be organized; I hate clutter. I couldn't stand looking at my stack of CDs collecting dust, so I started to rip them to my computer and put them on my mp3 players, hard drives, iPod, etc. And while I do have a small collection of DVDs myself, I've begun purchasing most of my new movies/TV shows via iTunes.

@Aimsly Clashing minimalist vs. hoarding enthusiast. Been there. No one ever wins, though I'm starting to think there must be some kind of middle ground where people can still feel good about collecting things without taking up so much room..

Some people prefer to interact with their media, which can be especially true for collectors of vinyl. It's more than just the large artwork. It's the physicality of the entire experience: pulling the record from the sleeve, dusting it off, placing it on the platter and watching it begin to spin, dropping the needle, watching the needle track through the grooves, flipping the record over, etc. It's a wholly analog and unique experience that you simply do not get with CDs/mp3s. I understand that it's an experience that only a few of us enjoy, but nonetheless it's a worthwhile endeavor that cannot be replicated in a digital fashion. Also, vinyl has the potential to sound better.

It's a tactile experience for me. Music is about more then noise. I also find vinyl (and cd) to sound better.

Spin the black circle yo!

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Spin-the-Black-Circle-lyrics-Pearl-Jam/1F15D98491D47717482568620008BA33

the noise boy get's it. it is about the experience.

Vinyl still sounds like crap, just like it always has. Noisy, distorted, compressed crap. Even poorly-mastered early CD's often sounded better. So I have zero nostalgia for that format. Good riddance!

I'm also delighted to be rid of the clutter and to free up the storage space physical media required. Now I can listen to my music in whatever order I choose, in as good a fidelity as the record labels have made available.

I do wish they'd start selling tracks online in lossless formats, so I wouldn't have to buy and rip anymore CDs.

Yeah, I kinda sorta miss the packaging, but the reality is you can find out more about most albums on the Internet than you'd ever learn from the packaging.

I find this fascinating as I've been wrestling with the realisation that its becoming increasingly difficult to justify purchasing something physical - in my case adding to my thousand-odd CDs. I believe strongly in our clouded-future, where digital things are stored remotely and securely, but I worry for a world where all things become digital.

I find digital purchases transient and disposable, I love and care for them less. The barrier to me accessing them is so low as to render the enjoyment from getting them small relative to going to the local record shop, browsing and making purchases.

Do we want a world free of emotional nostalgia? What about free from emotion full stop? Are digital assets leading to a new emotion-free pragmatism, will we slowly become less attached to 'things'...is this a good thing? The Buddhist in me would probably say it was, but I'm not quite sure I'm 100% ready to commit!

"Vinyl still sounds like crap, just like it always has. Noisy, distorted, compressed crap. Even poorly-mastered early CD's often sounded better."

Vinyl sounds compressed? I think your brain might be compressed. I can only guess you came to that conclusion on listinening to records on a poor quality system.

A record played through a cheap turn table, run through a cheap digital amplifier, into cheap inefficient boxed home theater speakers will no doubt sound like garbage.

Take a quality recording (it's true, I have some low budget indie and punk rock LPs that were never mastered properly for vinyl that sound like garbage too, although it typically fits the music quite well!) and play it back on a turn table of decent quality, through a nice lower power tube amp (i'll even settle for a good piece of 70/80s solid state) into some efficient speakers, then listen to the CD, or even 320 digital file version.

I'll take that analog sound any day.

As for convenience... My cars head unit doesn't even have a cd player. Just straight I pod/usb interface and controls. It really is as convenient as it gets.

But at home, on high quality system with carefully selected and matched components, don't you even think of plugging that Ipod into my preamp.

vinyl sounding compressed??? ummmm.....ok

agreed with another comment above. Physical media is just a more engaging experience. More intimate process when reaching for that cd/vinyl/movie than just lazily putting on a play list.

While I have music in nearly every format, to answer your question I'll present a couple of points (for me) in vinyl's favor:
- It's cheap. Whole albums can be had for $1 at thrift stores and yard sales and a vinyl stereo system of very high quality can be put together for pennies compared to what a computer or even an ipod will cost you.
- Just like eating is an act enhanced by eyes and nose, listening can be similar. Records come with big, beautiful and colorful art and paging through booklets while listening can be really fun.
- I also have a large collection of digital files and I've spent a lot of frustrating time moving, renaming, re-tagging, organizing, backing up etc. I also have a large collection of records. They may take up my space but they don't take up my time.

As someone who really, really, really loves music I like to hear it in as many forms as possible. Listening to digital radio in my car is a very different experience to listening to my ipod while I jog or listening to a record in my living room.

I think it is important for each listener to trust and follow their own ears. Luckily we don't have to choose just one! For me, a person saying that they only listen to mp3 files is like saying they only eat food with a fork. Forks are great for many things but sometimes using a spoon is necessary to get the full flavor and some things need a knife to be enjoyed.

for me it definitely is nostalgia but also the hunt for a record. When you unearth a 12" you've been hunting for or come up on some weirdo shit that just blows you away that's a memory.

Physical media has a story, there is a moment of discovery that you remember. It's not hard to find a mp3. You didn't have to dig around in some basement with record nerds to find it. You didn't unwrap it and read liner notes. You just hit play.

I've got a shit ton of mp3s but I collect records and cassettes because I enjoy those formats. But I know how much work it took to get my records, that's why I have a room for them. I've lost hard drives, but all I have to do is search some blogs and I've got it back. I don't know what I'd do if I lost the records to a fire.

Vinyl sounds compressed? I think your brain might be compressed.

No, but maybe yours is. Vinyl doesn't just "sound" compressed, it is compressed. All of it. With a functional dynamic range of around 60 decibels - far less in the deep bass - vinyl pales in comparison to the CD (90+ db on even the cheapest players). Mastering engineers almost always compressed the crap out of the dynamic range of the original studio master tapes when preparing a vinyl master. They had to in order to enable the program material to drown out all of the clicks, pops, rumble, hiss and harmonic distortion inherent to the vinyl format. They also had to attenuate any deep bass signals to avoid having the needle pop out of the groove. Vinyl is crap, which is to be expected from an audio format invented about a hundred years ago.

Here's a listing of some of the wonderful "advantages" of the phonograph:

* Loud tics and pops caused by stray dust and wear, resulting in a negative signal to noise ratio - i.e. the noise can become louder than the music! (with Katy Perry, I suppose this would be a blessing in disguise . . . or simply redundant.)
* Rumbling caused by the turntable's motor and the friction of the stylus as it passes through the groove
* Wow and flutter, caused by speed irregularities in the turntable's drive system and by any imperfections in the geometry of the disc
* Phase irregularities caused by the RIAA equalization and the subsequent need for the preamp to de-equalize the signal
* Frequency response irregularities caused by the RIAA equalization / de-equalization process
* The inability to reproduce loud bass accurately (the cutter making the wax master would pop out of its groove if it tried to reproduce the kind of bass CDs can handle effortlessly)
* The tendency for the turntable, platter and even the disc to function as microphones, picking up room reverberations and – particularly – the sound being produced by the speakers, smearing and distorting the audio in numerous ways
* Cartridge / tonearm misalignments, causing inaccurate stylus pickup, accelerated record wear, or both.
* 30dB of stereo separation, vs. CD's 70+dB of separation
* Hiss
* A theoretical maximum of 60dB of dynamic range for virgin vinyl of the highest quality (and only at certain frequencies – obviously, not in the low bass) vs. around 90dB of dynamic range from even the cheapest CD players, across the entire spectrum
* In practice, roughly 40dB of usable dynamic range across the majority of the spectrum
* A relatively flat frequency response from only around 60 Hz to 15 kHz, with severe rolloffs beyond those limits
* The need for mastering engineers to severely compress and re-equalize the signal in order to steer clear of the format's limitations relative to CD, which requires no such distortion-enducing compensation
* Pitch and frequency errors caused by the speed difference between the cutter used to produce the wax master and your turntable
* The media itself wears out as its played, and can easily be damaged during routine handling with audible results
* Harmonic distortion caused by, among other things, the tendency for both the cutting head and your playback stylus to ring like a bell after being activated (either by the electrical signal hitting the cutting head, or by the groove wall striking the stylus).

I was so glad when CDs came along and kicked all of this noise and distortion to the curb. Vinyl was easily a decade or two past its expiration date when Sony and Philips finally killed it off. Good riddance to obsolete rubbish!

Sunspot, all of the above just illustrates the point that vinyl, and the mechanism by which it plays, is like a living, breathing thing. It's analog, baby. It ain't perfect. That's why we like it. It's sort of like the argument for why someone would buy a 100-year-old house instead of new construction. Sometimes we like things with character, even if they include some flaws.

Buying digital formats removes ownership from the buyer, removes the resale market, removes physical copies, removes quality.

Ever sell a CD? Try it with your iTunes or Amazon purchases.

Actually, explaining the attachment to vinyl, we can get quite scientific. Before I begin, I should preface this by saying I am paraphrasing an explanation once given to me by Alan Cross, a spectacular Canadian radio-broadcaster and host of a few really awesome radio shows and podcasts I encourage all interested parties to check out (I believe this particular argument was covered once on The Ongoing History of New Music).

So here comes the scientific part: There is a specific chemical (who's name eludes me...) that your brain produces when you hear music you like. This same chemical is released for other things you might find enjoyable, like doing drugs like cocaine or having an orgasm. Basically, it's telling your brain "this is good! I want more! I like this!"

Now getting back to the music, as covered above, the great difference between vinyl and CD/DVD/mp3/etc is the distinction between analog and digital. The means by which digital files are able to be made so small and easily downloaded is by digitally removing the frequencies that the human ear hear. Despite the fact that we don't "hear" these frequencies, we still detect them in certain ways.

Studies have been done that show when listening to enjoyable tracks in a digital format versus an analog format, like vinyl, less of this wonderful chemical that was mentioned above is produced. By hearing the full spectrum of the music the way it was recorded, you're getting a less watered down "hit" of your musical experience. It's essentially the same reason I go crazy and start crowd surfing without my shirt on at punk rock shows and manage to stay fully clothed while listening to my iPod on the bus.

Again, this is all paraphrased from someone infinitely smarter and better at this than I, but in a scientific-nutshell, there's your reason.

sunspot, I'm a mechanical engineer by trade, I understand all the short comings of analog vs digital when it comes down to test numbers. If I cared enough I could counter all your points with a brief google search (we could start with loudness wars). Point is, there are plenty of muscian/audiphiles who desire to release their work on vinyl, this started well before vinyl became cool again with the past 5 years. Ask any old jazz musician what they would prefer to listen to. On paper, you're right, digital is better in every test parameter. A new Subaru STI is faster, more fuel efficent, and handles better than a 60's stingray corvette. I'll let you take the Subaru.

When it comes to listening, the paper numbers are meaningless. If you're complaining about pop and hiss, your record is likely dirty and/or your needle has thousands of hours on it. If you're concerned about a needle popping out of the groove from bass, your counterweight isn't adjusted properly nor is your turntable probably isolated from the surface it resides on.

So if test numbers and ease of operation are your main priority, I agree with you 100%. Go digital.