FOREWARNING: This is almost directly ported from my Tumblr and I have not bothered to double check it, so apologies if anything looks weird
There I said it. As I was eating my breakfast bagel, this thought kept racing through my mind. I hate vinyls and what they've done to modern music preservation. Cassettes, too. My reason?
Purchasing vinyl does not feel like purchasing music, it feels like purchasing a collector's item!
If you wanna collect vinyls, cassettes, whatever, more power to you. This isn't about you, this is about the artists. I've had enough, and I'm gonna go on my fever-ridden rant now.
I collect CDs. Compact Discs. The latest in music storage technology. No, I do not count music streaming as "music storage technology." CDs are small, fast, and hold lots of data at a pretty high quality.
Vinyls, on the other hand, are large, slow, and can hold very little data. Hell, they're made specifically to store music, and they can't even do that right. Why do people collect them? Because they look pretty - and they're the only option. Every time I ask a vinyl collector friend why they prefer vinyls over CDs, the #1 reason I hear is "you can use the album art as a poster." Not to mention, artists only do vinyls nowadays!
The biggest offenders here are EDM artists - Illenium, ford., and Madeon, just to name a few. These artists either never do CD releases, or have not done CD releases in forever. They've instead shifted over to releasing their music exclusively on vinyl.
My issue with that is that I do not collect CDs just for looking at them and playing them only from time to time; I collect CDs because I care about the audio quality. CDs are the best way to preserve music, barring just straight up downloading it at source quality. (And the source quality is HUGE in file size!) And in an age where your favorite media can just up and disappear like 🫰 that, being able to preserve it in high quality is important.
When you purchase a vinyl, you are not purchasing it for its quality. You are purchasing it because you want a physical copy of the song, and vinyls also have the upside of being nice to look at. You can put them up on a stand, show them off. But that's where they fault - because at that point, they're nothing more than a collector's item. Sure, you can listen to the vinyl, but it's hardly an ideal way to listen.
All of these complaints go doubly so for cassettes; you look me in the eye and tell me you're not getting a cassette in the modern day just because it would be cool to have one. On the bright side, these are seen as more of a collector's thing rather than the only way to listen. For now.
And that's not even bringing up the costs! Vinyls are much more expensive to both the listener and artist - they're expensive to manufacture, and they're expensive to purchase. CDs, on the other hand, can be mass produced at a low cost and are often much less costly than vinyls to both sides. I like to bring up a service called Kunaki at times like this, because you can manufacture a CD with them for only $1, and they have major discounts if you're mass producing.
I'm not saying artists shouldn't do vinyls or cassettes or whatever, I'm not saying that at all. They're fine as collectors items, but that's all they should be. They should not be the only way to listen to a physical version of your favorite album.
Japan still prefers CDs over vinyls; if you're looking for an anime OST, chances are, it's only on CD. And there are still some genres that regularly release CDs because it just comes with the territory - country and alternative rock immediately comes to my mind.
It just doesn't make sense to me why modern day artists wouldn't want their fans to actually own a high quality version of their album on CDs. Like I said, this is mainly a problem with EDM artists, but my case still rests. I don't want to purchase an album as a collector's item, I want to purchase an album as an album. Thank you for reading my rant.
Just got word that Buckshot Roulette's soundtrack physical release will be vinyl and cassette ONLY!
Kasbo, my #1 favorite electronic music producer, has confirmed his new album won't receive a CD release... despite the fact all his previous albums have. I hate this
