Vintage Collectors

Vintage Record Player

Collecting Vinyl Records

Vintage Collectors / By

During the past 5 years, vintage musical gear has amassed a huge resurgence in sales. Last year, over 9 million vinyl records were sold in the United States. On top of that, even cassettes have seen alluring rises in today’s musical markets.
Many of today’s youth, those who never even experienced these products when they reigned the musical platforms of history, have decided to skip past the cheap digital content that fills the modern-day musical scene and gravitate towards something with more meaning – vintage musical products.
Considering that most current-day digital lovers consider vintage records and 8-track cassettes to be obsolete compared to the ease-of-use of most modern-day digital content, why are so many spending their dough on such vintage products? What do these products give the buyer?
Let’s take a look…
Good-feels, baby!
While the ever-alluring digital content of modern day society continues to flood store floors, the nostalgic drive of music lovers is ever-flowing. When thinking of a real reason for the increases of vintage music, there is no better explanation than nostalgia. After all, music evokes strong emotions. That’s what it is for. To think of music without emotion would be to think of pot without stew – it just doesn’t make sense. That is what drives music lovers to ditch the convenience of present-day digital content and continue to invest their money in something worthwhile – nostalgia.
Purchasing vinyl or other vintage music delivers a beautiful musical experience. IPods and Apple stores just do not extrude the same physical presence that music lovers get when taking the time to insert a good vinyl record or rewinding a cassette to get to your favorite verse in a song. Listening to music is an always-cherished experience, and users are not easily willing to ditch this experience for the ease and convenience of listening to music digitally. This is a concept that is lost in today’s profit-based musical society.
To understand this, you must first understand that today’s music producers are obsessed with profits. After all, that is what music is about, right? WRONG! Music is about the experience – not the money you make from it.
Even still, many music lovers resent the lazy, sloppy music that they encounter on an every-day basis. Times have changed in music, that’s for sure. Still, you can remember the better days by simply opting to purchase a good vinyl or cassette, as opposed to a cheaply made CD or digital download.
It’s about quality!
In this modern era, publishing digital music is as simple as clicking the upload button. So-called musicians are able to throw together some verses and, within a few hours, their music is online for the world to see. Considering the ease-of-use for most internet users, low-quality, poor-sounding content is ever-flooding today’s musical landscape. To top it off, raspy sounding tracks are often left untouched to save time and money, thus giving music listeners a poorly sounding song or album. Still, it’s not like most music lovers of today would even notice. After all, they have been spoon-fed this content for years now.
Have you ever listened to a good vinyl? The warm sound that radiates from vintage records is indescribable to the novice listener. It is something that is you just don’t hear from today’s digital music.
The truth is, many do not even know what true quality music sounds like. Today’s listeners are conditioned to think that the sloppily configured tracks they are listening to on their Mac computers are the high-point in musical quality. This is most-definitely not the case.
What makes vintage music different? You see, vintage music was not as cheap to create as today’s digital works. To invest in getting your work put forth on a record, cassette, etc. you actually had to put up “big bucks” to do it. Because of this, you had to truly have quality content (or be rich) to get this done. The obvious result of this barrier is quality content. Maybe that is the true reason music lovers gravitate towards vintage technology; it weeds out the poor content and gives them a more-quality sound.
Artistic Appreciation
Splicing up a reel-to-reel player takes serious skills. It’s most-definitely not as simple as editing digital content in today’s world. Although difficult, this type of musical mastery is an enduring quality in today’s speed-based society. With so many half-assed entries into modern-day markets, finding products that have had a high degree of time and energy devoted into them can be appealing. After all, the artistry of doing these things is something to be cherished, not rejected because of falsely-wanted evolving simplicity.
Something to think about….
What you rather spend your money on a digital product that was thrown together and maximized for profits or a vinyl record that has had blood, sweat and tears put into its creation? As the sales statistics of today show, the latter is the obvious choice for many.