![]() Two hours later, I stood before my turntable, having a serious heart-to-heart with myself. It sounded so different, so much better, and it did nothing short of blow my mind. It sounds clean and warm and pure, like I’m right there in the recording studio. Why had I been wasting my time with Spotify and the like when vinyl sounds so good? Yes, I subscribe to Tidal’s Hi-Fi plan and enjoy its lossless high fidelity sound quality, but vinyl just offers so much more. They sounded gorgeous-I actually teared up a bit! There was no data loss or compression, and I could hear so many more details and notes and instruments. Hearing them on vinyl was like hearing them for the first time, exactly how the bands intended the music to sound. ![]() I kicked off the week with two of my favorites - Please by Pet Shop Boys and Revolver by The Beatles-and it was love at first listen. I brushed up on how to properly use a turntable, grabbed my Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds (I live in an apartment and don’t want noise complaints), and decided to get started right away. Now I was home from the record store, richer in music and spirit but poorer financially. Now I was more excited than ever for the week of analog music adventures that lay before me. I forgot how much I loved spending time in music stores, and I can’t believe I so readily gave up that experience so many years ago for the sake of streaming music. Shopping for vinyl was a truly (and unexpectedly) special experience. Streaming music services as a whole have taken that experience away from us, and that’s really sad. Plus, just thinking about albums as a whole concept again instead of individual songs, and to actually have to be mindful about the music I chose was simply delightful. It was also a visceral experience, as well, touching the records, looking at each album’s artwork, smelling the old sleeves and cardboard boxes, and hearing albums being played overhead. It was so fulfilling to stand in a room with my fellow music lovers and see which albums caught their attention. I couldn’t believe how much fun I had looking through box after box of records. I’ve been super into 80s synthpop lately, so naturally, I snagged some albums from the likes of The Cure, Pet Shop Boys, and Depeche Mode among others. Before I knew it, over an hour and a half had passed and I resurfaced for air with 11 records in hand that just had to be part of my budding vinyl collection, much to the detriment of my bank account. It was just like looking through CDs at a music store back when I was a teenager but even more exciting somehow. I was immediately absorbed by the experience. Spend 10-15 minutes casually looking around for three or four of my favorite albums across a variety of genres, and then head out to lunch. I’d only intended to pop in and out of my local record store. I wasted no time making my way to the biggest record store in my area, but that’s when my experience took an unexpected turn. I’d purchased a couple when I first got my turntable, but if I was gonna survive an entire week with that as my only audio input, I needed to go buy more before the week began. I was thinking about all of this recently, and it hit me how desperate I was to do something about it and reconnect with music. It eventually became background noise to me, like an accessory I had to have yet never paid much attention to anymore. I was thrilled when I could finally upgrade to an iPod, and I’m pretty sure I actually cried tears of joy when streaming music services were first announced.īut as I’ve spent more and more time with Spotify (and eventually, SiriusXM, Tidal, and YouTube Premium), I think I slowly started to take music for granted. I even shamelessly toted around one of those ridiculous binders full of CDs. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had some means of listening to it within arm’s reach. ![]() So recently, I did just that and I have a lot of thoughts about the experience. I also bought my first turntable a few months ago and have wondered what it’d be like to only listen to vinyl for an entire week. ![]() I listen to music every single day-it’s one of my favorite things in life.
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