Starting a Vinyl Collection

A few weeks ago I picked up a brand new home stereo. More about that later, but right now I’d like to detail the reasoning and new efforts around a key aspect of that stereo – collecting albums on vinyl, and in some cases when necessary on CD.

Before writing about the reasoning behind shifting to physical medium – and more specifically vinyl as a primary medium – let’s talk about the experience of listening to music over the last few decades.

Losing what was a rich experience – Listening to Music Today

Today when most people listen to music they launch an app, like Spotify, on a something connected to the internet. They then have the majority of the world’s library of music plus anything that is coming out available as soon as it hits the web. It’s easy, seamless, and barely any thought has to go into it. Many people even reduce the burden to figuring out what to listen to even further by merely having these apps suggest via lists or some algorithm what you’ll listen to next.

I know this first hand, as I’m guilty of this too. Is there anything wrong with this? At face value no, but looking deeper it has deprived millions of people of the experience of gaining familiarity with bands and artists, getting more in touch with their thinking, their inspiration, and their art. It’s completely removed the possibility of moving beyond the band itself. Many people today don’t even realize there are other artists, friends of the artists, and other creators that put together album art, art books, and other magnificent related items to the songs and music itself. There are stories behind the art that intertwine with the songs, the videos of the artists’s songs, the script and angles and points of view of those videos, and so much more. The the vast majority, I’d estimate at least 90% of the listeners today don’t connect in any way to the music and only superficially listen.

Again, not trying to wrong anybody for doing so, to each their own I say. But I myself, I wanted to reconnect with how I know one can enjoy music, the experience of getting deeper into and understanding the music, to know the stories and the inspirations. One of the easiest ways to do this is to start collecting an artists’ albums, art, music, and related things. Getting specific, one of the mediums that makes this very easy is to collect vinyls because of the formats inclusion of art books, insets, additional art beyond merely the album cover, and so many other aspects beyond this. It enables, via the medium, a way to connect with the artist and their inspirations.

Vinyl creates a real musical listening experience, that is has meaningful intent, inspirational, and draws passion from me – the listener – for the particular artist’s works. This is why I’ve chosen vinyl as the key medium in which to start collecting music again.

In this endeavor the first album I decided to unbox is Insomnium’s Anno 1696 – the art book 2 CD album version and the 2xLP version. You can check that out here. All future albums I’ll cover will be posted to the Music Reviews & Reactions Playlist on my YouTube Channel Thrashing Code.