Back in the 70s and 80s there was a psychological way to actually own music in the form of vinyl records and there was something so special about taking it out of the sleeve, placing it on your record player and then lowering down the needle and waiting those few seconds whilst you hear the crackling of the needle and then it started to play with that amazing sound out of your speakers.

Your favourite LP or album

Back then if you wanted to listen to your favourite LP or album you didn’t have to tap a screen or swipe it, you just walked over to your cabinet or shelf and you pulled out that cardboard sleave which you read several times and slid out the heavy disk of black from within its paper housing, do you remember that?

You remember how you held it really carefully ensuring you didn’t drop it or leave oil on the grooves in order to drop that needle and listen to the sound.

You were then committed to the next 20 minutes of your life to listening to your favourite music without a skip button and if track 3 or 4 wasn’t your favourite you’d listen to it anyway learning to appreciate the supple textures or you had to manually stand up, walk over to the record player and reposition the tonearm with a very careful steady hand so as not to scratch it.

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Today, we live in vinyl-less digital world with no going back, and every song that was ever recorded rests in a massive, invisible library in the invisible sky or cloud waiting for us to download and play instantly.

Now you probably didn’t know this, but at the time of writing in 2026, vinyl record sales have never been so high than they have been in decades and record makers are actually running 24 hours a day to keep up with the demand. Now what does that tell you?

Is this a passing trend, a fleeting thing of what’s called hipster nostalgia or is it a quiet deliberate rebellion against the culture that is now frowned upon due to the damage it’s made everything too fast, too easy and weightless.

When everything is available instantly like it is now, things feel less valuable according to psychology overstimulation, oversensitivity breeds a complacency, a familiarity where we take things for granted and the excitement and the thrill is now gone.

Cassette tapes

Additionally in the days of the Sony C60 cassette tape, the music we listen to was not only an investment of our time and money but it required an investment into our relaxation and escape from a stressful world, an investment into our passion and our hobby and our little place where we used to go to listen to music the way we did back then in contrast to the way we don’t do it now. And yes, there is a big difference to listening to music on a vinyl and all the surrounding environment, the ambience.

The way it’s listened to now in the headphones or the earpiece whilst waiting at the bus stop or standing in a checkout at the supermarket.

You saved your pocket money up and you walked down to the local record shop or even Woolworths record section, and you flipped through them browser bins with your fingers.

And then if you wanted to share music with a friend you copied it onto a C60 or C90 tape and you knew you shouldn’t but you did, and you carefully monitored and controlled the recording when mixing the tape off of radio1 and used to watch the little plastic wheels turning round through the clear window of the deck. And then you instantly hit the pause button at the exact second the Radio DJ started to talk or stopped talking then you quickly rewound to start the recording.

That mixed tape you made held physical gravity and it was your manifestation created with care and enthusiasm.

Streaming services now have turned this process into a utility like electricity or running water. It hums along in the background like sitting in traffic or cooking your dinner.

Streaming now loses its ability to anchor like vinyls and tape recordings used to.

You don’t look at a playlist on a smartphone and actually feel that feeling that you have a sense of ownership or actually deep connection because it’s just a data flowing through a pipeline cold streaming.

Buying a vinyl record was a conscious decision to slow down whether you realised it or not, it was that moment when you slowed down and you stopped and you listened to it, you put your time away from anything else to listen to that record and you took time to find the place to do it.

The warm hiss of the record player needle hitting the lead in groove, and that you are interacting with something real and mechanical and it’s a sensory experience that involves touching it, the smell of that record that the digital now can’t replicate this.

We are beginning to lose things and only the older generation know this!

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