The appeal to the vinyl is the ritual that we kind of lost buy going digital. I've also gone back to start reusing CDs, at least the little I kept. I donated most of my CD collection when I moved country and kind of regret it.
People keep talking about quality to praise digital media. But most people saying this listen to music through crappy bluetooth speakers nowadays. There is a very small amount of users still using decent hi-fi equipment.
When mass produced media first became possible, people probably said you could only listen to live music and the experience of not being in a venue was lost. Then everybody who grew up with a gramophone, modern turntables, Sony Walkman, etc, think the version they grew up with is the best because of nostalgia.
> People keep talking about quality to praise digital media. But most people saying this listen to music through crappy bluetooth speakers nowadays. There is a very small amount of users still using decent hi-fi equipment.
Lossless digital recordings are the _closest_ way to listening to the originally produced audio authentically. (It still will have artifacts from the equipment itself - the media is the message after all) You can use crappy equipment to listen to any audio, but digital is closest to ideal.
That's not what everybody's looking for otherwise people would stop listening to music in cars, public transports, even eance clubs or wherever there is the tiniest noise pollution.
Quality and being closest to original rank very low in people's media, location and equipment decision when it comes to listening to music. Heck we even pay a whole lot more to listen to imperfect music played live in a concert than their studio production counterpart.
And when making music digitally, most daws and sequencers come with a "swing" function to add a bit of imperfection otherwise music feel a bit bland.
Further, if the author intends, they can take their digital and make a vinyl; or record to vinyl, distribute as digital. (caveat: potentially having a double-lossy situation) Once you have a lossless digital you can publish it over two cans and string if you want. So it is quite literally a superset of analog media.
And because of all of the above, I understand why a lot of the buyers don't have actual record players. Vinyl is a bit like 8-bit cartridge gaming, it's a mix of nostalgia with physicality, holding something fun and cool in your hands. It's more like buying a book... The albums had pretty covers, and I do remember liking to hold them in my hands, read lyrics (often included in an insert) while listening to the music. That was a nice aspect of it, but it was overall so cumbersome and lossy that I'll keep my FLACs, thank you.