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Comment by brazzy | Hacker News Reader

> But the most important reason for me to buy records is to one day allow my daughter to discover this strange music from more than half a century ago that was always playing in the house when she was still young. Good luck trying to convince a teenager to have a listen at your Spotify playlist ;)

Sorry to be a spoilsport, but chances are she'll never care, and that your expectation that she'll come to appreciate your musical tastes and your collection will be a burden to her more than anything else.

She'll have her own life and her own tastes. Shared interests are great if they develop naturally, but they cannot be forced, and substantial collections very often end up only making the children feel guilty about disposing of them.

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I’ve had a turntable in my life since I was six playing children’s 7”s on a Fischer price setup. My parents records were my introduction to music, basically. Learning how to operate the big turntable when I was old enough to be allowed to felt like a big deal, and I’d spend hours going through their small collection of 60s pop records, blues and random classical selections. They weren’t especially musical people but that experience made a big impact on me, and helped me get to know my parents better as well. Anyway, it happens.

My mother's and grandfather's musical tastes were huge for me. Also two of my old girlfriends' tastes. We're not so atomized that the only influences we have in life are marketers and tabloids.

Maybe she won't care, maybe she will.

I'm forever grateful for my dad's records.

Maybe she will, but I find it unhealthy when that is "the most important reason for me to buy records".

> I'm forever grateful for my dad's records.

Same here. And mom's. And cassettes.

Me too. I never listened to them, and in fact I got rid of them. But I took a list of them and added the ones I remembered with love to my own mp3 collection.

This is one of the most tricky things about the modern digital age. It will be much harder for my children to go through my "papers" than it was for me to go through my father's papers.

The point is to offer an alternative form of music discovery compared to social media influences and advertisements, not about forcing my taste on my offspring. It's also about creating a body of cultural heritage that survives and counterbalances the fast moving and often shallow trends of our time. Same with books.

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