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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

Ok, I guess the "something else going for it" differs from person to person. I grew up with LPs too, but I don't have a lot of nostalgia for them. All the ceremony of carefully taking a record out of its sleeve, checking for dust, putting it on the record player etc. is too much hassle for me. A CD I can just pop in the good old stereo I have sitting on my desk and listen to it, or rip it and copy the files to my phone. With LPs, you're stuck with the format. I guess the music industry is happy with that, but for the consumer it's not the best deal. Ok, you get a digital download code with some LPs, but I'm not sure how common that is...

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There are only about a few dozen records in the world worthy of the ceremony to me, to be honest.

They're the ones you can listen from start to beginning in order every time. The ones you never get bored of and if you do, you have a need to listen to them again pretty soon.

The chance of me grabbing an LP off the shelf and listening to 6 Underground by the Sneaker Pimps from their Becoming X album is exactly is zero. It's a banger yes, but the rest of the album is decidedly not worthy of the ceremony.

My favorite band is Queen, so only counting their studio albums, that already gives me more than a dozen LPs I will listen to all the way through over and over again. Then there's their live albums, the band members' solo albums, singles/45s...

I also think listening to one side of an LP and then switching to a different one isn't that much more work than flipping it over, so it's OK if only one side is flawless. I will listen to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" anytime, even though the songs on the other side are not as iconic/necessary.

Finally, I think you may not know ahead of time which albums become beloved and worthy of the ceremony upon repeated listening. I bought my partner "songs" by Adrianne Lenker (of Big Thief) because she loved "anything" from that album, and now that double album is one of our favorite albums that we're currently wearing out. I think it's worth taking a risk sometimes, and if you don't love it, you could sell it to a used record shop for someone else to love.

I do have stuff I like, but don't love. I just mostly listen to those on digital, as they're not worthy of the Ritual - yet at least =)

> All the ceremony of carefully taking a record out of its sleeve, checking for dust, putting it on the record player etc. is too much hassle for me.

This is what I like about it really. It's quite a deliberate focussed thing. For most of my music listening when I just want noise in the background I stream it because it doesn't matter. But sometimes when you just want to sit down and enjoy something special, the ceremony seems to add something.

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