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Comment by throwaway742 | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally my teenage cousin asked for a vinyl album of her favorite artist last Christmas. She doesn't even own a record player and doesn't own a single CD. She said it was about supporting the artist and that she appreciated the art. It also came with a poster.

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Now this I understand! I rarely believe the audiophile explanations I usually get when I ask why buy vinyl. I personally can't usually tell a difference with sound quality (at the CD WAV vs Vinyl record quality levels) and most people that claim to I'm suspicious they haven't invested in the hardware to really extract it if it's there so I just think there's some placebo effect going on. I've also read some stats that statistically only a small percentage of people can detect what audiophiles claim to. So again, it's in peoples mind more than anything is what it seems like to me. I liken it to a high school prank where we often told kids at parties a drink was alcoholic, they acted tipsy, and we thought it was funny because it had no alcohol.

Hoarding collectible art is totally my speed though, this I get - I still buy the CDs from my favorite bands, I don't care about supporting them this way because I know they make very little off of it, I just like having "the collection". I also like the chronological album listening experience but Spotify does that, so now I get CDs and toss them in a box still wrapped in cellophane.

Some songs are mastered differently for vinyl, especially with regards to compression. See the loudness wars. This I think accounts for a lot of it.

Vinyl sounds worse anyway. It’s just fashion.

I have three vinyls I think, that I've never played because I don't have a player. The first one I got as a gift, and the others I bought because I liked the artwork – they're like paintings to me.

I keep meaning to get a player, but I can't find one that strikes the right balance of price and aesthetics. The Bang & Olufsen Beogram 4000c has the right aesthetics but probably way too expensive. I've been trying to find one but they're hard to come by in decent condition. Probably because B&O sourced them all to do their recreation project...

I like my Pro-Ject Debut I picked up a decade or so ago. At the time it was at the low-end of the audiophile-grade stuff.

Yeah, 50% of vinyl is bought by people without a turntable - it’s mad.

People collect much stranger things, like sports cards. Having a physical copy of a piece of art gives many people a nice feeling.

Well often people do this to support their favourite bands and artists. I think we’ll see a lot more of this in the future because of “generated music”

I support the artist by buying their (digital) albums on bandcamp.

Sure that works too, lots of younger bands where I live have records pressed, they’re quite popular merchandise.

I do that with CDs. I like having them in my cupboard but don't actually have a way of playing them. And yes, it is a good way of supporting smaller artists.

Maybe as an alternative you can send $20 to their paypal and buy a length of PVC piping.

Hah, what's the PVC piping for?

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