I recently got into vinyl, and what I found was that convenience is antithetical to my music listening experience. The less I have to think about the process of turning on music, the less I think about the music at all, leaving me without any real memories about it. The more deliberate I have to be about my music, the better.
Like, yeah, I can listen to a full album on a streaming site, but I don’t. It just doesn’t happen, and I can’t get myself to change, so I change the medium instead. Might not be the solution for everyone, but I can understand how having a dedicated box for music on the go would be preferable, not just in spite of the inconvenience, but because of it.
This fits my experience as well. Lately I’ve been listening to music as a main activity, not as background noise. I use my laptop, an external DAC and a pair or nice open back headphones. The whole setup keeps me tied to my couch, I can’t go wandering around and doing other stuff, I don’t keep my phone in reach, I just lay and listen. I’d say good music deserves the foreground.
I don’t think the vinyl analogy holds up here, because even though I don’t use vinyl, I recognize it’s a very different way to experience music. Vinyls you have to physically go out and buy, physically retrieve, physically place into your player, and then listen to in one static location. The iPod, meanwhile, is damn-near the same thing: you have 1) a portable electronic device 2) of a similar size and form factor 3) holding the mathematically exact same digital recordings of songs 4) which you listen back to through nearly the same medium (same speakers; different DAC) and 5) can see displayed on a screen. Navigating through the music is very slightly, near-meaninglessly different. As noted: the ClickWheel™.
Nevertheless, even under the premise that it’s highly analogous to vinyl, this would be like if you had a comparison of vinyl versus digital audio and spent half of it ranting about streaming services while basically ignoring local digital playback. That’d be fine if you set out with “vinyl versus streaming”, but you started on the premise “vinyl versus digital”. “Here’s my comparison of CRTs and OLEDs. But first, a rant about Netflix.”
My point was never about the exact traits of the media itself, it was about the relationship between convenience and experience. With your phone you can get any music you want at any time - essentially 100% convenience. My example was with the inconvenience of vinyl and its subsequent increase in experience because that’s what I’m familiar with, but an ipod is also significantly less convenient than a phone, requiring you to pick only what music it can store, and having to manually and deliberately put it onto the machine. It serves as a sort of middle ground between the two examples I’m familiar with, which is why I said I could understand why it would give a better experience when compared to a phone.
With your phone you can get any music you want at any time - essentially 100% convenience.
With streaming you can, but again, that’s a “streaming versus local playback” argument. I have to buy and download the songs I play. Even piracy would be jumping through some kind of hoop to find a good copy (purchasing being arguably more convenient). I download them to my PC and make a copy to my phone so I can easily listen on both (and stream via Jellyfin on LAN if I want).
The iPod is barely an inconvenience by comparison, even if I directly downloaded to my phone. It’s such a minimal step to physically transfer the digital audio to the iPod. The actual inconvenience is having a second electronic device taking up valuable pocket space, and that’s not a quaint little spice-of-life inconvenience like a retro console taking up shelf space; that’s just fucking annoying.
I recently got into vinyl, and what I found was that convenience is antithetical to my music listening experience. The less I have to think about the process of turning on music, the less I think about the music at all, leaving me without any real memories about it. The more deliberate I have to be about my music, the better.
Like, yeah, I can listen to a full album on a streaming site, but I don’t. It just doesn’t happen, and I can’t get myself to change, so I change the medium instead. Might not be the solution for everyone, but I can understand how having a dedicated box for music on the go would be preferable, not just in spite of the inconvenience, but because of it.
This fits my experience as well. Lately I’ve been listening to music as a main activity, not as background noise. I use my laptop, an external DAC and a pair or nice open back headphones. The whole setup keeps me tied to my couch, I can’t go wandering around and doing other stuff, I don’t keep my phone in reach, I just lay and listen. I’d say good music deserves the foreground.
I don’t think the vinyl analogy holds up here, because even though I don’t use vinyl, I recognize it’s a very different way to experience music. Vinyls you have to physically go out and buy, physically retrieve, physically place into your player, and then listen to in one static location. The iPod, meanwhile, is damn-near the same thing: you have 1) a portable electronic device 2) of a similar size and form factor 3) holding the mathematically exact same digital recordings of songs 4) which you listen back to through nearly the same medium (same speakers; different DAC) and 5) can see displayed on a screen. Navigating through the music is very slightly, near-meaninglessly different. As noted: the ClickWheel™.
Nevertheless, even under the premise that it’s highly analogous to vinyl, this would be like if you had a comparison of vinyl versus digital audio and spent half of it ranting about streaming services while basically ignoring local digital playback. That’d be fine if you set out with “vinyl versus streaming”, but you started on the premise “vinyl versus digital”. “Here’s my comparison of CRTs and OLEDs. But first, a rant about Netflix.”
My point was never about the exact traits of the media itself, it was about the relationship between convenience and experience. With your phone you can get any music you want at any time - essentially 100% convenience. My example was with the inconvenience of vinyl and its subsequent increase in experience because that’s what I’m familiar with, but an ipod is also significantly less convenient than a phone, requiring you to pick only what music it can store, and having to manually and deliberately put it onto the machine. It serves as a sort of middle ground between the two examples I’m familiar with, which is why I said I could understand why it would give a better experience when compared to a phone.
With streaming you can, but again, that’s a “streaming versus local playback” argument. I have to buy and download the songs I play. Even piracy would be jumping through some kind of hoop to find a good copy (purchasing being arguably more convenient). I download them to my PC and make a copy to my phone so I can easily listen on both (and stream via Jellyfin on LAN if I want).
The iPod is barely an inconvenience by comparison, even if I directly downloaded to my phone. It’s such a minimal step to physically transfer the digital audio to the iPod. The actual inconvenience is having a second electronic device taking up valuable pocket space, and that’s not a quaint little spice-of-life inconvenience like a retro console taking up shelf space; that’s just fucking annoying.