In my previous posts, I’ve mentioned that I’m now in the process of both replacing my old albums with their vinyl counterparts, and buying new albums strictly on vinyl, if I feel they’re worth owning in a physical format.
I thought I was just being weird and eccentric, but apparently, I’m not alone. And as this Rolling Stone article makes clear, vinyl sales are on the upswing, while CD sales are declining.
Logically, it makes sense. There is no time in my life now where I need to have a CD version of an album. I suppose you could argue that it’s a pain in the ass to rip an MP3 version of an album from one of those USB turntables, and that you’d rather rip high quality MP3s from a CD copy rather than download the crappy 128k MP3s they sell at the iTunes music store. Fair enough. But at the same time it seems like this isn’t a problem that’s going to last forever if vinyl continues to gain in popularity. Many record companies are selling the vinyl versions of new albums with coupons that direct you to a website where you can download an MP3 version of the album for free. Problem (partially) solved.
I suppose the bigger problem is the higher entrance fee. A new record typically is more expensive than a CD. You know what? I’m cool with that. To hell with maximalism - I’d rather own fewer records that I know I’ll actually sit down and listen to.

