Big Idea: Vinyl
“What the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. We love to move around. And we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”
J. Patrick Patterson
vi·nyl: noun
1. an analog sound format requiring physical care and attention
2. a small act of rebellion against the algorithm
Kurt Vonnegut (a former In These Times senior editor, by the way!) once told a story about refusing to buy 100 envelopes online: “I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope,” he said. “I meet a lot of people.” The moral, he said, was that we’re here to enjoy the world and the people in it, a facet of human life computers have changed. Vinyl is the envelope. It makes you leave the house. “And, of course, the computers will do us out of that,” he said. But “what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. We love to move around. And we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”
We have better technology, so why regress?
For one, “better” is doing a lot of work. Spotify’s default streaming quality is compressed (some of the original audio data is stripped out to save space), which is why more than a few hard-core music lovers call it mid. (Vinyl has its own trade-offs, but at least nothing’s being thrown away to save space.) Vinyl also forces you to listen to an album in the artist’s intended order, rather than a shuffle algorithm’s best guess at what keeps you listening longest. Plus, who doesn’t love nostalgia? A friend with a sizable inherited record collection put it this way: “I don’t listen to rock daily, but when I put on Cheap Trick, I’m like, damn, that’s my dad’s favorite album.”
Why spend money on records?
Because that $12.99 streaming subscription money doesn’t go to artists. Spotify’s Daniel Ek is worth nearly $13 billion, and co-founder Martin Lorentzon nearly $12 billion. Meanwhile, artists earn, on average, $0.003 to $0.005 per stream. Björk called Spotify “the worst thing that could happen to musicians,” pushing artists to tour constantly just to stay solvent. In 2025, Massive Attack pulled its catalog entirely, calling Spotify an “economic burden” funneling fans’ money into “lethal, dystopian technologies.” Buying a record (or a CD!) sends money directly to an artist or a small shop, instead of to a platform where songs have to be streamed hundreds of times to earn the artist a single dollar. It’s not really more expensive— it’s expensive differently and more honestly.
What if we all become hipsters?
I get the concern. But buying used vinyl and CDs is reuse, not consumerism dressed up in flannel. A physical collection is a hobby with something to show for it — different from a rented catalog you lose the day you stop paying.
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J. Patrick Patterson is the news editor at In These Times. He has previously worked as a politics editor, copy editor, fact-checker and reporter. His writing on economic policies and electoral politics has been published in numerous outlets.
