Going into a music store is downright confusing nowadays. After quite a few years of these types of stores have been shrinking CD and music offerings for piles of DVDs, Blu-ray discs and pop culture trinkets, now music is back. Not just music though, records. I thought we ridded ourselves of these low fidelity garbage discs?
When I first got into music, it was shortly after the wide release of the compact disc. Many people ditched their Walkmans for Discman players. CDs carried more music, were smaller, and the sound reproduction is better. The 8-track was supplanted by cassettes, CDs replaced everything that came before it. The sound on a CD is the closest you can get from the studio master recording – what the artist or group wanted you to hear. Years later, even as music collections have been digitized, CDs are still used. While I buy much of my music now as digital downloads, I still buy CDs. Please note, I said buy music as I refuse to rent music from streaming services. But now vinyl records are back.
As a historical artifact, records are interesting to look at. Ten years ago, you couldn’t give records away. Bulky, usually stored in milk crates, and kind of musty-smelling, most vinyl records were destined to go into the dustbin of history. I believe it is the pandemic-fuelled nostalgia that brought it back. It couldn’t be from the listening quality. I disagree with the opinion that the sound of a needle dragged along a spiral groove at 33 and one-third revolutions per minute produces a “warm” tone in the music. It may as well be listened to through an AM radio.
Never mind the audio quality, have you see the prices of new releases of vinyl? The average new release is in the $30 range, with limited editions and special sets inching up towards the $80 to $100 range. And what are many people using to play these records on? Cheap record players. I just don’t get it, but it reminds me of something similar happening in photography – the resurgence of film.
Around the same time I started into music, I also started focusing on photography – high school. One of the few redeeming qualities of the high school I went to was the art and photography teacher, Winona Elliott. She not only taught the fundamentals of photography like shutter speed, depth of field, and composition, she taught the technical aspects including chemistry. Developing your own film and prints made photography more affordable and accessible. Digital didn’t exist until the late 1990s and it was out of reach for many. I did move into digital photography in the mid-2000s when affordable cameras were of better quality. Just as loading your own rolls of film and developing your work in the darkroom expanded the craft, more modern digital photography has taken that to the next level.
Recently, I saw a comment from a New York City street photographer who said that unless you take photos with a film camera, you are not a real photographer. I disagree, but nostalgia did pique my interest. I started looking at what the cost would be to dive back into film photography including developing my own negatives and prints. It wasn’t that expensive, but then I remembered something else – chemicals. There is a distinctive smell to some of the chemicals used in the darkroom. I remember those smells, and in retrospect, I don’t want to revisit that.
I imagine these vinyl records are something similar. A fad, or more of a collector’s item like people who collected Beanie Babies, Pokémon cards, or these Labubu Dolls some chase now. It doesn’t make sense, and it can’t be for the audio quality. Maybe the return to vinyl records is a metaphor for where we are as a society – choosing to try to reclaim what positives from a past era instead of embracing all the improvements made since. Or maybe a cigar is just a cigar.
This column was originally published in the February 4, 2026 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader.
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