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The Importance of Collecting Music

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Dark and cryptic image for a dark and cryptic band 

Since my high school days, I have always been fascinated with the physical side of music. Whether it's from cassettes, CDs, or vinyl records, there is something special about being able to buy a piece of music in a shop, cracking open the shrink wrap and taking a look through the artbook and potential goodies in a new release before throwing whatever media you got an experiencing new songs. It's that personal experience that I am disappointed that more people are unwilling to experience. Who knows how many CDs are rotting in peoples basements or even underground in general when they hold such treasures. Today, I am going to analyze what makes the physical media of music truly special, from sound quality, to the materials included inside and much more. 

It is no secret that music initially started out as a physical media, practically everything we know that is transported over our devices has. Yet we still see the medium around, unlike with movies whos future was supposed to be Blu-rays and don't even get me started as to where VHS and DVDs are. What makes music so special then? Well, starting with cassette tapes, these are surprisingly still making  comeback and have only thrived through the pandemic era. Gaining prominence in the 1970s, and reaching new heights in the 80s, cassette tapes were so portable that they are practically the mp3 of the MTV era. However, I think this goes without saying but Cassettes are very much far from perfect, in fact they are the only music medium that I actively try and avoid. Not only is their sound quality kind of wretched but they have a very short life-span if you happen to actually like the piece of music you bought then do I have the problem for you, do you want your tape-reader to eat all of the reel or chew it up? If that does not sound appealing to you then congratulations, you hate Cassettes just as much as I do. Moving onto more conventional mediums however is where I start to develop a fondness for physical media.

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Deftones were very much in my high school budget...

I initially began getting into music around the time that I discovered my local record shop. In Sarnia, there is this place called The Cheeky Monkey, and it is potentially my favorite shop of all time. It introduced me to so many bands and artists that I otherwise would have never checked out. One of these bands includes Deftones. The first CD I ever picked up from there was their 2003 Self-titled release. When I popped it into the CD player, it was unlike any digital copy of an album I had ever heard before, and yes I am still talking about CDs here, not vinyl. There is a reason you see a lot of YouTube uploads and various other websites refer to an audio file as "CD quality", it is because a majority of the time most online digital files still cannot reach the high-fidelity of a CD release. Unfortunately, the reason most people do not realize this and disregard CDs as an audio format is because they don't have the proper sound systems for it, or their car ends up scratching the CDs to the point where the skipping becomes almost unbearable. As such because CDs have gained a reputation for being a flawed format people just toss them aside however if you take your time to care and respect them the same way people do to vinyl records, the end up sounding better than vinyl records. This is scientifically proven as well, it's not just a think piece opinion that will get me in the latest Buzzfeed article. However I do still prefer vinyl records, why is that? 

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I happen to be a bit obsessed with Bowie at the moment 

So I spoke so highly of CDs you would think they would be my favorite format to listen to music to, right? Sadly, that's wrong because I absolutely adore vinyl records. Just the way the look, their presentation is immaculate and of course how they sound. While scientifically CDs do sound better, and I can actually admit that I do believe they sound better, there is nothing more satisfying than the crackle and pop mixed with the heavy bass that vinyl records give off. When I first got into Vinyl records, I was really big into The Cure, hence why a majority of that collection is vinyl (I couldn't fit all the releases in the frame infact) and that is what has kept me by vinyl for so long, other than the fact that it is incredibly expensive of course. It's collecting the pieces to an artists discography, there is something special about having such a large scale piece of the artists music, you not only feel you are supporting them but you almost have a connection to the vinyl itself. These are all reasons why I feel physical media is so crucial in music and we haven't seen it fade away just yet. With big companies taking over the streaming landscape and scamming us daily, we are taking for granted what was there all along and hipsters such as I and potentially you, are realizing that. Thank you for reading and feel free to check out my latest Instagram post linked below! 

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