Introduction#

Today is may 17th 2025, the day Blurryface turns 10.

In order to celebrate the day I reached out to my special silver edition record to listen to it again. This post isn’t only about Blurryface but also a homage to one of the greatest human inventions ever made.

Today’s post is about how vinyl records aren’t only vintage tech but still great today. But before I’d like to look briefly at the before and after, to understand the impact records had.

The landscape before#

While vinyl records weren’t the first of it’s kind, they still hold the same principle: the audio wave is carved into something and you can use mechanical motion to recreate the same sound wave.

Vinyl records are like fossils of sound waves

But before the vinyl records we have today, the recording and playing back of audio waves started with the phonographs in the late 1880s. It’s interesting to think that 150 years ago there was no way to listen to songs you liked on demand.

Before the creation of the record the only ways of listening to songs were live concerts or performing it yourself (either by reading the sheet music or by someone teaching you what to play in what order).

I couldn’t imagine myself living in a world I couldn’t listen to songs I love on demand

Music has been an important part of the human experience throughout the years and I can only imagine what could have been living through the invention of records, when suddenly you could listen a song as much as you wanted.

The landscape after#

Digital#

Since records are analog media, eventually we would develop a digital alternative. I suppose small plastic discs were easier in regard to logistics than big plastic discs, and by using laser technology the manufacturers could add about 700MBs worth of data in them. I’m going to make a point later about the difference (today) between CDs and Vinyl, but essentially music consumption wouldn’t change all that much. You’d still have to carry a plastic disc with you, but CD Players were more portable (imagine trying to listen to a vinyl record on a moving car).

I’ve skipped the Cassette tape because it’s not something familiar to me, but with tapes we started seeing how much more portable music could be. Devices like the Walkman would let you listen to music on the go, then later the Discman was introduced, but they still had a fundamental flaw: What if you’ve only brought Bee Gees discs, but now you’re really feeling like listening to ABBA?

If you wanted to have your full catalog available, you’d still need to have a CD Bag to carry them around, it was cumbersome.

Story time: even though I grew up in the 2000s, during my childhood I listening mostly to CDs. Whenever there was a family roadtrip, we would each get the CDs and take them all in a bag. There was only one CD player home, or so I thought until the day I found out my PS2 could play music CDs and I could listen to music in my bedroom

The iPod Revolution#

We can’t talk about the music history without talking about the iPod but before talking about the iPod, I’m going to talk about the day my mind was blown by digital technologies.

I’ve always taken CDs for granted, but by about the time I got my first phone (not a smartphone mind you) YouTube was already a thing. Even though YouTube streamed videos there were a lot of music videos already available, and I could listen to bands and songs I didn’t have on CD. Then one day my younger self thought: My phone can record custom ringtones and the family computer can play YouTube videos. I recorded the music video for Sweet Child O’ Mine and used it as my ringtone, more than that I recorded a few other songs so I could listen on the go.

How I created the iPod 8 years later

Back to the iPod, the revolution for consumers is taking a thousand songs on your pocket at any time, no more deciding between Bee Gees and ABBA, you get them both. I imagine living through this moment must have been ming boggling. Even though later the iPod was discontinued, it still lives on through the smartphones, I have access on my phone to more songs than I could ever listen in my entire life.

I’d say the iPod is as important to music consumption as the phonograph was, they make music more accessible and a bigger part of our lives.

But the iPod’s revolution was also on the record labels side: you don’t need to manufacture plastic discs and ship them worldwide, you convert your music to a digital format and send it to Apple. The cost of distributing music was dropped to almost zero. Of course they still made CDs and records but at a lesser quantity.

Why are vinyls great?#

If I like the album enough, when I get the chance I buy the vinyl version. In a way it’s a collector thing (much like I collected CDs back in the day). But maybe having the record is also safe keeping

A Not so great 10 Year anniversary#

Back in 2012 Van Halen released their last album, titled ‘A Different Kind of Truth’. I bought this album the year it came out and some songs were also on YouTube as music videos. 10 years later in 2022 I subscribed to my first music streaming service and I was shocked that I couldn’t find Van Halen latest album there. So I went back to YouTube to find the music videos and they were gone too?

Turns out there was a disagreement between the former band mates and the record label pulled the album on all streaming platforms. This meant that if I relied only on streaming services, I wouldn’t be able to listen to it. The only way I could listen to the album was through my physical CD and through re-uploaded version on YouTube, which were taken down due to copyright issues

Every now and then on the digital world we come across Piracy being the only way some media was archived and not lost to time. This example is not that different. In 2022 my computer didn’t have a CD drive, the only way to listen on my phone was through those pirated versions on YouTube. I guess piracy really is a service problem

CD or vinyl?#

If you have either a CD or a vinyl record, you have music stored in a media no one will be able to take away from you with a Terms of Service change or agreement expiration. In that sense they are both great, but I still prefer vinyl records.

CDs are still digital media, which means they require computers and codecs. Maybe your computer doesn’t have these codecs so you’d need to use the internet to download them, they might be proprietary and don’t have an open version yet. These small things aren’t problems by themselves but they make listening to CDs more complicated than records. Hopefully no one in the industry is listening but CDs could as well in the future require DRM or some other forms of authorization to prevent making copies or ripping the songs. Also most computers these days don’t come with CD Drives.

DRM related, I can’t watch Netflix on the Zen Browser because these services require proprietary stuff that Zen doesn’t have access to

Records, as previously said, are like fossils of sound waves. Vinyl can’t be encrypted and can’t be encoded. They are as close as one will ever get to the original sound waves stored in the artist computer. You won’t ever need internet as these records were invented about 100 years prior to the internet.

Vinyl records are one of the items I don’t mind spending money on. Brasil has heavy import fees and I often end up paying double the record price to have it in my hands, but once it arrives in my house no one can stop me from listening to music I love.

Final Thoughts#

While the market for vinyl records exists, labels will still manufacture them. Even if they are a vintage and collectible item, they are the pure sound wave that no one can take away from us.

If we keep buying records they will keep making them and we’ll keep the music accessible and alive, without being locked behind DRM, Internet Access.

Of course I’m considering the legal ways of having songs, because piracy will always live on and allow us to have access to media that was taken away

As always here’s a song recommendation for the day, celebrating Blurryface 10th birthday.

Even though this post is all about having your own copy of the song, I cannot share an MP3 (or the record piece that contains this song). So while streaming services are being nice to me, I’ll be nice back. When they stop being nice to me I’ll stop being nice to them and go back to my records