[Glice]

I always think it's a bit of a mistake to assume that one of the 'virtues' of vinyl is that it's analogue. It's only the reproduction, from needle-arm, that's particularly 'analogue', and the overwhelming majority of non-audiophiles use gear that converts the signal to 'digital' somewhere along the line. How many bands use all-analogue studios? Ones who work with Steve Albini who, as many of you are aware (what with having ears), is the emperors most boring new clothes.

So I'm saying that the digital 'vs' analogue debate is just bullshit, essentially. Ok, I know that there's recording engineers and so on who'll argue about that, and I'm a big fan of a wide portfolio of sound sources, recording, mastering (etc etc). But essentially it doesn't really play in the 'vinyl vs mp3' debate.

Are mp3s lower quality? Sometimes, yes. And I don't care what studio-heads say - the overwhelming majority of music fans - and I take that to include the 'hardcore' music fan - can make minimal distinctions between digital/ analogue recordings and digital/ analogue reproduction. And, just to be clear, there's a massive difference between the various factors at play (recording, reproduction, mastering and so on).

I'm only saying that to be clear that I don't endorse vinyl for any nostalgic reasons. The idea that everything in my life is reduced to a computer screen is just fucking laughable. I use computers heavily. They are a tool. They are not a tool I use to play music. I have a handful of mp3s, but the majority of my music is in 'hard' formats, like CDs and vinyl. But not tapes, because - and I think more people should take note of this - tapes are just shit. I don't care about the 'warmth' or the shit fidelity - they're shit. Shit shit shit. Tapes are about nostalgia, and in some incredibly rare cases the fidelity suits, but generally anyone using tapes can fuck off (that includes myself, obviously).

Anyway. This a bit of a circuitous defence of vinyl. I'd take on board that there's a rampant wasteful economy attached to vinyl, but there's a rampant wasteful economy attached to the production of silicon for computers. Whether one is greater I'm unsure, though I suspect there's a case to be made for the transportation of vinyl being far less cost-effection/ ecologically viable (etc etc).

But. Some people enjoy vinyl. Many people appreciate the ontological surface of it. Musicians should get paid for labour. Regardless of who they are. I spend a lot of time working on my solo stuff to play a gig without getting paid. I play a function, having learnt the songs (if at all) 10 minutes before, and I'll get somewhere between £50-250 an hour. Vinyl is a way of recouping profit for musician's labour, and is attractive to the market. CDs and mp3s are very cheap and disposable (in both an aesthetic and material sense) and the market treats them as such. If some of those people buying vinyl are doing it because it's 'warm' and 'real sounding', or for other hackneyed bullshit reasons really doesn't matter. That there exists a format which treats music, as an ontological, material object, with some sort of dignity, as an art form, that's utterly crucial at a time when musicians themselves don't treat themselves with dignity.