Are Retro-Style Turntables Right For Me?

The return of vinyl, which we have discussed a lot on our blog, is exciting for music collectors and anyone working in the music industry, but why should someone take to the long nascent world of LPs and 45s?

It is a good question to be sure. An iPhone can stream tons of music on something that fits in your pockets. Attach that iPhone to an in-dash receiver and you can drive with the entire history of popular music near and far. It makes one wonder why people still collect large slabs of melted plastic imprinted with their favorite artists on them.

If you are not a music collector, owning records and playing them on a beautiful retro-style turntable can still carry a lot of charm. Unlike the short-attention-span listening your streaming-music service provides, a record can be an immersive experience. By listening top to bottom, you are experiencing the music in a very different way that even the easily skipped tracks on compact discs missed. Often times you will hear older music fans lament the disposable nature of modern music.

Maybe they have a point, or maybe the problem is us. If we are not giving something the time it takes to appreciate and are only checking out the hit singles on an album, how do we know the rest of the record is bad? Why would an artist even bother making a whole album no one would ever listen to?

For novice music listeners, the idea of purchasing LPs might still seem like an inherent hassle. Your retro-style turntable will take up space, and a rack of albums will take up even more space. Still, records and those retro turntables offer your home an aesthetic authenticity that not much else can provide. Even as your home-audio setup has expanded beyond your wildest imagination, much of even the best equipment can seem a little cold. Your Bluetooth speakers offer stellar fidelity, but do they make your house more of a home?

In the end, the rebirth of vinyl can turn a novice music fan into a totally psyched music fanatic. It will deepen your appreciation of music and offer you a new, stylish collection to show off to guests. When entertaining, combing through a stack of LPs simply has a better vibe than scrolling through Spotify. Dropping the needle on your retro-style turntable might just change the way you think about music.