Minimalism vs The Cloud

My stereo system (a turntable, two bookshelf speakers, an amplifier, and about 30 vinyl records) is a disgrace to my minimalism. I don’t need it and I don’t love it. But I do like it. As one school of minimalism would put it, it sparks joy.

I treat it as temporary. I might sell it one day, when it ceases to deliver the goods or when I need the money.

I keep wondering if I’d rather have the ullage (the empty space) instead of the stereo system. For now the answer remains: no, I’d prefer to have the records.

Part of the reason for this return to physical media was to buck against digital streaming and jab-screen devices. In many ways, I’m a 20th Century boy.

The bottom line, really, is that I don’t enjoy streamed music. Playing it has little appeal to me as an activity, so while the storage solution of The Cloud might look like a good one, it’s a failure in that the new system doesn’t actually deliver the benefits of the old one. Quitting something you enjoy without a higher goal (e.g. the plan is to move country) is no solution to anything.

I was going to write more fully about this today but, by happy coincidence, my friend Carrie just did the same. She speaks of the benefits of physical media:

It feels like [vinyl] somehow matters more, and because I’m listening with my whole self it’s much more emotionally affecting too.

[Streaming has] broken many artists’ ability to make a living from music. When you can stream pretty much everything ever recorded for less than you’d pay for a single vinyl LP, your streams are almost worthless in terms of what any artist gets paid.

and of the reservations about it:

vinyl is hilariously expensive and may need you to buy a whole bunch of new hardware too

The reasons not to buy a bunch of vinyl records remain the same as when I first put thought into this. It’s stuff. But as much as I dislike the cost and the responsibility of ownership, I also dislike the impoverished world offered by streaming.

The Cloud is a good place to stash your ugly, boring administrative documents. And it makes photographs more sharable and stops them from collecting dust. But music? Not everything needs to be invisibled away. I have real art on my walls too, not those horrible screens you can get now. And real books, not e-books. The physical world is better for you sometimes; to move around and manually make something happen is appealing to the primate brain. And we are primates.

I’m not saying every primal urge should be humoured or that everything should be analogue instead of digital but, overall, a balance can be struck in the interests of mental health and general quality of life.

I’d rather be with my partner “IRL” than look at her face on Zoom. I’d rather write notes with a pencil on paper than in an app. And I’d rather, for now, softly drop the needle into a shiny black groove instead of jab dumbly at yet another screen while wondering if I’m really hearing the proper version or if the streaming provider is punishing the artist I’m currently trying to admire, while simultaneously cursing the range of bluetooth. I mean, yawn.

I may of course feel differently about this some day. Perhaps when I next move to a different apartment.

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