I have recently acquired a turntable--this has been one of the happiest things. I am a lover of music, and like anyone born after 1980, by the time I was allowed to purchase music, we advanced from the archaic vinyl disc and "moved on" to tape. Further, by the time I "got into" music, tape was usurped by the more "compact" plastic disc, only with a laser instead of a needle. Now, Apple has fooled us into thinking music is a bunch of 1's and 0's -- and thus to listen to music in our current age is to listen to a computer signal.

Well, let me tell you what a joy it is to pull out a clumsy plastic disc, lay it upon a perfect circle, lift the needle and lay it gently upon the outer fringes of the disc.

So I have been internally compiling reasons I think listening to records is better than listening to cd's/mp3's. I decided to make the list here. So here it goes.

1. Album art - quite nonexistent with digital music (and the little box on the video iPod hardly counts!)
2. Records sound better - there is something more immediate, full, and spacious about vinyl. It is simply a false lie that digital music is "cleaner" and better quality. No, friends, digital music is flat.
3. Experience - Listening to a record requires time. It slows you down--it forces involvement on the behalf of the listener. It requires so much attention, the music is never relegated to "background music," a place I think music was never intended to go. (think about music lovers who feel awkward just sitting around a computer listening to music--we were meant to just listen to music; the digital music phase simply makes this awkward.)
4. Imperfection - this does not run counter to reason #2. In our digital world, we have falsely assumed that music must be overproduced, clean, and "flawless." It is is a false assumption. We live in a fallen world, where beauty and ruin exist side by side. To create art, and thus view/listen to art that doesn't account for this reality is shallow and deceptive. Why do you think people like Ryan Adams/Johnny Cash over Jimmy Eat World? Records have imperfections, thats all I'm saying.
5. Time - You can actually watch the music play as the needle moves down the groove closer to the center of the disc. This is far better and realistic than a digital time-piece telling you the "track" and "time" of the song.
6. There is no such thing as digital - Dr. Pratt helped me understand that even "digital" signals are analog -- just really really fast analog. We live in an analog world, nothing in life is "1"or "0". Our lived reality is not that clean, hard, and fast. Dare I say digital is hurried, compressed, and worse sounding analog.
7. You can't steal from a musician - It's quite easy to steal a musician's lunch by not buying their art, but making a copy in a digital world. This is impossible and undesirable in a vinyl world.
8. Bigger is better - We want to make everything smaller-who says that is a virtue?
9. Community - You can't carry your turntable with you everywhere earphones in tact, and thus pretend the shared world around you doesn't exist. Instead, with vinyl, everyone hears the music--and very often you simply invite others over to listen to records (they even make backpacks to carry records).

10. The record store - support your local record shop. Enough said. I know capitalism does what it does, but it pains me to see these local shops die because of a website with digital storehouse of music.