Twelve Songs at a Time

In 1990 nobody thought vinyl records had a future. They sell more every year now, and a lot of the buyers are teenagers.

It isn't nostalgia. Nostalgia is based on memory, and these buyers have none — the record shops closed before they were born. Ask a sixteen-year-old why, and the answer usually isn't about sound.

Part of it is the object. A record is big. The cover is twelve inches of art, one of the few places left where a band can be creative with something you actually hold. On a phone, the same album is a square the size of a stamp.

Part of it is the time. A record has two sides, and you can't skip a song without standing up.

Part of it is the shelf. A shelf of records is a list of what you like that your friends can see. Streaming is content; a shelf is a statement.

And part of it is context: twelve songs in the order the band chose, not one song in a playlist between two others.

Nobody has to say the sound is better. A phone holds forty million songs. A record holds twelve, and the teenager who paid thirty dollars for it plays all of them.