I am going to admit that I am mostly streaming my music (and I pay for Apple Music and Pandora), so when I come across something I really like, I go out of my way to buy it.
Being an old fart, and having inherited a decent stereo with turntable when my Father in-law passed, I try to buy on vinyl. I know that it isn’t as crisp as a good digital copy, and that in a blind hearing, I probably can’t tell the difference, but I don’t care. I like the tactile feeling of pulling an LP down from the shelf, removing it, putting it on the turntable, using the Discwasher to remove the dust, blowing the dust off the stylus, and dropping the needle on the disc.
It is just soothing, listening to music a side at a time, 22 – 30ish minutes.
But for this joy, I typically pay a premium over the CD or digital download price. A single disc being $22 or more, and a double disc being $30+. I don’t mind, and I am happy to spend the money.
But what really grinds my gears, what really gets my goat, is that for this premium that I spend, they use these gawd-awful paper sleeves. The kind that will scratch the disc. The kind that, well, for want of a better word, sucks.
For about a year, I was a member of a club, Vinyle Me Please, for a reasonable membership fee, they would select an album each month, and send it to you. A bit pricey, but it was always interesting music, often things I wouldn’t buy, but fun.
The downside? You guessed it, shitty paper sleeves.
So what is an anal-retentive music fan to do? Fortunately, you can buy relatively inexpensively high quality sleeves from Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs, and now, when I get an album, I immediately replace the crap with a quality sleeve. But for the premium you pay, one would think this wouldn’t be necessary. Yet, here I am.
The two albums I bought: In This Moment: “Black Widow” and Bring Me the Horizon: “That’s the Spirit”
