11/09/2025
Some thoughts on vinyl: When capturing instrumental and vocal performances the recording industry’s holy grail is fidelity. But I would argue that authenticity is a better goal. We want musicians to perform authentically so we can capture and preserve a great perfomance of a piece or song and provide that as the product we sell to the listener. But why?
Well, as commercial enterprises, the streaming platform/record store, distributor, pressing or duplication house, label, studio, engineer, producer, management, performers, publisher, and writer need to collect revenue. But for artists, the commercial viability of the supply chain just enables bringing the living art to the public. The artist seeks an authentic relationship with her audience.
Reflect, for a moment, on how that plays out in a live performance. The writer creates a work. With an artist, or as an artist, the work is edited, tweaked, developed, rehearsed, and embellished with elements of a live performance. That might include pyrotechnics and drone signage, stage dancers and video backdrops, costumes, and a boat load of technology and stage crew to bring it all to life for an audience. When the perfomance happens, the moment is fixed. The artist expresses and the audience experiences (holistically) everything about that moment. If, like me, you want to remember some moments more than others, you pull out your phone and catch the moment (complete with the waving hand or big head in front of you). Or maybe you are a concert purist (like I also am, depending on the show) and you go into a hypnotic state and fully engage without the phone. Phone or not, that actual moment never happens again. You can see it or hear the same song at another show. Those will be different moments. You can rewatch on your phone. Trust, it will also not be the same moment.
The great artist wants to reach an emotional core in their audience. They work hard (often with a big team) to make that happen. And they know that the moment they reach you it is a unique moment.
If we are in agreement on this so far, hear me out on why vinyl provides a more authentic listening experience. Rather than stage (or coffee house, or street corner, or concert hall, or livestreamed event, or late night TV show) the recording captures a moment. If you stream, you hear the same captured moment every time. When you listen on vinyl, however, your listening changes the recording. Each pass wears out the record. Each pass risks damage that can never be truly undone. Some passes cause damage that can’t be eliminated. The listener has skin in the game here. And the record itself becomes an artifact of the listener’s engagement with the art itself. The more you listen, the more you engage, the more you change the thing you are listening to. The record is a living part of the art itself. It becomes a record not just of the song, but of the listening of the song.
What is more brilliant is that each copy encodes its own story. Each copy becomes a unique history of the enjoyment of the artist’s creation. The push toward fidelity gave us “lossless” streaming. And I have no doubt that the tech people will improve upon “lossless” at some point. But for the relationship of artist, art, and listener, I firmly believe that the life of the art benefits more fully from the lossfullness of physical media; the accumulated scars and wear that capture not just the art but the experience of the art by a listener, or many listeners. The art doesn’t just survive the loss, it lives and grows because of it.
-Peter Nagy, Proprietor, Studio3 Records
