The L-Word
No, vinyl is no more luxury than your clothes or your daily Starbucks milkshake
For many of us in the UK, January means it’s time to submit our tax return for the previous tax year.
If you’re fortunate enough to own rental property and/or earn above a certain pay level, the taxman expects to hear from you by the end of the month. No ifs or buts.
In many social circles, it’s unusual for someone my age to fall under this category, so I get my fair share of strange looks and envious comments from time to time, as you can imagine.
You have to file a tax return? Gosh, what a luxury!
You see, filling in endless forms with five spreadhseets open at the same time is not precisely my definition of luxury.
Ever had to deal with a broken boiler in the middle of winter or an unresponsive tenant? Not glamorous either.
I’m grateful to be in this position, but when you’ve had to put in untold amounts of hard work and sacrifice, luxury feels like an insult.
There is one other aspect of my life that usually gets called the L-word. Can you hazard a guess?
Vinyl as a luxury item
The notion that vinyl records are luxury items has grown in popularity in recent years, especially in some record collector circles and certain quarters of the press.
With growing demand for the format, and prices rising accordingly, it should come as no surprise that some people feel increasingly priced out of the market.
But is it fair to call vinyl a luxury when there are, now more than ever, such a wide array of options to suit virtually every budget and style of collector available?
Luxury for all
There are two main reasons why I refuse to call vinyl a luxury.
The first is pragmatic: at the risk of raising eyebrows in the audiophile community (a challenge I will always happily accept), you can buy a basic all-in-one turntable for less than £40 ($50) and focus exclusively on second-hand records, which you can get for as low as £5 ($6) each or less.
Sure, this turntable won’t sound like a Technics, but it’s a start.
For someone who counts their pennies (and trust me—I may be filing tax returns now, but I know damn well what counting pennies feels like), a cheap turntable can be the difference between having one and having none.
What’s more, many used records in decent condition sound way better than their factory-sealed counterparts, simply because a little bit of (gentle) use and friction can help smooth things out on the vinyl surface, thus giving you a better sound throughout.
My point is there are options with vinyl, depending on your pay grade, budget, preferences and needs.
Do you have budget options for private jets or Louis Vuitton bags?
Luxury problems
The second reason is more philosophical: the problem with calling something a luxury is that it is often circumstantial and intrinsically subjective.
What else shall we call luxury? Beauty products? Having more than one pair of jeans? Going on holiday? Getting a Starbucks milkshake?
At one point in my life, it was a luxury to eat a different meal for lunch and dinner. Shall I consider it luxurious if I now can afford two different meals a day?
The fundamental issue with blindly calling stuff out as luxury is that the goalposts will inevitably shift from one person to another.
For the vast majority of us, there will always be someone poorer or wealthier. As with many other things in life, a lot boils down to perspective.
Besides, not everyone connects with music in the same way. In order to buy some or all of your records, you probably had to relinquish other things. Clothes, dinners, going out, an extra round of drinks.
All these sacrifices just for one record? You’ve already got so many!
Some people will never get it.
If it’s a choice you make, and you are ready to sacrifice other things, is it fair to call it luxury?
Blood, sweat and tears
When you achieve your goals or attain a certain level of success, some people will readily assume you have just got lucky.
If you have an athletic body, many will say you are blessed. They don’t see the sweat drops on the floor. They don’t hear your heartbeat when you are about to pass out. The early mornings or late evenings don’t exist. Let’s not even mention the dieting sacrifices you make on a daily basis.
You know what the real blessing is? Being healthy enough to get up from my bed and lift heavy weights every day. That’s the blessing. The rest is an awful ton of hard work, and another ton of blood, sweat and tears.
Similarly, when you own property, people underestimate the extra time it all entails, those sleepless nights and the countless sacrifices which helped you get there. Let alone the liability of ownership—a bit like parenthood, it’s one of those things you can’t fully grasp until you feel it in the flesh.
Buying a vinyl record, or investing in a new turntable, means you are making a choice. You are prioritising your music to the detriment of other things.
People have no idea the amount of time it can take to clean and look after a vinyl collection. The joy of finding a record you’ve been chasing for years. The crazy budgeting calculations that go through your head as you reach the counter, knowing the record is a stretch, but one you can’t possibly leave the store without.
When you are passionate enough about something, you will use all resources available to make it happen, because you simply refuse to conceive life without it. Not without trying, at least.
Being ready to make sacrifices for something you want is not luck or luxury. It’s called love. A much nicer L-word to go by, if you ask me.
Thanks for reading/listening. Happy spinning!
The tragedy of our culture and I believe the thing that will bring it all crashing down (well, is bringing it all crashing down) is thinking that art is a luxury, and valuing only science. Only technical and scientific skills are considered "essential," but those things don't matter much ,in a world without art. Art is the highest expression of human potential -- the best articulation of who we are as a species. When we decide that's a luxury, and thus optional, we doom ourselves to, well, the culture we're currently living in.
It's not going to get better until we get our priorities straight.
Lately, I’ve found myself eagerly clicking on every new episode of your fantastic newsletter, Andy—not just for the excellent writing, but because you read it aloud. It’s pure gold!