V for Vinyl

Say goodbye to those pesky phone notifications and join the vinyl revolution

Photo by Steve Harvey on Unsplash

As you’re probably aware, I have a complicated relationship with streaming platforms.

If Spotify is your main hangout, I bet you’ll find some of my streaming habits unusual.

For starters, I make a point of limiting my streaming consumption to places where I can’t spin my vinyl records. The gym is a great example.

I download an album and play it from start to finish throughout my workout. I tend to choose records I don’t know, so I can discover new sounds and decide whether they should join my vinyl collection.

For me, streaming is, essentially, a means to a (vinyl) end. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t help me block out the background music and noise on the gym floor.

What’s wrong with the gym’s background music?

No disrespect to all those wonderful EDM workout DJs, but come on. If these squats are going to squat and these pull-ups are going to pull, I’m going to need some funk with that. Thank you very much.

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Another streaming quirk of mine is that I make a point of not looking at the screen. Easy to do, I hear you say, when you are lifting weights, putting chains around your waist and sweating like a pig.

The main reason I avoid looking, though, is because I want my interactions with streaming platforms to be like a TikTok reel: brief, fleeting and forgettable.

I just cannot stand all the nudging and algorithm-driven recommendations which have sadly become par for the course.

So imagine my surprise the other day when, as I was logging my weights and reps on my phone while cooling down in the changing room, a suggestion popped up on my screen.

I wanted to blame the streaming platform (admittedly, my favourite pastime), but on this occasion, the culprit was my phone.

Excuse me?

The wording was particularly irritating. Volume should be turned down. Should it now, really? Who are you? The sound police?

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This brought me back to that time when, as a kid, my mother suspected I had a hearing impairment.

I was blessed with a very good ear for languages and music. The accuracy or precision of my hearing was never an issue.

Her concern was the deafening volume of my stereo and TV which, by all accounts, seemed unusual for an otherwise healthy 9-year-old.

After a thorough examination, the doctor concluded my hearing was fine.

It was my attention span… or lack thereof. Cranking up the volume was my unconscious reaction to fight my tendency to get distracted.

Fortunately, this ADHD-induced volume madness seems to have calmed down over the years.

Volume is not an issue when I’m watching a series on Netflix with my husband. It’s never an issue when I listen to my records, even if I’m doing other things in the meantime.

Volume is never an issue with vinyl.

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Can you imagine your turntable or amplifier sending you warnings? Big Brother’s voice coming through your speakers, reminding you that volume should be turned down and, by the way,

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

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Headphone notifications. Exposure notifications. In theory, there’s an option to turn them off, but local laws won’t always allow this.

What’s next? Offensive lyrics?

You have listened to three songs in a row containing the f-word.

Consider yourself tracked, traced and babysat. You will excuse my cynicism, but I can’t take blanket health recommendations seriously. Nor will I take instructions from a machine.

We are different individuals with different bodies, minds, habits and needs. Your priorities may not work for me and vice versa.

I crank up the volume because I’m working out like a bitch and I need motivation and I can’t stand the EDM playlists nor can I stand the gym bros who are strong enough to lift (albeit with questionable technique) yet so weak they always bang and drop the weights on the floor for everyone else to hear.

So thank you for the advice, dear phone of mine, but no. I think we should be able to make our own risk assessments. My headphones, my music, my choice.

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Call me old-fashioned, but I need the human element. With all these wonderful music writers on Substack —their shrewdness, their knowledge, their creativity— coupled with my own curiosity, why would I need algorithms?

By the same token, you can be sure that, if my records are ever too loud, I won’t be getting a random and impersonal volume notification from a machine.

It’s going to be a human being knocking on my door, who will hopefully accept my apology, agree to come in, and enjoy a beer or two with me while we rock my house down.

Thanks for reading/listening. Happy spinning!