Having grown up with vinyl and cassettes, I honestly only miss LPs when it comes to an autograph from the artists. Playing LPs remains a colossal pain in the ass. In its defense, it is helping my favorite Austin store, Waterloo Records, keep the lights on since every hedge fund accountant and/or greedy real estate shitbag covets their real estate; yes, we need more overpriced, empty condos while more and more tent cities pop up. I prefer to call them Reagan Ranches or MAGAtvilles.
The other factor is that the manufacturers are putting effort into vinyl. The majority of today’s is the 180-gram stuff so no more putting a couple quarters on the stylus as we used to do in the Eighties because it was so poorly made.
To take some of the sting off, many also come with download codes to save me the stress of digitizing with the latest turntable I haven’t unboxed yet.