Why listen to vinyl? Just to look cool?
As the pursuit of online attention turns music-making into mass production, vinyl returns as a filter—one that works differently from recommendation systems and puts the listener back in the process.
Someone is always posting this question. And the question itself clearly carries a certain bewilderment about why anyone would listen to vinyl.
I wonder how many people feel that finding a song they actually enjoy isn't as easy as it used to be. Plenty of people complain online that new music keeps getting worse. For a while, comparing today's lyrics with older lyrics even became a trend. It reflects a widely shared feeling: music these days just doesn't sound good.
But why? When people complain that songs like “Tiaolouji” are assaulting their ears, have they stopped to think about the reason?
Drawing on my brief experience working on recommendation systems at an internet company, I think the central reason is that music has shifted from being made for listeners to being made for online reach. Under that logic, the content occupying the center of a recommendation system also ends up at the center of people's attention.
What does that mean? What does it mean to make music for reach?
At its core, it's about being driven by data. The songs serve the metrics: likes, saves, comments. But ultimately, all of those metrics serve one goal—how far the content spreads.
How we got here is complicated, and I don't want to go too deep into it. Put simply, tools have lowered the barriers to making music, and the internet has made feedback immediate. Music-making has turned into the mass production of products built around metrics rather than content. Production efficiency and instant feedback form a remarkably effective loop, powered by the rewards of online attention.
Watch closely and, to my eyes, you can see a shift in the music market's creative logic around 2018. In the era of music made for listeners—Mandopop before 2010, for example, or Western popular music in the 1960s and 1970s—the logic went like this: musicians made music, listeners heard it, and the music became popular. Its popularity was the result of listeners making their choices.
In music made for reach, that listener-driven filter has been removed. Recommendation systems and charts have taken its place. Listeners become recipients of the content rather than the people who select it. Music made for reach targets the recommendation system itself. Its purpose has fundamentally changed.
That's the core difference between the two approaches. Traditional record releases needed a long time to prove themselves in the market. That long cycle naturally made creators reluctant to rush their work. Economically, the stakes were extremely high. Yet it was precisely this delayed feedback that gave good work enough time to be refined. To put it rather strongly, uncertainty about the market's response helped push the quality of the music upward.
After all that, why vinyl?
Because vinyl is itself a filter. That filter grows out of producers' uncertainty about the market, and the entire process involved in making a record helps select the music for us. There is also a cost involved, which makes you choose more carefully. Inexpensive records tempt you to try genres you might never otherwise listen to. That broadens your musical horizons and helps you discover excellent music you previously overlooked.
Not long ago, I was buying records at Shuiguodian, a record shop in Beijing, and complained to a member of staff that finding good music had become so difficult that I'd started reading music-history books just to listen to the music they mentioned. They chuckled and said they knew exactly what I meant.
Does that mean there are no good musicians today? Of course not. Then why aren't we hearing their music? Because truly excellent creators keep getting buried by recommendation systems. Those still making music for listeners are trying to survive with an approach that's out of step with the times. They contribute good work, only to be beaten by the next “Tiaolouji.” It's like bringing swords to a fight against bombers.
Speaking from my own record-buying experience, practically every vinyl record I've been able to buy has been worth listening to. But that music is also at least twenty years old.
Now, many younger artists are releasing vinyl too. I think this hints at another change: vinyl may be turning from a medium for music into a vehicle for online attention—from a music product into merchandise.
Finally, I'm not an industry insider. I'm just an ordinary listener writing down a few thoughts about listening to music.