We asked the good people of Lancashire how they preferred to listen to music - on old-school cassette tapes, on smooth vinyl, on retro CDs, or via modern streaming apps. Here's what they had to say...
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00:00 So I'm here with Alex and Lily. So Alex and Lily, just to put it to you briefly, tape,
00:10 vinyl, CDs or streaming?
00:12 I've got a collection of both vinyl, CDs and cassettes now.
00:17 Yeah.
00:18 Because I invested in a machine that played them all. But we use it a lot for Bluetooth
00:24 as well.
00:25 Yeah.
00:26 So we do tend to stream a lot of music.
00:27 Yeah, to be fair, we use all four of the platforms.
00:31 I think vinyl for me is definitely the best sounding if you want in quality.
00:35 Absolutely.
00:36 Streaming is good just for easy access.
00:39 Convenience.
00:40 Vinyl all the way if you want in quality.
00:42 I was going to ask about that audio quality because vinyl obviously had a big comeback
00:45 when people were saying it just has that warmer sound and people just like rating it higher
00:49 just in terms of quality and the production value and things like that. Would you both
00:51 agree with that kind of thing?
00:52 Oh, absolutely.
00:53 Yeah.
00:54 I mean, you can get a lot of the vinyls that honestly, in my opinion, I collect a lot of
00:58 them because they look pretty.
00:59 Yeah.
01:00 You can get ones like all the different ways that they're printed.
01:01 Definitely.
01:02 And a lot of them now are like limited edition and you can get collector's edition. So even
01:08 if you're not listening to them, it's something that's an addition to your music collection,
01:12 as a collector's piece anyway.
01:14 Yeah, definitely. Alex, you agree with that?
01:16 Oh yeah, a million percent for me. It just sounds more like in the room with you and
01:21 listening to it being recorded live. That's what I find every time. It's so much better.
01:26 A hundred percent. CDs, obviously, we've seen the whole vinyl comeback, but CDs are apparently
01:30 doing the same thing. And now someone of a certain age like myself, I can't help but
01:34 think what on earth is going on, but I'm sure people who collected vinyl back in the day
01:36 thought the same thing. So do you think CDs probably just going to go through a similar
01:39 process?
01:40 I think probably. I think it's to do with like an age thing. Obviously, vinyls came back
01:45 and now they're sort of going out and getting CDs and coming in. It's more like, I don't
01:51 know, they came out after, so it's going back in time, really.
01:55 Time is just a circle.
01:56 Yeah, it's just repeating itself, basically.
01:58 Definitely, definitely. And Lily, you mentioned cassettes. So do you genuinely still use cassettes?
02:03 Yeah, we've literally went out the other day and bought a couple of new ones, but it's
02:07 all old music. They don't read print anymore. So it's just things that usually we'd miss
02:14 or we'd have to stream, but we can now listen to in a physical form, which is really, really
02:21 cool to be back.
02:22 Do you think there's value in going back to things like cassettes and CDs and investing
02:26 in vinyl and stuff like that because of the lack of investment that corporations put into
02:30 streaming because artists are rewarded so poorly for streams? Is that a motivation for
02:35 the two of you?
02:36 Yeah. A lot of producing music online and distributing it that way is horrendous. If
02:43 you're not paying for somebody to do it, they'll take so much of it out of the cut. They'll
02:49 take so much of your ear to use. But yeah, physical copies of everything as well. It's
02:55 better to have as an investment because vinyls, I've seen people buy a vinyl for 50p and sell
03:01 it for 800 quid. So if you know what to look for, they're an investment to go for.
03:06 100%. I like you say before, Lily, some of the sleeves are just gorgeous, aren't they?
03:09 So they collect items.
03:10 I've got into a habit of putting the little cases on every single one of them so I can
03:16 keep them in pristine condition. Because then even if I'm not listening to them, I can still
03:20 look at them and think, wow.
03:22 They are works of art, aren't they? They genuinely are works of art. Yeah, 100%.
03:25 I'm here with Tom. So Tom, just to kick us off, really basic question. Tape, vinyl, CD
03:30 or streaming?
03:31 Mostly streaming.
03:32 Yeah. And obviously, things like vinyl had a big comeback and lots of people would say,
03:38 oh, it's for the warmth, the music and the quality, the sound, the production value.
03:41 Is that something which you think you ever take into account when you come to listen
03:44 to music? Or choosing which, how you listen to music?
03:48 Yeah, usually it's just like, it's more like convenient to stream. So I listen to vinyl
03:54 a little bit, but I'm not made of money. So it's difficult to get everything you want
04:01 on vinyl. So it's usually just the stuff where it's like, you can play it start to finish,
04:08 no skips. That's the sort of stuff I've listened to on vinyl. But every day, it's just convenient.
04:14 Yeah.
04:15 I suppose if you've got like almost every song ever released in the palm of your hand,
04:18 that kind of thing is hard to turn down.
04:19 Yeah.
04:20 Yeah, 100%. What do you make of the kind of comeback of CDs? Because for people, certain
04:25 generations that have thought, as soon as CDs kind of were replaced by streaming, they
04:28 thought that's it, they're done. But they're kind of making a comeback vinyl style. What
04:32 do you make of that?
04:33 I think it's great because it's a cheap way for the musician to make some money off their
04:40 music. Because really, the music streaming, that's kind of killed the music industry.
04:47 It's like, there's people at the top like Ed Sheeran, and they're raking it in. And
04:52 then there's smaller artists. It's like, they're making a penny for every couple hundred streams.
04:58 Yeah.
04:59 And also, I suppose if you're listening to music on streaming platforms, they kind of
05:04 know what to push you. So they're going to push you to do popular stuff rather than say
05:07 about the indie band, which you wouldn't mind, well, you might have come across if you're
05:09 just listening to CDs. So they kind of dictate what you listen to as well.
05:13 Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
05:14 Obviously, you as someone who listens to primarily streamed music, is that like a financial thing?
05:20 If you had all the money in the world, would you just listen to vinyl or CDs exclusively?
05:24 That's a good question. Probably not.
05:27 It is a convenience, isn't it, of having it in your pocket?
05:30 Yeah, exactly. I'm always on the go. So it's just so easy to get my headphones in.
05:36 Your old Walkman's not going to make a comeback, is it, with a CD in it?
05:40 I don't know. I don't know. They're bumpy, aren't they?
05:43 Yeah, they certainly are.