Despite the current age of streaming, many still choose to listen to physical albums on record players, even though vinyl albums cost more and are more difficult to find.

Joseph McLain, junior in LAS, said he began to collect records because of the art on their covers. Eventually, he began listening to the records as well.

“I ended up investing in a decent record player, and I kind of realized that the sound quality is nicer than you can get on a CD or streaming services,” McLain said.

McLain said he used the same speakers for digital and physical music, which made the differences apparent. 

“There are just small details that you can notice on the vinyls that I don’t think you can always pick up in a digital recording,” McLain said.

McLain said that in streamed music, recordings have lost softer sounds because of how the songs get compressed into digital forms.

However, McLain said the quality of records can be inconsistent. Warped discs made music sound out of tune, and newer records had a noticeable dip in sound quality compared to older records.

McLain said he found difficulty obtaining his favorite artists’ records.

“There’s one album I ordered online last April, and I’m still waiting on it to come through,” McLain said.

With the increasing trendiness of records, he said prices have also increased.

McLain said that before people decide to collect records, they should listen to a record and decide whether the increase in sound quality warrants the increase in price.

“It’s kind of a money pit if you decide to jump in,” McLain said.

Bob Diener, the owner of Record Swap, a local record store in C-U, was surprised by the sudden and rampant resurgence of vinyl records.

“I always expected vinyl to come back,” Diener said. “I didn’t expect it to come back as strong as it has.”

Diener said the revival started in 2008 and has continued to expand ever since.

“People who do not buy music wonder how his store still exists, which brings them in to check it out,” Diener said.

Before Record Swap grew to have around 10,000 records, Diener said classical music records kept their store going.

“There’d be five or six professors that would be almost getting into fist fights over who would see this stuff first,” Diener said.

Customers kept Record Swap open, Diener said, which made him want to bring in every person he could.

“I always wanted to be a record store that just had a deep, deep selection and all types of music,” Diener said.

However, Dieter said he had another goal beyond that.

“Opening up a records store was really my idea to increase my personal collection and get records at a much cheaper price, and learn more about music all over the world,” Diener said.

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