A story about music

Back in May 2025 Fatoni, Edgar Wasser and Juse Ju released their new collaboration album BAWRS. I had ordered that on vinyl. Due to the May 1st holiday however the record arrived in my hands 2 days early. The problem: I couldn't play it. I didn't own a record player. This was the fourth vinyl in my collection, with no way to listen to it. The album wasn't available for streaming yet, as it wasn't officially released.

I swore that this would not happen again. I went online and found a used and affordable Audio Technica AT-LP60XBT. I bought it. A couple of days later I could finally listen to my vinyls. Of course I had listened to BAWRS already via streaming, but listening to the vinyl somehow felt different.

I started to significantly expand my collection of records from 3 at the start of 2025 to 47 by the end of it. It's a wild mix of old and new. I have everything from rock, punk and old-school hip-hop to modern German rap, hard techno and minimal house. Even some Karneval music now. I have used vinyls, self-pressed releases of local artists, collections of local clubs, and newly released albums. Some I bought online, some I bought browsing a record store, some I grabbed at the flea market just because they looked nice. I built a whole scrobble app to keep track of what I have and what is spinning.

Listening to vinyls feels different. The physical act of putting on a record, flipping it, doing it all over again every so often. It's a good interruption while working, to be forced to get up. It's also good to just sit on the couch and listen, doing nothing else. It made me enjoy music a lot.

This wasn't even any intentional switch away from streaming services. I still use them. However I never really made much use of everything else music streaming services had to offer. I didn't use any generated Weekly playlist, I didn't use recommendations, I didn't use their release radar. Most of what I listen to daily are DJ mixes. Most of that I still get from SoundCloud. Some from Bandcamp. I have quite a local music collection as well. Music streaming is the fallback, often for older releases, sometimes for full albums, often on the go. Now I have vinyl to listen to at home.

In December I had the chance to give a lightning talk at work. I couldn't attend the lightning talk session in person, so I had to prerecord it.
That's when I came up with a little story about music.