(Photos taken by Carolina Tavares. “Streaming services and physical media both have reasons to be used.”)

Carolina Tavares
Connector Staff

From the wax cylinders of the 1800s to the popularity of CDs in the 90s and 2000s, the way that people consume musical media has changed throughout time as technology has evolved. Most people nowadays use streaming services, such as Spotify or Apple Music, to get their musical fix— but there’s also been an uptick in the amount of people who collect physical media, such as vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs. Both forms of listening to music come with their pros and cons, and fans of both can see the positives and negatives associated with each.

One of the reasons that people rely heavily on music streaming services is due to their convenience. Many services offer thousands of albums that can be streamed instantly, without needing to purchase them first. “You have access to everything… you can access a greater deal of [music] than through any other medium,” said Nicholas Teuber, a senior business student. “If you want to listen to an album, you can look it up. If it’s not on Spotify, it’s usually on YouTube or SoundCloud, or you can download it from somewhere.”

Streaming services can also be helpful depending on the job that someone does. “From my perspective as the music director at WUML, it would be very, very hard for me to do my job without using streaming services to find new music, [and] to try and keep track of up-and-coming artists,” Teuber said.

But streaming services have their constraints as well. Sometimes, due to licensing issues, albums aren’t able to be streamed and become unavailable to users. “Childish Gambino dropped an album called ‘Awaken, My Love!’… and for one day, it got taken off Spotify, and I was distraught,” said Ezequiel Perez, a junior English major. “[T]he ability to remove songs— and this isn’t only including Spotify; this is YouTube Music, this is SoundCloud, this is Apple Music. I think that digital media… [controls] what audiences can and can’t listen to.”

Another common complaint about streaming services is about how little they pay artists. Several streaming services compensate artists for the number of plays or listens a song gets, but the amount is very little, with some services paying less than one cent per stream.

“I believe that artists should be able to make a living off of making music,” Perez said. “That’s the whole point of being an artist… starting up is very difficult because Spotify will undercut you, SoundCloud will undercut you, Apple Music will undercut you. It’s very hard for [artists] to make a profit. It doesn’t even cover rent.”

In the midst of all the controversy surrounding streaming services, some people have turned to collecting physical media as their main source of listening to music. “I am a really big physical media person,” Teuber said. “It’s not always the most convenient thing to do, which is why I still do use a lot of streaming services. But I do lean on physical media as [a form] of listening to music that I love in a certain way.”

A part of Nicholas Teuber’s record collection.

Another positive aspect of physical media is the opportunity it offers to foster connection between people. “My first ever record was a gift from my dad,” Perez said. “He gave [it] to me when I got my first record player.”

However, physical media collection isn’t without its faults. Many cite the high cost of records, the physical space needed to store a collection, and the elitism that surrounds physical media communities as potential drawbacks. “A lot of times, especially if an artist is kind of a fad… price gouging [can be] a huge problem with scalpers buying up physical media,” said Micaela Caro, a junior sociology major. “It’s just very hard to find physical releases of the albums that you might want.”

Perez agrees with this sentiment, saying how physical media culture fosters spaces that can be exclusionary to people who don’t have the means to invest a lot of money into CD or vinyl collecting. “[T]here’s definitely a culture around physical media, and that culture around it is not very welcoming to the idea of it being expensive and it not being affordable for everybody,” he said.

Even avid collectors of physical media acknowledge the high cost associated with building a record collection. “I don’t even want to talk about much money that I’ve spent on CDs, records, and tapes,” said Teuber. “It’s criminal.”

A vinyl record of the Metallica album “…And Justice For All” from Nicholas Teuber’s media collection.

Choosing to collect physical media or use streaming services is a choice that falls on the individual. Both forms of listening to music have their pros and cons, and both forms serve different purposes. “There’s pros and cons to each side, but the fact that music, as a genre— as any genre— can bring people together is very important,” Perez said. “I think that’s the main highlight of it to me.”