Interested in the cultural significance of vinyl and how this might colour biases to preferring vinyl.
So, all those who grew up with vinyl, have no idea how many have switched allegiances. It's obviously a reasonably large number, but nowhere near a majority.
It may not be a majority among audiophiles, but it was obviously the vast majority of the general public who switched.
I personally, like so many others, loved the large album covers of vinyl when I grew up, which also had a cultural significance for me and my class mates at school. I was not exactly pleased with the compact format of the compact disc, which literally seemed to diminish that significance.
Yet I hated the clicks and pops on vinyl and I developed OCD trying to get rid of them. The advent of the CD was an incredible relief for me just on that point. Later, as I became more of an audiophile, I had to confront the shortcomings of CD playback at the time, which now have been resolved more than satisfactorily to my ears.
But those who've grown up with digital, how many have switched to vinyl?
Among audiophiles, maybe a significant percentage, don't know. A few among non-audiophiles, but those have switched to mostly digital vinyl, which is not the analog experience of yesteryore.
I do love the analog experience with also modern excellent AAA releases like, for example, TOS by Deutsche Grammophon or the Tone Poet series by Blue Note. Yet those are obviously not mainstream, not like the digital Taylor Swift or Adele LPs.
Yet like in the old days, the large album covers and the tactile experience of vinyl seem to guide a good amount of the attraction of even digital vinyl. And of course, now the colored vinyl as well. In the old days colored vinyl was rare, but I still fondly remember the green vinyl of Peter Green's "in the Skies" when it came out in 1979.
