There is nothing like placing a vinyl on a turntable or popping a CD into its player. Owning the music you listen to can be extremely rewarding, and students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recognize this.
“The full experience of the artist is through the vinyl,” junior Julian Wood told The Daily Cardinal, noting sound quality is better than listening online or with CDs.
Having millions of songs at our disposal through mobile devices propelled the initial decline in vinyl records and then CDs. However, UW-Madison students are part of a larger resurgence in physical media use among younger audiences. As early as 2007, global vinyl record sales started increasing every year. In the U.S., more than 43 million vinyl records were sold in 2024.
Aesthetic appeals and nostalgia have partly fueled this comeback. Wood said he got into vinyl because of his parents.
“They have a whole basket [of vinyls] in the basement,” he said “It’s just fun to browse through them.”
Wood is a member of WSUM student radio, an organization that houses a large collection of vinyl records and CDs. WSUM also participates in Vinylthon, select days where radio stations across the world only play music from vinyl records.
Vinyl is not alone. CDs and even cassettes are experiencing higher sales. Emily Isensee, a sophomore studying communication arts, radio television and film, is a self-proclaimed member of team CD. If you are going on a car ride, you can have CDs, she said.
“You can download music, but you lose a little bit of beauty with convenience,” Isenee said.
In the pursuit of beauty, you do lose money, Wood said — “it is an expensive hobby to have.” Still, the Madison area has several second-hand music shops, including B-Side, Strictly Discs and Half Price Books.
The relative affordability of second-hand CDs influenced me to collect them. However, my music-collecting habit started with a box of old CDs in a truck shed on the farm my dad grew up on.
Most of my dad’s CDs came from a well-known promotional offer in the 1980s and 1990s by Columbia House, ‘8 CDs for A Penny Club.’ This deal targeted rural customers who lived far from cities with record shops like my dad, who grew up in a small town about an hour and a half west of Madison and graduated in a high school class of 25 people. By signing up for the introductory offer, you could get albums on 8-tracks, cassettes or CDs for one cent.
While the company filed for bankruptcy in 2015, its impact on previous generations could be a reason physical media is making a comeback. Wood said there is value in listening to music via physical media versus on a streaming service.
“You have to commit to it. On your phone, you can easily switch songs, but not with physical media,” Wood said.
A listening experience grounded in reality may be old school, but it could be exactly what we need today.
