This week, Lake Effect is celebrating Bob Reitman’s new album, 12th House, ahead of an Oct. 12 release party that WUWM is hosting at the Pabst Theater.
The album will be released exclusively on vinyl. And while that's exactly on-brand for Reitman, it did get us thinking about the resurgence and continued relevance of physical media — especially among younger generations.
To find out more, Lake Effect’s Audrey Nowakowski spoke with Marc Tasman, director of Digital Arts and Culture at UW-Milwaukee. Tasman discusses a handful of factors that make vinyl and other physical media so attractive today.
Physical media and nostalgia
Tasman says the vinyl resurgence is driven, in part, by a nostalgic longing for simpler times. For young people who’ve only ever known the internet, he says it’s an example of the Greek concept anemoia — or nostalgia for a time that one never experienced personally. Engaging with earlier media formats lets audiences escape from a frenetic present to inhabit a slice of the past.
“Our present is filled with to-do lists and concerns and a future that is undone,” Tasman says. “But the past is finished. We can look at it selectively, and often that's how people who didn't live [through a given] time experience it: selectively, through media, through music.”
'Slow care' and attention
In contrast to the world of social media, Tasman says collecting and listening to vinyl requires its own kind of “slow care” and attention. Collectors go to great lengths to protect their albums from dust. Putting a record on brings a certain sense of occasion, too — unlike effortless, infinite scrolling. Physical media exists in physical space, engaging a variety of senses.
“We have the smell. We have the album art. We can touch, feel, you know?” Tasman says. “Does it smell new, off the press? Is it old? Is it musty? Has it been in somebody's basement? ... Are there scratches on the album, which will translate to pops and hisses?"
Building community through physical media
At a moment of simultaneous hyperconnectivity and atomization, physical media can help foster face-to-face social bonds, Tasman says. While digital media is often enjoyed in solitude, he says people can connect through shared recommendations, or listening to a record with another person.
“Here's a way to be like, ‘That's enough of the intense stimulation of electronic networks. Let's find a way to build that [connection] sustainably, to build relationships,’” he says.
Tasman points to record stores as third spaces and hubs for fellow music enthusiasts to connect. Before streaming, those word-of-mouth exchanges at record stores were often the best way to figure out whether an album was worth purchasing.
“In the old days ... you could ask the clerk to play it, or you could talk to other people in the aisle: ‘Hey, have you listened to this?’ ‘Oh, that album's great.’ ‘Oh, there's only one or two songs,’ you know? ‘Don't bother,’” Tasman explains. “There’s that different sort of value-making exercise, where you do have to take the time, the attention, the energy that must be invested when you’re buying the entire album.”
‘Permanence in a rapidly changing world’
Finally, in a time of so much ephemeral content, of major media buyouts and of ever-shifting streaming rights, Tasman says there's power that comes with ownership of physical media.
“If you own it, it can't be taken away, right? The terms of service aren't gonna change. It's not gonna disappear,” notes Tasman. “It's about a bit of a permanence in a rapidly changing world where most media that we experience is in that social media stream that you can never really find it again.”
You can listen to Audrey Nowakowski's full conversation with Marc Tasman above.
