Music has existed for centuries, but was only put into a widespread replayable format beginning in the late 1920s. Since then, humans have worked to make listening to music more convenient and accessible. Nowadays, there are many ways to listen to music that offer listeners many choices in accordance with their preferences and lifestyles. Purchasing physical media may be one of the best ways to support artists, but streaming is infinitely more convenient. This raises the question: Which media format works best for you?
Vinyl
Vinyl records were first introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. The standard 12-inch record, more commonly known as the LP or Long Play, can hold an average of 22 minutes of audio on each side. This limitation resulted in the average album length being approximately 40 minutes, which has largely stood the test of time.
Vinyl offers a unique aesthetic that no other music format has been able to replicate thus far. Collecting vinyl has been widely regarded as an expensive hobby. Vinyl is generally expensive, on top of the nice equipment you may purchase to actually play your vinyl. However, it can be easy to start your journey into collecting vinyl by purchasing a cheap record player that fulfills your needs and finding cheap vinyl at a store or garage sales.
CDs
CD players were first sold in 1982 and have been a staple in the music media market ever since. As the name suggests, the compact disc was truly compact, with the first portable CD players going into the market in 1984. CDs are easily portable and arguably the most practical physical format of music currently available on the market. Whilst CD players were once commonplace within cars and laptops, these have been quietly phased out of the norm. However, it is easy to find portable CD players and those with a USB port to plug into a laptop or most modern vehicles.
Cassettes
The patent for the cassette tape became freely licensed beginning in 1966. The first Walkman went on sale in 1979, and the cassette business boomed. Cassettes are extremely compact and often competed with vinyl during the peak of their popularity. There are three main types of cassettes, which can hold 30, 45, or 60 minutes per side, competing with vinyl by adding bonus tracks that would not fit onto vinyl.
While they may be compact, cassettes can be the most tedious of physical formats of music. Cassettes must be rewinded and it is incredibly difficult to find the song you’re looking for. Cassettes are also known to not last long, degrading after only 10 to 20 years on average. While cassettes may offer a cool 80s aesthetic, they prove themselves to be the lesser physical music formats in the long term.
MP3
The rise of the digital era warranted the need for music to be played online. The MP3 format was ultimately chosen as the standard due to its small file size and acceptable fidelity. Although the file type gained popularity during an era of widespread music piracy, it remains prominent today as an audio format. Today, you can mostly purchase official MP3s through Amazon Music and Bandcamp. MP3 files can be easily transferred across devices nowadays, and many music streaming services support local files.
Streaming
Spotify officially launched for the first time in a small European market in 2008. This service has changed the music industry in countless ways, from the structure of songs to how they are advertised. Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music currently rule the streaming space.
While streaming is the most convenient format in the modern day, it is getting gradually more expensive, with features that were once standardized now locked behind a paywall. It is also important to note that artists make the least in this format, an average of $0.004 per stream on Spotify. These platforms also feature a lot of AI music. However, these flaws are often overlooked by the vast convenience of the format and its widespread usage.
