ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors wish to reflect on all those issues, particularly on the way people acquire, listen to and hear, handle, play and care for analogue records. They believe it is crucial for informing their understanding of vinyl as a specific music medium. The authors begins with exploring the way vinyl can be – and has typically been – obtained through practices of crate digging, before moving to consider the way people describe the way they play and hear vinyl. The marketized practices of buying, trading and selling vinyl records tell us a lot about the meanings and mythologies of vinyl as a medium. There are a number of interrelated things that make digging such an enjoyable pastime for buying music. In order to succinctly couch the salience of medium in a broadly recognized parlance, we refer to the phrase ‘medium is the message’ in this book and our other published research on vinyl record culture.
