It’s not as silly a question as it might sound. Forty years ago, if you asked a music fan to point out their collection, they’d gesture towards an entire wall of vinyl. Even a decade ago, people would point to a rack of CDs (even if most of them were burnt). Today, it’s a little more abstract. If you’re lucky, there’s an iPod or laptop hard drive within reach, but if you’re using Youtube or Myspace, well, good luck. The ‘00s began with half-hour waits for single tracks on Napster, continued with high-profile copyright lawsuits, and ended with almost instant downloads of entire albums – for $10 from iTunes, for $? from Radiohead, and for $0 if you know where to look. Ask someone where their music is, and you’re likely to be answered only with a confused stare.

Technology drives sales, sales drive technology – downloads are on the up and up while CD sales continue to drop at a rate that sends record executives into a terrified collective sweat. Wipe away those pathetic tears – physical music isn’t dead just yet. Bucking the overall trend is a format that should have died yonks ago. Vinyl sales have more than doubled since 2007 – the biggest numbers since measurement began in 1991. Let’s not be misleading here: vinyl still makes up only a small percentage of music purchases overall. But considering it was a dead technology twenty years ago, its growth is pretty remarkable. What is it about this relic that’s proving so popular in the digital age?

It certainly isn’t convenience. Turntables are still around (both new and used) but a decent one will cost you a bit, and that’s not the end of your troubles. You can start an album on iTunes in less time than it would take to confusedly splutter out terms like ‘stylus replacement’, ‘pre-amp’, and ‘anti-static brush’, let alone put them into practice. The records themselves are often pricier than CDs or downloads – though not as much as one might guess. Shopping at a local store it’s easy to find new indie releases for $30. If you venture to online mail order, depending on shipping and exchange rates it’s possible to pick up three or four albums for about twenty bucks apiece. And of course, if you’re into used vinyl, you can pick up a lot of interesting music for mere pocket shrapnel.

It’s commonly stated among audiophiles that vinyl ‘sounds better’. This is, basically, bullshit. A record in decent condition can easily sound as clear or ‘good’ as a CD of the same album, but it can also suffer from pops and hiss that worsen with age and poor treatment. The sound from vinyl does have a noticeably different quality, which the audiophiles call ‘analogue warmth’. Some like it a lot. Is it objectively better? Nope. Vinyl is not the format for guaranteed fidelity.

We reach an unavoidable conclusion. People don’t buy vinyl just to hear music (unless, of course, where the music wasn’t released on anything else). Products have changed. Digital downloads are now the means of getting music in its pure sense. They’re cheap, easy, and portable. If you can get, note-for-note, the same music in a cheaper, more convenient form, why would you pay more for something that just takes up space?

With digital files everywhere, the tangible product has become a value-added proposition that has to offer something that downloads cannot. Artwork is one of those things. There’s some lovely album artwork out there, and it’s becoming more and more elaborate. Sure, CDs have their digipaks and whatnot, but vinyl is superior – and not only for its sheer square-footage. You have gatefold sleeves, coloured records, poster inserts, and picture discs. A good release of even a mediocre album can still feel like a genuine collector’s item. Because that’s what it is.

But even artwork aside, there’s a certain something about a physical product with heft and inconvenience, about a music collection that takes up space in your room (not just on your hard drive), about a conscious effort required to play your tunes. It’s almost a ritual – taking the album out of the sleeve, placing it carefully on the platter, maybe giving it a brush down before dropping the stylus into place. You can feel the weight, you can watch the record spinning. Heck, you can literally see the music’s waveform right there in the wax if you look closely enough. It beats putting a CD in a tray. And when the alternative is pressing the play button in iTunes, there’s no contest at all.

There’s the rub. No matter how immaculately tagged, a collection of MP3s will never compare to a tangible pile of albums. This ingrained attraction to music that we can actually feel, in a real and physical sense – this is what I think is driving the vinyl revival. To be fair, CDs are solid too. But how often have you bought a CD only to rip it and never look at it again? Vinyl, on the other hand, is a joy to come back to again and again. To put it simply: there’s a choice right now between downloaded music and physical music. Before MP3s, the CD was the choice of convenience. But now physicality is a luxury, not a necessity – and records are better than CDs at everything that makes a physical format worthwhile. Seen in this light, the sales trends make more sense.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve got my gigabytes as well. But when it comes to actually laying down the cash, I’m a bit of a Luddite. I’m pretty uneasy about paying real money for something that exists only on a hard drive. Maybe things will be different for the next generation – those who have known nothing but instant access to virtual sound. But right now, for me, and a growing number of others, when it comes to spending money on music, nothing compares to the first drop of that needle.