What to do with all those pesky download coupons

November 6, 8:03 AMLA Vinyl Records ExaminerJason Gelt

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A typical MP3 download coupon
Author's collection

A lot of records come with them these days. You shelled out $10.99 for the LP or $4.50 for the seven-inch but lo and behold you also receive a coupon for a free MP3 download of the record. I could paper a small wall with the download coupons I've received in the last couple years, but I've taken advantage of only a handful of them.

Unlike actual, physical vinyl records with cover art and inner sleeves (the lingerie of any well-maintained piece of wax), the downloads invariably get lost, hidden away on some obscure desktop folder, corrupted, accidentally deleted. I'll admit, I'm kind of an old fart about these things. I'd prefer to live in a pre-digital world. But these are the times we're stuck with. An acquaintance once asked me why I wanted to play records when you could just copy your collection to digital and save all that wear, tear and work. To paraphrase Satchmo, "If you have to ask, you'll never know."

I like listening to records because they sound better than any other format. They look better, too. Yes, they're ungainly, labor-intensive (as anyone who's ever DJ'd with 45's knows) and old-fashioned. But they're also tactile pieces of art. They look great on a shelf, imbuing a room with the same warmth and culture as a wall of books. Their sound is big, expansive, clear -- the exact opposite of the tinny, cramped quality of an MP3. Which is why all those little slips of paper don't do me a bit of good. I appreciate that someone's trying to give me free stuff, but I'm a one-music-format kind of guy. 

So I guess I'll just keep collecting those coupons, hoping that someday maybe they'll come in handy for a round-the-house paper project.