This Tuesday I spent the best $18 of my life. The day before that I made an identical purchase, but by different means. I own both the iTunes version of Mumford & Sons’ newest album Babel (which I purchased first) and the vinyl record. Consider me a die-hard fan. Even though the content is identical on the digital and vinyl album, there is something about the hard copy that makes it feel inherently more valuable.

I never even intended to buy the album a second time. I was with a group of friends in The Loop, got a phone call and was told to come to Vintage Vinyl as soon as possible. I had always heard about this store, but never really shopped there. When I came in, my friend John Fuszner was holding a copy of what I now consider one of my most prized possessions.

I grabbed Babel and went straight to the counter. The entire ambience of the record store was amazing: the smell of the plastic covering the album, the avaunt-garde jazz music playing over the speakers, the very hipster looking cashier. Just simple things like the “good choice” the employees said to me made the music buying experience more interactive.

When I bought the virtual version of the album, the experience was emotionless. I didn’t get any feedback on my taste in music, I didn’t have anything tangible to make me feel like I really had the album, and I was able to listen to it immediately. What made the vinyl so great was that even though I had heard every song a dozen times, I had to wait to hear the hard copy, and the suspense helped make it an experience.

More people need to depend less on iTunes to get their music. It is quick and convenient, but it is an impersonal process. In a record store you deal with actual people, you handle actual money and receive a product you can actually hold.

I do not by any means qualify for being a hipster (even if I did listen to Mumford & Sons before they were mainstream), but if hipsterism entails visiting music stores frequently, I could see quickly becoming one. With internet usage on the rise for building a music collection, these awesome shops could become a thing of the past. So next time you want to find some new folk-rock or are looking for jazz, shut down your browser, get in the car and take a drive to the nearest record store. You will thank yourself. I did.

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