There is a version of listening that is apparently so rare that hardly anyone is doing it. It’s not the background streaming type, or accidentally hearing your fave song in the supermarket.

It is the active sitting-sipping-relaxing one. No skipping or skiddadling your way through it. Just the good old PLAY button. Phone face down, eyes closed, doing absolutely nothing else. It looks, to anyone watching, extremely unproductive.

And as we run Weight of the Woods, Dermot Kennedy for the 100th time, from top to tail… we don’t believe it.

We believe that those who are doing this, who are lovers of albums, simply enjoy it and don’t feel the need to post, publish, wax lyrical (good vinyl pun, you’re welcome) about it. That is just happening.

We got to thinking, though, just because we’re doing it now, is that our natural state of listening? Are we lying to ourselves because Dermot is soothing us today? But tomorrow we revert to the hyper consumer?

But maybe that's the thing about real listening. When you're in it, you forget to ask yourself if you're doing it right.

So be honest, this is a judgment-free zone.

Think about your last ten listening sessions, or maybe you listen as we often do.

You press play on your own playlists in the morning and work through them until you’re finished for the day. So, your last ten, real ones, not those long all-day things.

Not something playing while you have three tabs open and a half-read message on your phone.

When did you last sit with something, all the way through? No. No checking who texted mid-song.

We'll wait.

Because the industry has a fairly grim picture of what most listening looks like. Songs are front-loaded with the hook now because Spotify punishes skips before thirty seconds. The platform shifted its algorithm in 2024 toward familiarity over discovery, because familiar music keeps you on the app longer without requiring you to pay attention. 106,000 songs get uploaded every day. Most of them die before they hit a hundred streams. And, we tested that flow by creating a piece of terrible music and getting it published.

The whole system is designed around your distraction. It assumes you are not listening.

And for most people, it is correct.

But real listening, it feels like this gif looks. And if you are one of the last of us, you know exactly what we mean.

Is the industry with us, against us, or something else?

It is both, and neither.

Vinyl just had its 19th consecutive year of growth in the United States. $1 billion in US revenue in 2025. 46.8 million records sold (we think we purchased about 20% of that in the last 24 months), up 9.3% year on year. The industry goes where your money goes.

46 million records, and they play as background to TikTok scrolling? It seems unlikely, but sure, there will be some people who do that.

But vinyl is only part of it, and we'd be doing a disservice to the streaming listeners in the room if we left it there. The real listeners are not defined by format. They show up as the ones running full album sessions, building playlists with a sequence in mind, going down a rabbit hole because one song led somewhere interesting, and they followed it all the way down.

If you read Musical Rabbit Holes a few weeks back, you already know we’re that way inclined, and if you weren’t subscribed by then, go take a look. That is an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours, and it requires absolutely nothing except the willingness to keep going. You can do all of that without owning a single piece of physical music.

The format is not the point. The intention is.

We keep seeing people talk about how surprising it is that Gen Z are big into vinyl - but is it a plot twist? It doesn’t feel like it. It looks more like the love for the physical that every generation before them had is still there. The 85-year-olds who play their favorite cassette tapes, the 63-year-old who is a stickler for a CD, and the Gen Z who spins the edges of a vinyl in their palms before putting on their turntable all have the same thing in common. They believe… know that the ritual is worth it.

Nobody has to tell you these things have value; you either know it or you don’t.

27% of all vinyl sales in 2024 were Gen Z. A decision, with access to 100s of songs, each person here chose to sit with between 12-18 instead of skipping through 12,000.

Here’s the bit where the finger-pointing starts. Sure, the industry is a big monster, designed to hold your ears and funnel stuff in there. A terrible visual… but the fault isn’t entirely at their feet. Be honest. Are you actually a real listener, or are you just telling yourself you are?

Because there is a very comfortable version of "music lover" that is mostly trends and Wrapped screenshots. Plenty of 40,000-minute years made up almost entirely of background noise, mood playlists, and songs you genuinely cannot name by the end of the week. Top Artist of the Year, and you listen to three songs, never an album… never that (ok, maybe this one is a bit far). That counts as listening in the data. It does not count in here.

And then there is the other version. The one who noticed the algorithm cycling the same two hundred songs and went looking for something else - most of you, is what we know for sure based on how you answer polls and what you re-read. The one who built a playlist and actually used it as a playlist, not a skipfest or something to forget.

The one who is reading this right now.

The last people who listen are not disappearing. They are buying records faster than at any point in the last forty years, running deep listening sessions on streaming platforms, keeping independent stores alive, going to gigs on Tuesday nights, and yes, opening newsletters about music because they genuinely care what happens to it beyond a surface level.

A minority, maybe. But a loud, stubborn, growing one.

You opened this. So. It is you. And it is us.