In a world where music finds you before you even know you’re looking, there’s something radical about flipping through a crate of records. For younger people—especially those still forming their sense of identity—algorithm-led discovery feels less like discovery and more like quiet conformity.
Scroll long enough and you’ll notice it: everyone’s playlists start to sound the same. TikTok has declared the songs of the moment. Spotify's "Made For You" wasn’t, really. It was made for someone likely to click—and you’re close enough. What gets recommended isn’t what's meaningful; it’s what keeps you from closing the app.
So what does it mean when a teenager—born after the CD era, raised on AirPods and auto-play—starts spending their Saturday afternoons browsing a used record store?
It means they’re doing something quietly subversive.
The Algorithm Isn’t Your Friend
Streaming services promise infinite access, but what they actually deliver is guided repetition. The songs rotate, sure, but the guardrails are always there. New artists rise not because they’ve said something profound, but because the data says they’ll hold attention past 10 seconds.
Music becomes content. And content becomes noise.
For young people trying to build a sense of self—trying to figure out what they actually like versus what they’ve been fed—this is a problem. Taste gets flattened. Surprise disappears. And worst of all, your decisions aren’t really yours.
That’s why physical media matters. A used CD isn’t going to interrupt you with a notification. A record sleeve won’t auto-skip the song halfway through. When a kid finds a dusty 50s jazz album or an obscure punk 7-inch, there’s no algorithm involved. Just curiosity, chance, and the quiet beginnings of personal taste.
Digging Is a Personal Act
There’s a patience to crate digging that runs against everything modern tech tries to instill. No scroll bar. No skip button. No curated feed. Just a long row of dusty LPs, cracked jewel cases, or Maxell mixtapes in faded Sharpie. It's tactile, quiet, and unpredictable.
That unpredictability is the whole point.
You might walk in looking for a specific Nirvana CD and walk out with an Ethiopian jazz LP you’ve never heard of. And that experience—the act of choosing something unfamiliar over something safe—is the opposite of how most young people are told to engage with media today.
Digging builds instinct. It invites mistakes. You might buy a dud. You might find a holy grail. But either way, you chose it.
That moment—where a teenager buys a record not because it’s trending, but because the cover looked weird and they were willing to risk ten bucks? That’s a real cultural education. One that sticks a lot longer than a TikTok sample.
Tip: Want to get started building your collection? Check out our guide to valuing your used records.
Collections as Identity, Not Output
A Spotify playlist disappears when you close the app. A record shelf becomes furniture. A CD tower becomes a reflection of time and taste. When a kid starts to build a collection, they’re doing more than buying media. They’re forming a viewpoint.
Streaming makes all music equally accessible—and equally disposable. When you own a physical copy, that record can’t just disappear from a licensing deal. It’s yours. Permanently.
And more than that: it becomes part of your personal geography.
You remember where you found it. What you paid. What else you passed up. Who was with you that day. It’s not just consumption. It’s memory.
That matters when you’re 15 and still trying to figure out who you are. Owning the weird techno CD your friends hate might make you the weirdo in the group. But in five years, it might be the foundation of your own DJ set.
Want to sell your collection and help someone else build theirs? Learn more about how to sell your CDs and vinyl in Milwaukee.
A Record Store Is One of the Last Free Zones
Step into any good used record store and you’ll notice something: nobody is telling you what to buy. There's no algorithm nudging you toward what 2 million others clicked last week. No autoplay, no notifications. Just bins, racks, sleeves, and the quiet thrill of not knowing what you’re about to find.
When I was 18, I picked up a used Jackie Mittoo “Best Of” LP on a whim. I had no idea who he was, but the cover looked cool. One track—a warped, psychedelic reggae-funk cover of Sunshine of Your Love—completely floored me. That one song cracked open a whole world I didn’t even know existed. My generation was being handed pop-punk and nu-metal like a lunch tray. But here was a guy playing a Hammond organ like he was from another planet. It made me realize there were entire universes of music being ignored by the mainstream—and I could go find them myself.
That kind of discovery doesn’t happen in a TikTok feed. It happens in places where randomness still exists.
For me and my brother Tom, those weird discoveries often came with hilarious missteps. A British DJ once told us about “Library music”—those haunting, funky instrumentals from labels like KPM or DeWolfe. But his accent was so thick, we spent years asking shops if they had any “lively music” instead. Nobody knew what we were talking about, but we kept digging anyway. Eventually we figured it out—and found one of the deepest rabbit holes in crate-digging history.
That’s the kind of thing the internet can’t replicate. When you're digging, mistakes become part of the story. So do the friendships, obsessions, and revelations that follow.
Want to explore more hidden vinyl worlds? Check out our blog on rare soul 45s and local Milwaukee gems.
Let the Kids Dig—Not Scroll
This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about agency.
When a young person starts flipping through LPs, tapes, or CDs, they’re choosing to engage with music on their own terms. They’re resisting the feed. And in doing so, they’re building something real: their own taste, their own archive, their own sense of curiosity.
In my case, that curiosity led to something even deeper.
Years ago, I started finding strange, unmarked local 45s while digging around Milwaukee—soul records pressed in tiny batches by groups no one outside the neighborhood had ever heard of. But I didn’t just collect them. I tracked down the original musicians. And in some cases, I got to collaborate with them—artists like Brothers By Choice, Little Gregory and The Concepts, and Duchie Rogers from Black Earth Plus. I’ve written songs, cut records, and shared stages with them. None of that would’ve happened without the spark of flipping through forgotten singles.
That’s the power of physical media. It doesn’t just preserve history—it creates new ones.
So if you're a parent, a teacher, or a collector seeing a teenager spend an hour in the jazz or soundtracks section—don’t rush them. Don’t wonder why they’re into “old media.” Recognize what’s really happening: they’re building their own creative compass.
Let them dig.
Because the scroll is easy, but the dig is where all the good stuff lives.