Are we burning out, or just longing for simpler times?

That is the question worth asking as a generation raised on taping the mixes off Radio 1, whilst we quietly rebuild our record shelves. I’ve been getting an enourmous amount of press releases lately on retro tech, ie: CD players, mp3 players, turntables, even mobile phones aka Commodores latest release, so I started doing some digging on some stats behind it all. Gen X started this, and the numbers back it up. Research from Back Market in 2025, surveying 2,000 people in the UK, found that 71 per cent had a piece of retro tech they wished they had owned as a child, and 45 per cent now plan to buy a vintage device. Nostalgia was the main driver for 43 per cent of them. CD players, vinyl and the Walkman sat firmly on the wish list. None of this feels like a coincidence, I mean, when doing research on old tech for my Throwback Thursday articles, the demand for retro tech is insane (and the prices)

I guess the pull is partly about touch. You can’t beat holding a sleeve, reading the credits, sliding a disc into a tray and committing to an album in the order the artist intended. You also own it. It does not vanish when a licensing deal expires or when an algorithm decides your evening for you. Back Market found that 21 per cent of people simply miss screen-free experiences, and 38 per cent see older tech as a more affordable way back in. Owning something physical, rather than renting access from a platform, seems to be the whole point.

The hardware has kept pace. FiiO’s CP13 cassette player charges over USB-C and sells for around a hundred pounds, while We Are Rewind has built a small cult around its colourful Walkman-style decks. Portable CD players are back too, from the practical FiiO DM13 to the tube-fitted Shanling EC Zero T for those who take it seriously. These are not loft-clearance relics. They are new products built for people who want to engage with the format rather than tap an app.

Then there are the rooms built around all this. Vinyl listening bars, long a Tokyo institution, have spread to London, Sydney and well beyond, offering proper sound systems, no laptop sets and a crowd that came to listen rather than be seen. Boutique record stores have multiplied alongside them, curated spaces where the staff still hold opinions and the racks reward an afternoon of digging. Record Store Day, the closest thing the format has to an annual holiday, gets bigger each year, with queues outside the independents and exclusive pressings changing hands before lunch.

What makes the story interesting is who has joined in. This is no longer a middle-aged indulgence. Over the past twelve months Gen Z bought more CDs than millennials, Gen X and baby boomers, according to figures reported by the Guardian, and nearly half of Gen Alpha is already listening to physical music in some form. CDs had their modern bump in 2023, with 36.83 million units shifted, helped along by deluxe editions from the likes of Taylor Swift and Pink Floyd. For younger buyers a lot of it is aesthetic, a form of identity in a digital-first world, something to hold and display. The motive differs but the instinct is the same.

So, burnout or longing? Probably a bit of both. The constant notifications, the endless scroll, the sense that your taste is being quietly managed for you, all of it makes a physical object feel like a small act of independence. It is also, let us be honest, partly about age and a little spare cash. Many of us can finally afford the gear we coveted as teenagers, and there is real pleasure in that.

For what it is worth, I agree with most of it. It is each to their own, and I am not about to tell anyone how to listen. What I will say is that I love switching off two days a week from being online, just being out and about, not staring at my phone or replying to a million messages. Maybe that is the older me talking, a look back at simpler times, and yes, finally having the money to buy all those cool gadgets or cars we wished we had growing up (if only I could afford a BMW e30 M3). It is about the touch and the feel, the knowing you physically own something rather than borrowing it from a tech company’s algorithm. You have to actually engage with the format, not just open an app. That, more than any chart figure, is the part I find hard to argue with.

by Damion Pell

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