Slow Living, Fast Collapse: What the Romanticisation of Analogue Culture Really Means for Music in 2026

There’s a particular flavour of optimism doing the rounds as we head into 2026. It wears linen, deletes apps, buys records again, and talks about being present. The so-called slow living turn has been framed as a corrective, a way out of the burnout loop that defined the early 2020s. In music culture, it’s been greeted with a kind of breathless hope. Vinyl sales tick up. Smaller shows sell out quicker. Listening becomes an activity again rather than background noise. The implication is that something purer might be on the way back. The reality is messier. The romanticisation of analogue lifestyles carries consequences that most trend pieces quietly skip. A year of people buying physical releases and showing up to gigs might sound like a renaissance, but it comes with a cost, and that cost is discovery. Music does not exist in a vacuum, and neither do artists. Strip away digital sprawl too quickly, and you do not return to some golden age. You narrow the funnel until only those already in the room remain. The Slow Living Fantasy and the Shrinking Funnel Slow living, as it’s currently sold, is less a philosophy and more a coping mechanism. It promises […]

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