Vinyl Is Spinning Huge Sales For Sunrise Records: Sunrise Records’ president Doug Putman doesn’t buy the popular mantra that music sales are cooked. Proof of this is the fact that his chain of nationwide stores sold close to a half-million vinyl albums last year. That’s right. Sunrise sold just shy of 500,000 vinyl recordings and most with an average sticker price of $29.99. And that’s just the half of it. Last year, Putman expanded his Ontario-based 12-store chain by negotiating leases from mall owners left holding the bag when HMV declared bankruptcy, and in the space of a year grew to 82 stores nationwide. Today he employs about 800 staff working full or part-time in Sunrise locations, and he has plans for more expansion in 2018.
Going For A Song Chronicles The Tale Of Britain’s Record Shops: New book Going For A Song chronicles the history of Britain’s Record Shops. Round about 10 years ago or so only one type of article was commissioned about British record shops: obituaries. Vinyl, we were told, was a dead format, downloading was here to stay, and that record shops would move online, into the digital realm. Fast forward a decade or more and vinyl sales are at their highest level since 1991 and more shops seem to spring up on a weekly basis. New book Going For A Song details the history, the fall, and subsequent resurgence of Britain’s record shops, and the communities around them. Moving from early shellac outlets to dub shacks, Soho shebeens to Brian Epstein’s NEMS network in Liverpool, it looks fascinating, packed with detail and new interviews.
Recycled Records’ longtime owners considering selling: Changes could be in store for a one-of-a-kind downtown Springfield business that’s been a second home to generations of music lovers. Mark and Gary Kessler, co-owners of Springfield Furniture and Recycled Records, 625 E. Adams St., said they haven’t made any definitive plans, but they are considering selling the business. Mark, 70, and Gary, 64, have not set a date to close the store and stressed that there is no need for them to hurry and make a decision. They plan to continue buying and selling records as always, but they are open to reasonable offers. “It’s not a fire sale,” Mark said. “Neither Gary nor I need to sell this business. I’m 70 years old. I just want to do some other stuff.”
Why Vinyl Matters: Nick Hornby on Records, High Fidelity, and His Personal Top 5: “Well, of course it hasn’t really returned. Sales are still tiny. But it isn’t, as we thought, going to vanish completely, at least for a while. There’s snob appeal, for sure—vinyl looks great, the covers are cool, the format is fashionably retro, and so on. But I suspect that many young people are taking the position that old-school music nerds adopted: what you own says something about you. You can’t own the music on Spotify. Everyone has the same—namely, everything—despite attempts to personalise the new platforms. Vinyl offers a way of distinguishing yourself from those who care less than you do.”
Vinyl revival – What goes around comes around: When digital downloads became the dominant music delivery format in 2011, outstripping sales of all physical media for the first time, the music industry in general was in turmoil. The boom stemming from compact disc sales (a period stretching from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s) became a bust; industry revenue (sales of all recorded media) dropped from $14.6 billion in 1999 to about $9 billion in 2008. While those numbers continued to drop in subsequent years, the direction has now reversed course. During the first half of 2017, the RIAA reported a 17 percent increase in revenue over the same period the previous year. Vinyl sales are at their most vigorous in nearly three decades…
