America’s Groove Honored with City Business Appreciation Award: The City of Effingham has named America’s Groove Record Store as a recipient of the City of Effingham’s Business Appreciation Award. Mayor Jeff Bloemker stated, “We applaud the Wilsons’ entrepreneurial spirit! They have applied their passion and creativity to their hobby and have turned it all into a great business. They have a cult following and I love that they are located in the Village Square Mall.” Aaron and Brianne Wilson are the owners of America’s Groove Record Store. They opened the store located in the Village Square Mall in 2016 as they wanted to bring something “cool” back to the mall, and it has been better than they could have imagined. In fact, coming up this February, they will be celebrating their two-year anniversary.
City recognizes America’s Groove Record Store: Nominator, Darin Blickem, describes the store as “a place for music lovers to find new and used vinyl, CDs and even cassettes. They also carry new and used stereo equipment, toys, video games and consoles, and a few other funky items.” Aaron Wilson holds family friendly bands to play at least once a month in the back room. The store also participates in the Record Store Day program twice a year in which special vinyl releases are made available to independent record store owners. The sales attract record collector enthusiasts who “record-store hop” on these days to find these special additions to their collections. America’s Groove hosts a biannual Toy Show that includes several vendors and brings in many attendees.
Hamilton record store’s expansion solves signage issue: Main Street Vinyl, a record store that opened in Hamilton in May, won approval Tuesday for a sign on its facade. The sign issue, which has been pending since July, was made possible partly because of other good news for the record store: It has been able to expand into an adjoining space, making it possible to center its sign above both of the storefronts it now occupies. Main Street storefronts have increasingly been filling, and officials hope that with the proposed Spooky Nook Sports at Champion Mill development nearby along North B Street, that trend will accelerate, with both Main Street and High Street becoming an entertainment district to serve all the athletes and their families, who are expected to visit from as far as a 3.5-hour drive from Hamilton.
Canadian Record Store Chain Grows 925% — In One Year: Ten years ago, the fate of traditional record stores looked really, really bleak. By 2007, file-swapping had eviscerated CD sales, and vinyl was an antiquated format for niche audiophiles. People still loved music, they just weren’t going to record stores. Instead, they were stuffing their iPods with thousands of songs while spending their savings on festivals. Accordingly, established record stores were going bankrupt, unable to make ends meet. Up in Canada, that included HMV, which recently shuttered more than 70 stores during a gruesome bankruptcy process. Enter Sunrise Records, which made a daring move earlier this year.
Concert Venues and Record Stores Boycott LA Weekly to Protest New Owners: Amoeba released a statement condemning the layoffs and expressing concern about the newspaper’s future: “We were as surprised as anyone to hear about the sale and layoffs at the LA Weekly this past week. Amoeba has had long-standing friendships and working relationships with the writers and editorial staff at the Weekly, and we have shared a history of commitment and passion for the creative community. Our community was rocked by these unexpected, major layoffs. These are friends and colleagues whose voices have been intertwined with ours over the past 16 years as we have all struggled to keep the creative community thriving in Los Angeles.”
Vinyl records see record sales in Ireland for the first time since the 80’s: Vintage vinyl is making a surprising comeback, as record sales have reached heights that have not been seen in a number of decades. Vinyl record sales began to decline steadily after more people began to opt for the more compact cassette tapes during the late 80’s and early 90’s. However, they have seen a revival in recent years with well known Irish music and entertainment retailer, Golden Discs, having just announced that for the first time since the 80’s that more and more people are purchasing vinyl records. “We haven’t seen this volume of sales since the ’80s,” says Golden Discs CEO Stephen Fitzgerald, noting that it’s not just new releases but back catalogue, reissues, limited editions and box sets that are catching the eye of music lovers across the country.
My Name Is Dave, I Collect Vinyl Records, and I Have a Problem: My record collection and I got priced out of my apartment. I recently had to move to a smaller apartment because of our great city’s rising rents. Maybe you can relate. This has forced me to face the unpleasant physical reality of my music collection, which consists of six or seven thousand records, CDs, and cassettes (conservative estimate). Oh yeah, and dozens of music-oriented DVDs…As I write this, I’m surrounded by dozens of boxes. I live in a U-Haul box fortress fashioned out of my neurosis. Sorry to say, but you cannot properly party in my pad—not yet, anyway. I’m methodically working on unpacking these manifestations of my obsessions. Anyone who collects stuff (action figures, dildos, what have you) eventually has to reckon with the physics problem.
