Record players and instant film were Amazon best-sellers this holiday: ‘Tis the season to be retro, as a turntable and instant film became among Amazon’s best-selling products this holiday. Specifically, the Jensen JTA-230 3-Speed Stereo Turntable was the best-selling piece of home audio tech this Christmas, according to Amazon’s post-holiday debriefing, while Fujifilm’s INSTAX Mini Instant Film two-pack reigned supreme in the camera department.
The Vinyl Revival is showing no signs of slowing down: It’s not just the middle-aged rediscovering their passion for vinyl and rebuilding scratched collections. Hipsters and other younger fans are also catching the bug. “Five years ago the average age group was a 46-year-old white male – now they are in their 20s,” said Steve.
Discogs Turns Record Collectors’ Obsessions Into Big Business: “There’s no way an independent record store can stay open without it,” said Stephen Benbrook, the owner of Zion’s Gate Records, a store in Seattle, who said Discogs was his primary outlet online, with about 500 orders a month.
Memphis Record Pressing is right on trend: A partnership between Matthew Johnson and Bruce Watson of North Mississippi rock and blues music label Fat Possum and Mark Yoshida and Brandon Seavers of Memphis-based media manufacturers AudioGraphic Masterworks, Memphis Record Pressing officially opened for business in January. The venture was designed to address the overwhelming demand for vinyl production, which has increased exponentially as record sales have exploded over the last half decade.
Pressing demand for vinyl sees GZ expand record output: The resurgent vinyl record industry is more than a U.S. phenomenon. A Czech packaging company is riding the global tidal wave of demand for vinyl discs triggered by a revival of collecting music on vinyl records. GZ Media of Lodenice, Czech Republic, which has manufactured vinyl records since 1951, turned out 14 million discs during 2014, and claims to be the world’s largest producer of vinyl discs.
Pressing Vinyl: The Intersection of Band and Business: “We shied away from vinyl for years,” says Scott Pollack, president of A to Z Media, a brokerage that connects labels and musicians with vendors who make records, CDs and other artifacts. “It is a dirty, time-consuming, expensive process. But now we are really focusing on vinyl.”
Permanent Records Celebrates One Year In South Slope, And We Want Them For Keeps: P-Recs re-located and re-opened October 1, 2014 at BrooklynWorks at 159, which is a co-working space that had just celebrated its own one-year anniversary at the time — and the two businesses have collaborated well together. “We knew this was not a place that people just stumble across,” says manager Matthew Milligan. “Vinyl is a destination.”
Behind the Business: Joe Nardone Sr. is on the record: “Records are back bigger than ever and they sound great,” Nardone said, offering his own spin on the industry. He should know. If his story was a disc, it would be an LP for the long-play format. He opened Joe Nardone’s Record Shop in Wilkes-Barre in 1960, moved into the Wayne Department Store in Edwardsville and, when it went bankrupt, opened his first Gallery of Sound in 1972 in the Wyoming Valley Mall.
