London record store set to close its doors: London record store Lucky Seven is set to close after the shop was put for sale. Store owner Jason Gore blamed rapid rent increases over the last few years for its closure. “The rent went up by a third in 2009 and if it goes up again there’s only one way it’s going to go,” he said. “I’ve given it until August and then I’m thinking of calling it quits.” The boom in vinyl collecting has also been a “double-edged sword”, claims Gore. “The demand is there but I can’t get hold of it as easy as I used to,” he told the Hackney Gazette.
Is The Vinyl Boom Leaving Classical Music Behind? Vinyl is booming in Toronto. Record shops have popped up all over the city to serve a new generation of record buyers as the format becomes popular again, but fans of classical music might be feeling a little left out of the resurgence. The new shops carry everything from folk to electronica to hip hop, but in many of them, the classical “section” amounts to a single milk crate on the floor near the back. Perhaps this has to do with the image; record stores thrive on appearing hip, and walking out with a seminal recording of a cantata or quintet isn’t exactly cool.
Vinyl indignity: record sales are up, but small labels don’t see the benefit: The real story is that sales of downloads are dropping not because vinyl is wooing back digital listeners but because streaming is becoming the default way of consuming digital music. Furthermore, the headlines were misleading because vinyl hadn’t outsold digital downloads at all, but rather had made more money for the music industry over the previous week – and no doubt a good proportion of that was thanks to Kate Bush’s new live album Before the Dawn, which sets you back well over £50 on vinyl, more than four times as much as the download.
Ashby record shop owner on why vinyl sales have outsold downloads for the first time: Ben Duncombe, 33, runs the Attic record shop, in Ashby, and has been involved in the vinyl resurgence. Last month, he hosted a hugely-popular 1,000 records for £1 event, which saw record hunters come from across the Midlands head down to grab some bargains. He said: “I think the simple explanation is that it’s just a better format, but the other side is that people want to own something and have something physical in front of them. I think when you buy a download there’s a feeling of emptiness, because all you’ve got is a load of data. Records are a lot more personal.”
Essex rocks to the vinyl revolution as sales soar: Richard Onslow has owned South Record shop, in Queens Road, in Southend for three years. The 35-year-old owns vinyl records himself rather than CDs or downloads and is delighted by the resurgence. However, he added: “It is no surprise, it has been building for the last few years. I think people are tired of downloads that they don’t actually own. You can touch and hold a record and that is much better. Records look much better than CDs as well. “Although downloads are quite cheap generally, because there is no overhead, a new vinyl album can range from £14 to £25.
For a niche jazz label, vinyl is the future: “It’s a model that sustains the music,” he said. “I came to this idea of how to record because of how difficult it is to make a record as a jazz musician.” Jazz accounted for just 1 per cent of all record sales in the United States in 2015, according to Nielsen’s year-end report. But jazz buyers do purchase albums: Almost half of those jazz records were bought in physical form. And across all genres, vinyl sales continue to rise; according to Nielsen’s midyear report, in the first half of 2016, vinyl accounted for 12 per cent of physical album sales, up 3 per cent over the same period a year ago.
The vinyl record industry is booming around the world – so why not in Hong Kong? “I think vinyl is like a human being; they have a life and even after the artist is long gone, he is still living in the vinyl,” Paul Au Tak-shing, owner of Paul’s Records in Sham Shui Po, said…Au fell in love with vinyl while growing up in Saigon, Vietnam, during the 1960s and 70s as a result of the pervading American hippie influence during the war. He escaped to Hong Kong in 1974 to avoid the South Vietnamese military draft. His passion for vinyl is undeniable, but according to others working in the Hong Kong record industry, he is increasingly in the minority.
Local vinyl record maker moving locations, closing historic facility: United Record Pressing, which has been manufacturing vinyl records in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood since 1962, is leaving its historic facility in order to expand, according to a Thursday post on the company’s Instagram account. Today is the company’s final workday in the space, according to the post. Sources close to URP told the Nashville Scene the company is moving all its operations to a new 142,000-square-foot facility on Allied Drive in South Nashville that it purchased in 2014.
Dutchess product brings famed music mastering facility to Peekskill: A master of the music-mastering industry whose credits include albums by Steely Dan, Lou Reed and Sting has quietly left Manhattan and set up his studio facilities overlooking the Hudson River in northern Westchester County. Scott Hull brought Masterdisk — one of the industry’s legendary names in mastering — to Peekskill more than a year ago. On a recent afternoon, Hull, who grew up in Dutchess County and possesses some 30 years of expertise working with many of the recording industry’s biggest musicians, sat at consoles facing towering speakers as lush sound waves enveloped a room in the facility. “I know the speakers so well that if I put something on that’s just slightly out of focus, I can tell instantly,” Hull said of mastering albums and other music.
Crosley is starting its own vinyl pressing plant: Crosley, the manufacturer of the popular retro-styled briefcase turntables, has bought the vinyl pressing equipment from a plant that was up for sale in the UK. Bo LeMastus, Crosley’s CEO, told ARCARacing.com that a Crosley plant is a natural extention of its business. “We’ve been selling record players for years, so getting into the record business is a natural extension of what we’ve already been doing. There isn’t a lot of record pressing equipment out there, so we are buying some.”
Shinola’s quest to make the best turntable you’ve ever heard: Shinola planned to make audio gear from the very beginning, and Rosson has dreamed of building turntables since his days as a teenage DJ. The company has spent more than a year enlisting partners, training employees, tweaking designs. This is only the start of Shinola Audio. Rosson came from Audeze, which builds headphones for discerning and deep-pocketed audiophiles. He wants to bring his expertise to a broader audience, and quickly. Shinola built its rep creating factory jobs, and the more products it sells, the more jobs Rosson can bring to Detroit. But first, he wants to make the best turntable you’ve ever heard, and sell it to you for $2,500.
