Edinburgh, UK | Princes Street store is the apple of HMV’s eye: It has been an open secret that HMV has been looking to move back to Princes Street, so the news was no surprise. But what was surprising was the location they chose, squashed in between Kingdom of Sweets and Superdrug and spread over three floors. In recent years when downsizing, HMV have claimed that customers preferred everything to be on one floor and there was some truth in that. It is odd, therefore, that their new store, which is already not that big by flagship standards, is spread over three floors. I can only imagine they took the best deal for the worst location as there is the perfect flagship store just along the road in the old British Home Stores building. For Avalanche it is good news, as their extortinate prices for vinyl will only highlight our own prices which are often not a couple of pounds but five to ten pounds cheaper. For Assai, who have chosen the treadmill of having some of their favourite artists release albums every week, HMV will provide strong competition, but ironically by far the biggest losers will probably be FOPP, who are also owned by HMV.
Leeds, UK | Meet the Premier League referee who runs a record shop in Leeds called ‘Vinyl Whistle.’ Jonathan Moss runs a record shop and cafe in the Headingly district of Leeds called ‘The Vinyl Whistle’ when he is not officiating matches in the Premier League. Premier League referee Jonathan Moss runs a record shop in Leeds aptly called ‘The Vinyl Whistle’. The former PE teacher, who counts James Milner amongst his former students, runs the record shop and cafe when he is not busy working as a top flight referee. Moss has officiated in the Premier League since 2011 and has taken charge of FA Cup and League Cup finals in the past. ‘The Vinyl Whistle’ is open seven days a week, with reduced hours on Sundays, and is located in the Headingley district of Leeds, the city where Moss went to university before becoming a teacher. The shop’s logo features vinyl and record player on a whistle, paying homage to Moss’ profession when he is not at his store. He explained his love for vinyl and record shops during an interview with Goal.com back in 2019, stating that: “If I want to hear about a song straight away, I might listen to it on streaming, but I’ll always want to own it on vinyl.
Carthage, MO | Four State Record Show returns for 3rd year: People from all over the four states checked out records, both old and new at the Four State Record Show. But it’s much more than that. They’re part of a bigger community of collectors. “The vinyl community’s been building for about ten or twelve years now. it’s gaining popularity,…so a lot of people of all ages are coming out and buying records that tend to find the holy grail type items here that people will bring that they’ve been hunting online. maybe in a lot of times, you’ll find those items here,” said Lynn Brennfoerder, Co-Host of the Four State Record Show. The four-state record show brought people from northwest Arkansas, all the way through Ottawa Kansas, like Sean Dickinson with the Ampersand Vinyl. “For me, I do this every week, so my business, as I do pop up record shows and usually brewery is coffee shops kind of in small towns where they don’t have access to record shops, and so shows like this, I guess, allow me to have a larger audience and you’re really going to get the word out there,” Dickinson said.
Lancaster County, PA | Record Store Day 2022 announced; Here’s the participating record stores in Lancaster County: Since its start in 2007, Record Store Day has been used as a way to celebrate independent music retailers across the country. After splitting across multiple dates during the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Record Store Day in 2022 will indeed be just one day, Saturday, April 22. This year’s “Record Store Day Ambassador” is Berks County’s own Taylor Swift, who will be releasing an exclusive 7″ of “the lakes,” a bonus track from Swift’s 2020 album “folklore.” In addition to Swift’s offering, releases from Prince, David Bowie and hundreds of others are on this year’s list. In just 15 years, vinyl records have gone from niche to record-breaking sales. According to a report by MRC Data-Billboard (formerly known as Nielsen-Soundscan), 41.7 million vinyl records were sold in 2021, the highest reported amount since 1991, and more than double the amount sold in 2020.
Harrogate, UK | Cartoonist’s tribute to legendary Harrogate record shop Mix Music: Harrogate district music lovers from the 1990s and 2000s have fond memories of independent record shop Mix Music. From Britpop to the indie boom to metal, dance music and hip-hop, the small shop on Oxford Street stocked a deceptively comprehensive selection of CDs and vinyl. Award-winning comic book artist and cartoonist Tim Bird grew up in Harrogate and went to St John Fisher Catholic High School. The 39-year-old specialises in drawing scenes that conjure up the history and memories of place. Mix Music was a haven for teenagers that were into alternative music in Harrogate, which Mr Bird said made it the perfect place to draw. “I used to go there in my school lunch hour, me and my friends. We didn’t necessarily buy music, we’d just hang out there. “I remember buying the White Stripes there on vinyl, and Radiohead’s Kid A when that came out. It was that era of indie rock. There was lots of really obscure stuff too.”
I Swapped Spotify for Vinyl and It Changed My Life: I listen to music every single day—it’s one of my favorite things in life. I also bought my first turntable a few months ago and have wondered what it’d be like to only listen to vinyl for an entire week. So recently, I did just that and I have a lot of thoughts about the experience. My history with music is lifelong. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had some means of listening to it within arm’s reach. I even shamelessly toted around one of those ridiculous binders full of CDs. I was thrilled when I could finally upgrade to an iPod, and I’m pretty sure I actually cried tears of joy when streaming music services were first announced. But as I’ve spent more and more time with Spotify (and eventually, SiriusXM, Tidal, and YouTube Premium), I think I slowly started to take music for granted. It eventually became background noise to me, like an accessory I had to have yet never paid much attention to anymore. I was thinking about all of this recently, and it hit me how desperate I was to do something about it and reconnect with music.
A 10,000-piece Hawaiian music collection from Canada has a new home at the Hawaiʻi State Archives: The largest known collection of Hawaiian music just ended up in the lap of the Hawaiʻi State Archives. Scores of boxes arrived in the building safe and sound in early December from a trip across the Canadian border. Thus, the Hawaiʻi State Archives is looking for more volunteers to help organize the collection. Archivist Adam Jansen says it will take one to two years for staff and volunteers to clean, index and digitize the 10,000-piece collection donated by the Michael Scott family in Canada. He says the most interesting thing to him is how much early period music is in the collection. “I’m going through and digitizing some of the versions of Aloha ‘Oe, and to find these recordings from the 19-aughts, the 1910s, 1920s, you know, we’re getting to the earliest recordings of Hawaiian music so that we can understand some of the genesis of what we appreciate today,” Jansen said.
Cassette Tapes Seeing Sales Resurgence in the Tens of Millions: Cassette tapes may never be as popular as vinyl, but they are selling like hotcakes. The sound quality of the format is famously lackluster, but sales have skyrocketed. And today, the sound is much clearer. Media formats for music playback have changed countless times over the centuries: cylinders; phonographs; cassettes; CDs; and now, digital music. Over the last few decades, vinyl has seen an incredible rebirth, with purists arguing that music has never sounded as good as it does on a record. More recently, cassettes have seen a smaller, but noticeable, return, as well. Of course, cassette tapes are known for sounding scratchy and muffled, with a constant hissing in the background. In his video series How Music and Mathematics Relate, Dr. David Kung, Professor of Mathematics at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, discusses the history of recorded music.
Denver, CO | New Hotel Adds Victrola Record Players as Unique Amenity: Victrola is partnering with Thompson Hotels to have record players at the hotel’s new Denver location. The soon-to-open Thompson Denver has teamed up with Victrola to provide guests with a novel addition to their stay at the boutique hotel at 1616 Market Street: record players. Victrola, an iconic name in the stereophonic industry, moved its headquarters to Denver last year; it is installing a variety of its turntables in some Thompson suites and bluetooth-enabled radios in all of the rooms. The hotel will also have a turntable-equipped listening lounge on the sixth floor, and guests will be able to check out a portable Revolution GO record player to take with them around town. According to Victrola CEO Scott Hagen, the partnership came about because the two companies considered themselves “newbies” to Denver and realized they shared some of the same goals for engaging with their new community. During their conversations, representatives of both companies realized that music is an integral part of Denver’s culture, and they began to discuss how to bring that culture into the hotel and its rooms.
