10 Top Vinyl Record Stores in Stockholm: Vinyl records have become a real topic of discussion in recent years. The old format has gone through an impressive and noticeable revival, with many new albums being put on vinyl—as well as a number of reissues of classic ones. For some people this is fantastic—this is how music is meant to be heard. For others, it is a pretentious waste of money for music snobs, who pretend to hear an imaginary difference between vinyl and CD. Whichever side you are on, Stockholm has embraced the trend and has a number of fantastic vinyl shops. These are ten of the very best Sweden’s capital has to offer.
End of an era at Bert McCormick’s Ballyclare music shop: After more than four decades selling records from around the world, on Saturday Bert McCormick brings the shutters down on his eponymous Ballyclare store for the final time. Now 78, music man Mr McCormick started in the business when he was just 16 years old. He was a jazz keyboard player before going to work for a record label and then touring with showbands around Northern Ireland, playing with the likes of Chubby Checker and The Kinks. But it was in 1976 that he spotted an empty unit in Ballyclare’s Main Street, and fulfilled his lifelong ambition of opening his own record store. He has worked there ever since, with his wife, daughter and grandchildren all helping out…
Strictly Business: Back-A-Round Records opens downtown: Finally, Fayetteville has a new record shop, and all is good in life again. Music lovers — especially the young vinyl-buying crowd and the older folks who have never quite embraced the world of digital music — may want to check out Back-A-Round Records, which opened in the downtown district Friday morning. The store celebrated its grand opening in conjunction with Fourth Friday activities. “We were excited about the store,” said 48-year-old Chris Creech, who was perusing the compact discs with her daughter, Erin, on Friday afternoon. “I think there’s a great selection. Not just records but tapes, CDs, vintage concert shirts, record players and stuff.” The Creeches are from Hope Mills. Mom was wearing a David Bowie T-shirt; her 19-year-old daughter, Erin, had on a shirt featuring English post-punk band Bauhaus…“This is who I am. This is what I am,” said Adkins, who is 37.
Nostalgia, novelty drive vinyl’s comeback: Rochester resident Curt Queensland was nine when he bought his first vinyl record. It was a 45 record of Seals & Croft’s 1972 hit “Summer Breeze,” and it marked the beginning of a lifetime love affair with vinyl. Today, with a record collection at 3,000 to 4,000 albums, nearly every inch of shelf space in Queensland’s Northwest Rochester apartment is covered with vinyl records. Many bring back memories. One of the first LPs he bought was Billy Squire’s triple Platinum album “Don’t Say No.” “That had Stroke It on it. ‘Stroke Man, Stroke Man,” Queensland said…Though vinyl sales dipped to extinction levels in 2006, Queensland just kept on buying and selling records. When vinyl began its comeback, no one was less surprised than Queensland, because, in his mind, it never went away.
The CD Business Isn’t Dying—It’s Just Evolving: As streaming takes over the music business, there are signs that the CD is still going strong–just not at Best Buy or Target. “Instead of having to put up thousands of dollars and having a huge stack of boxes in the garage in hopes of maybe selling them, they’ll order a few hundred at a time, and when they sell those out, they’ll order more,” she says. Vinyl, by comparison, is more of an ordeal. Manufacturing can take at least a month and is more expensive than CD production. The resulting vinyl album is pricier for fans, who can’t even listen to their purchase on the way home from a show, like they can with CDs. For the clients Atomic works with, CDs still make up the vast majority of their merchandising sales.
Vintage vinyl market is on the rebound: Huessein “Huss” Esmailzadeh may have seen the resurgence of vinyl records before most. Back when Esmailzadeh was owner of Man Cave Consignment, there was a corner of his South Broadway store devoted to selling old and classic records. Even as the Man Cave theme faded, the Rochester entrepreneur noticed, his records maintained a brisk business. That little section of a store would become the genesis for what is today called Rochester Records. The opening of Rochester’s first vinyl shop in nearly a decade underscores how vigorously the market for vinyl records has rebounded over time. From a format that once seemed on the verge of vanishing, today vinyl’s popularity is outstripping digital music growth.
Turntable Review: Rega Planar 6: The latest addition to the Rega range is a stealthy turntable in more ways that one. It looks just like the classic Rega Planar 3 that has been evolving since the early seventies, yet its plinth is not wood but a laminate of rigid skins either side of a foam core created for maximum stiffness and minimum weight Rega understands that the only vibration you want on a turntable is at the point where the stylus sits in the groove, and that the best way to stop anything else interfering with this subtle interaction is to minimise its ability to vibrate. Stiff and light is the best way to do this as they have proved with the mighty RP10 range topper, from which the Planar 6 has borrowed a lot of tech. The foam core plinth first appeared on the RP10, and the Neo power supply (available as an upgrade for any 24V Rega BTW) is based on the DSP generator from that turntable.
