Streaming and vinyl bring color back to the record market: The upturn in the sector is confirmed with a 5.4% increase in the recorded music market in 2019. More and more French people are subscribing to on-demand listening offers. It’s probably a first. During the presentation on Tuesday morning of the music market results for the past year, not once was the word piracy spoken! Growing for the fourth consecutive year, the sector which has regained color has visibly moved on to something else. With progression “Sustained” of the recorded music turnover to 5.4% and 772 million of receipts, this long moribund market was again pulled by the streaming (59% of the sales), while the physical supports fall again by 10% . And if the CD remains the second most profitable format after streaming, thanks to a network which still has 4,000 points of sale, vinyl confirms as everywhere its good health. Sales are up 12% and now represent 20% of the physical market, with 42% of buyers under the age of 30.
Ottawa, CA | Downtown music store to close, make way for pot shop: Compact Music is the city’s longest-running independent music retailer, with a primary location in the Glebe that’s been a fixture since the mid-1990s. Compact Music co-owner Ian Boyd quips that one of his stores is going to pot after 17 years. His downtown Bank Street location is set to close in May to make way for a Hobo cannabis store where you can now buy cbd oil, and Boyd has mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, he and his brother James, who’s also a partner in the business, are in their 60s and were already starting to make plans to downsize the two-store business to one location. In December, they gave six months’ notice to their landlord that they would not be renewing the lease at 206 Bank St. That would have given them until the end of June to clear out the bins of vinyl records, CDs, DVDs and everything else… “We would have much preferred to stay to June to have a longer window to sell all our inventory,” Ian Boyd said. “We were even thinking that we might want to renew. Business is up at both stores, and it’s all because of vinyl.”
London, UK | A new record shop has opened in London: Selling Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis’ record collection as well as secondhand offerings. A new record shop – called Atlantis Records – has opened in Hackney, London. Located in the former premise of Pacific Social Club cafe, Atlantis Records will sell Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis’ record collection, which spans from early jungle and UK indie records. In addition to vinyl, it also includes acetates and cassettes. Atlantis Records will also stock secondhand records spanning a range of genres – with everything from from ’50s Yemeni Yiddish dance music, classical and reggae, to free jazz, soul and spoken word represented in the shop. Atlantis also plans to sell beer on tap, as well as hosting DJ sets and small gigs in the space. Visit Atlantis Records in person at 8 Clarence Rd, London, E5 8HB, open daily 10am – 7pm
Santa Fe, NM | The Guy in the Groove record shop moves to Constellation Home Electronics: Dick Rosemont is continuing his 43-year run as a vinyl record shop owner in a new location. His The Guy in the Groove store earlier this month moved to Constellation Home Electronics, 215 N. Guadalupe St. Since 2012, The Guy in the Groove had been inside A Sound Look, 502 Cerrillos Road. Rosemont became a record store co-owner in East Lansing, Mich., where he had Flag, Black & Circular from 1977 to 2011. He followed his wife, photographer and filmmaker Jane Rosemont, to New Mexico after she got an offer from a Santa Fe gallery. These days, he has more of a vinyl record nook, with about 1,500 to 2,000 discs on hand at any time. He is the only person on staff. Rosemont has stuck with vinyl since the Carter administration. “They didn’t go away,” he said of record outlets. “They just went to smaller stores. The end of the ’90s and early 2000s were the low point in vinyl sales. Last year albums surpassed CDs for the first time since the 1980s. It’s a hip alternative.”
Brooklyn, NY | You can bring your own records to play at this new bar: Beloved music venue Good Room has long been one of the best spots to go dancing in Brooklyn—in fact, it most recently served as a set for Hulu’s new television show High Fidelity. Now, the team behind the space has their sights set on a new type of nightlife venture: a listening bar called Good Bar. You may be wondering: How does a “listening bar” differ from any regular bar with an LCD Soundsystem playing through the speakers? Listening bars—bars outfitted with state-of-the-art sound equipment and bartenders who expertly curate the playlists—are on the rise throughout the city. Though you can, of course, chat while you’re in these spaces, they are the perfect crutch for the socially anxious: No need to drum up small talk if the group is busy being hypnotized by the tunes…but it’s also a strong conversation starter, should you need one.
High Fidelity’s Music Supervisors Pick Their 10 Favorite Songs From the Show: When the High Fidelity reboot was in preproduction — before Zoë Kravitz had even signed on to play Rob, a role made famous by John Cusack in the 2000 movie — music supervisors Manish Raval, Alison Rosenfeld, and Tom Wolfe of Aperture started making playlists. The producers made their own mixes, as did Kravitz once she joined the ensemble, with the track choices often making their way into scripts and informing characters’ personalities, such as the punk-leaning Simon and pop-loving Cherise. “The showrunners said, ‘We want this to be a platform to introduce a younger generation to like older favorites like David Bowie and Prince, but also be a good avenue to introduce music from all over the world,” Rosenfeld tells Vulture. Raval adds, “We personally wanted to do what we could to not reference the movie. We felt that this is just a different world and, musically, we’re in a different time.”
Can High Fidelity Survive the End of Taste? The story of a record-store snob struggles to fit an era defined by shared enthusiasm. The challenge facing the 2020 High Fidelity, then, is whether it has anything to say about taste in the 21st century. Showrunners Sarah Kucserka and Veronica West immediately signal that the story is no longer about a (too-slowly) vanishing species of patronizing music dudes by switching the chief protagonist’s gender. In the fourth episode, a woman gushes to Zoë Kravitz’s Rob (here short for Robin) about her music-shop career, saying, “It’s so badass for you to not only occupy but frickin’ own such a historically masculine space.” Rob cocks a skeptical eyebrow, but then shrugs happily, “Yeah, I guess it is kinda badass.” None of the core trio at the record store now is a straight white guy: Jack Black’s role has been taken by Da’Vine Joy Randolph as the ebullient Cherise (rechanneling the energy of her breakout role in last year’s music-history-mythologizing Dolemite Is My Name), and the third musketeer is Simon (David H. Holmes), a gentle geek who dated Rob briefly before he came out of the closet as gay.
How to Start Collecting Vinyl Records and Listening to Music as Intended: Ready to breathe some analog mojo back into your music collection? It’s easier to get started than you may think. Vinyl has been on the rise for the past few years, so much so that vinyl records are actually selling better than CDs. Both pale in comparison to digital music, but plenty of people are looking to our analog past in an attempt to make a better connection with the music they love. Maybe you’ve thought about getting into listening to vinyl, but it seems daunting. Getting set up for listening to records is actually simpler than it seems, but there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind, which is why we’re here to help. First things first, you’re going to need a turntable if you don’t already own one. You can spend a lot of money on a turntable if you want, but a model like the Audio-Technica AT-LP60X costs less than $100 and will still get you quality sound. You’ll also need something to amplify the turntable’s signal and either headphones or speakers. Your home A/V receiver will handle this, but there is one important thing to keep in mind: unless your receiver has a bespoke Phono input for a record player, the volume will be very low.
