UK | UK record labels annual trade income hits £1.1bn in 2019: The trade income of the UK’s record labels has reached its highest level for more than 10 years. According to the BPI, trade income rose by 7.3% in 2019, reaching £1,069.8 million, thanks to investment in new music, the growth of streaming and vinyl sales. Trade income covers revenues generated through streaming, physical and download sales, public performance rights, and sync. “Watching British artists such as Stormzy, Celeste, Dave and Harry Styles at the BRIT Awards was a reminder of the fantastic contribution music makes to our national life. The music industry’s success is powered by record labels’ up-front investment and shouldering of risk, so it is important to the sustainable health of the music ecosystem that label revenues grew on last year’s results,” said BPI & BRIT Awards chief executive Geoff Taylor of the latest results.
Kettering, UK | Kettering record fair cancelled for “safeguarding.” Another cancellation amid the coronavirus pandemic. Record fairs planned in Kettering for March and April have been cancelled in light of the current coronavirus crisis. Kettering Vinyl and CD Fairs posted a statement on their Facebook page to announce the decision. They said: “Very sorry to inform you that March and April fairs have been cancelled as a safeguarding measure for record dealers and the public.” The fairs on March 28 and April 25 were due to be held at the Parish Hall in Kettering. The remaining fair dates will be reviewed in mid April. Kettering Vinyl and CD Fairs said they and many record dealers have an online presence and urged customers to send a message if they want to get in touch with any regular dealers.
Kingston, UK | Covid-19 Music Industry Update: Banquet Records. Kingston’s independent record store Banquet has announced that, due to the coronavirus, its staff will now be working in the shop with the front doors closed, and will be focusing on mail-order services only until further notice. “With the recent Social Distancing measures advised by government, we can no longer in good faith have our physical shop open,” they explained in a statement. “While music is essential, and new music is brilliant, it can’t be argued that travelling to the store is essential travel. Our doors will be closed, until the time we feel it’s right to re-open. Some of our staff are working from home, others’ hours and roles will change. We have hundreds of thousands of pounds of stock, with deliveries arriving daily, and we expect minimal disruption to supply chains. We will not lay off any staff over the coming months and expect records and CDs to get out to you in good time, with no sign of a change to the Royal Mail service…”
Austin, TX | Coronavirus in Austin: Waterloo Records temporarily closing, will have curbside service: Waterloo Records, winner of the Austin Music Awards’ best record store category every year since it opened in 1982, is closing its doors to the public through March 29 amid the coronavirus pandemic but will offer curbside service via online and phone orders, the store announced Monday… “Curbside service will be provided by a small crew at the store each day from 10am-7pm Mon-Sat and 11am – 7pm on Sunday. Simply call us at (512) 474-2500 to place your order and a staffer will bring your LP/CD/Video out to your vehicle. For this service we are only accepting credit card payments. In addition you can shop us at WaterlooRecords.com where orders over $35 ship media mail for free. You can also shop with us through our Ebay, Amazon, and Discogs stores. Links to those stores can be found on our homepage www.waterloorecords.com.”
Chicago, IL | High Fidelity Turns 20, and the Chicago It Imagined Is Gone: A writer reflects on the vanished city the movie immortalized. It would be an exaggeration to say watching High Fidelity persuaded me to move to Chicago nearly two decades ago, but it didn’t hurt. Stephen Frears’s film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel showed me a world I fervently wanted to live in, a place of funky shops, laid-back concert venues, and a culture scene inextricably tied to alt weeklies. It’s not that I wanted to be Rob Gordon, John Cusack’s lovable-loser antihero, but I longed to enter his orbit. Championship Vinyl, his fictional workplace, was my dream version of a record store: deeply stocked, disorganized, and staffed by clerks who, if they decided they liked you, would point you in the direction of the best music you’d never heard. This was not the Chicago of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or The Fugitive, two movies that had shaped my early imaginings of the place. This was something better.
Houston, TX | A Houston Art Exhibit Redefines ‘Chopped and Screwed’ Music: DJ Screw’s life and work act as a springboard for 15 mixed-media artists, reflecting ideas of identity and agency outside the mainstream. The late, great DJ Screw, born Robert Earl Davis Jr., sold mixtapes in high school for lunch money. He went on to open his own record store—the legendary Screwed Up Records & Tapes—sell hundreds of thousands of copies of his albums, and establish himself as the godfather of Houston hip-hop, all before his untimely death in 2000 from a codeine overdose at 29. Now, a new exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City Through Mutated Lenses, explores his artistic legacy. His lunch money mixtapes didn’t have the same sound for which he would become known; Big Bubb, Screw’s cousin and the current owner of Screwed Up Records & Tapes, says as much in a documentary filmed for the exhibit. At that point, he was still experimenting, becoming the artist Houston knows and loves.
Industry Veteran Jim Salzer Dies: Jim Salzer, a veteran Southern California home video retailer, died early March 15 after suffering a second fall. Salzer, whose Salzer’s Music in Ventura remains one of the area’s top sellers of physical media, had been hospitalized after an initial fall in late February. Shortly after noon on Sunday, March 15, he posted to Facebook, “I can’t keep up with Facebook currently. I’m having a bad time with recovery. See you on the flip side.” His daughter, Sage, writes on his Facebook page that in the late afternoon, “my dad and I FaceTimed and a few more hours passed and he is gone. Grateful for the countless hours we spent around the clock with him in the hospital after he took the first fall, breaking neck and back….”
