Denver, CO | Victrola, a maker of record players since the early 1900s, is still around and has moved its HQ to Denver: Vintage brand plans new products to appeal to a new generation of phonograph lovers. Not every technology Denver is attracting is new. In fact, one is very vintage, like gramophone old. The modern-day successor to Victrola, which popularized records and record players in the first third of the 1900s, has relocated its headquarters to Denver ahead of an aggressive expansion strategy. “We are launching new products that we know have never been seen before — what people need when it comes to a record player today,” said Scott Hagen, Victrola’s CEO. The company recently relocated from Long Island to the Shift Workspaces in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Its new home is in a building once used to repair audio equipment and consumer electronics. Be it coincidence or destiny, old Victrolas left behind now decorate a space the brand inhabits. Victrola is looking to grow its headcount from about two dozen to 40 employees this year as it aggressively expands its product line to appeal to a new generation of record enthusiasts…
Love Letter To A Record: Silky Roads On Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ This song has been one of our favourite songs for years, and the record as a whole also holds a spot worthy of the pool room. The record for each of us captures a signpost for certain times in our lives. Pink Floyd was a pathway into the world of music we know now, we love everything from the structure and cohesiveness of their albums, and, more recently as we’ve grown, we have been able to understand and appreciate the political agenda they explore. The record tells a story, and marks a point in the careers of Pink Floyd. After their immensely successful release of Dark Side of The Moon, they found themselves at the mercy of many labels reaching their greedy hands out to try to get their fingers on some of Pink Floyd’s magic. The blatant groove of one of our favourite Pink Floyd songs lives in the album Wish You Were Here. ‘Have A Cigar’s assertive lyrics written by Roger Waters, and unique vocal phrasing by Roy Harper, instantaneously take you down a spiralling road of clear imagery.
France’s recorded music market generated revenues of $883M in 2020: The recorded music market in France generated €781 million (approximately $883m) in 2020, representing annual growth – albeit very small annual growth – of just 0.1% in the pandemic year. The results, which include total revenues for physical and digital sales, neighboring rights and sync, were published this week by French trade body SNEP. According to SNEP, physical and digital sales combined (omitting neighboring rights and sync) increased by 4% to €658m ($744m). That saw this physical/digital figure return to its 2008 level, but it still only represented 46% of 2002’s peak sales figures in the world’s fifth largest music market. Digging deeper into France’s 2020 revenue figures reveals that overall physical sales declined 20% from €230m ($258m) in 2019 to €184m ($208m) last year, which saw saw record retailers shuttered due to the pandemic.
Triumph To Release ‘Allied Forces’ 40th-Anniversary Box Set: Canadian rock legends Triumph will release a 40th-anniversary box set of their classic 1981 album “Allied Forces” to celebrate this year’s Record Store Day. In addition, the trio—drummer Gil Moore, guitarist/ vocalist Rik Emmett and bassist Mike Levine—has been named Canadian Ambassadors for Record Store Day, which takes place June 12 and July 17. “We’re really proud to be this year’s ambassadors,” Moore said in a video message. “When I got interested in music, my buddies and I in the neighborhood, we had a pilgrimage pretty much every weekend. On Saturday morning, we’d all get to the bus station and get ourselves downtown. And here in Toronto, we had Sam The Record Man on Yonge Street, which was the record store that was the ‘be all, end all’ of vinyl… That’s what got me started playing drums,” he explained. “So make your way over to your local record store and parse through those beautiful vinyl records, find some music that you wanna fall in love with, and turn it up loud.” The Triumph box set, due out June 12 via Round Hill Records.
From Vinyl Records to Streaming Platforms: How Spotify Changed the Music Industry: The digital age has transformed almost every aspect of our culture and society, especially entertainment. While it has never been easier to be entertained, the roots and culture of certain entertainment industries have slowly melted away into the background with the presence of electronic amusement. For music specifically, pivotal factors to the industry’s growth have now become artifacts. Cassette tapes are now foreign, vinyl records are vintage wall decorations, and record shops are slowly turning into the Blockbusters of the film industry— unneeded and fading away. However, the music industry has never progressed at a more rapid pace than it is right now. With just the touch of your fingertips, music streaming services have made it possible to listen to anything, anytime, anywhere. …Spotify, a brand that you have definitely heard before, is a company that is just as significant to the music industry’s history as the words “vinyl record” or “cassette tape” are.
