Los Angeles, CA | Amoeba Music in Hollywood sets to relocate as city plans move forward: After years of being in limbo, Amoeba Music, an iconic Hollywood record store, is leaving its current space for a slightly smaller one nearby. In 2015, Amoeba Hollywood sold their property for a reported $34 million to a holding company associated with GPI Companies. The store was able to lease the location back for a couple of years, but ultimately the company plans to replace the record store with a residential apartment building over 20 stories high. Buzz of this news filtered all throughout the internet, and long-time fans of Amoeba feared this could be the end. But in 2017, Amoeba put rumors to rest with a Facebook post ensuring that the store will not leave L.A., but is “now in a position where [Amoeba] may have to change locations in the coming years.” On March 14, 2019, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission voted to reject an appeal to halt the project, moving forward plans for the store’s relocation. Luckily for music fans, Amoeba won’t leave Hollywood. In fact, the branch hopes to only have to move a block or so away.
Austin, TX | Austin Will Be Hosting The Biggest Vinyl Record Sale In The USA This Spring. The vinyl loving city will be holding the biggest record sale in May. The coolest event for music lovers of all kinds is coming to Austin this May. For three days the largest record convention in the entire country will be held at the massive Palmer Events Center in downtown Austin. Fans of every type of music imaginable will be able to find something they like at this giant sale. The Austin Record Convention will be on May 18th to 19th so mark your calendars right now! The massive Austin sale is known as the largest sale of recorded music in the entire USA. There will be over one million vinyls, CDs, cassettes, LPs, rare finds and memorabilia available for purchase. The giant record sale will host over 300 different vendors from across the U.S. and Europe to bring rarities and styles of music from all over the globe. The event will be so enormous that visiting for just one day wouldn’t be enough! You’ll definitely want to stop by the giant sale when it’s set up in May. You could look for rare and unique vinyl to add to your collection, find the perfect gift for someone you care for, meet local music lovers similar to yourself or just have a blast visiting the past with a collection of thousands of records that go back to the early 1900s.
White Bear Lake, MN | Special day celebrates venerable vinyl: Contrary to what the digital music generation may think, the independent record store is doing a brisk business. You could say the popularity of vinyl is making a comeback, but some say it never really left. Owners of White Bear Lake Records, a downtown store the size of a one-car garage, attest to its staying power. Chris Valenty, a one-third owner who grew up in Forest Lake, admitted that, yes, records went out of style a couple decades ago. “In the ‘90s, people were throwing them out,” he recalled. “There was a time when no one was making records and pressing machines were scrapped. But they’ve started making records again.” And it’s not just the baby boomers walking through the door into the small, cluttered store. Gen Zers are getting hip to vinyl and the whole “music experience” records bring. Valenty sees it as a physical thing. “Records are cool. You put on a record and concentrate on the music in an almost ritualistic way. You have an experience with music rather than something playing in the background. Kids see it as almost magical. It’s alien technology to them.”
Tokyo, JP | Tower Records Tokyo goes all in on vinyl: The Tower Records Tokyo store in Shinjuku is cashing in on the Japanese market’s resurgence of interest in vinyl records. While Tower has sold records for a long time, the Tower Vinyl brand is seizing on the global vinyl revival that has seen consumers worldwide take a preference to the physical discs, with all the nostalgia they represent, over the more ephemeral and invisible distribution of digital music. The store now holds 70,000 records in stock – the majority of which are second hand. The vinyl revival is blossoming just as streaming technology hits a new peak in the territory…Vinyl records have been making a major comeback in Japan for some time, with HMV also launching a vinyl-album store in Shibuya in 2014 – having been absent for the district for several years, and now having expanded its operations since that time. Japanese artists have recently been releasing their music on vinyl, and – rather anachronistically – some 90s-era CDs have been reissued on vinyl record.
UK | Hipster embrace of cassettes fuels demand for magnetic tape: A global shortage of the music-quality magnetic tape used in cassettes has helped the fortunes of two firms, riding the resurgence in popularity of cassettes. Across the US cassette tape album sales grew by 23 per cent in 2018, according to industry tracker Nielsen Music. Sales rose from 178,000 copies the year prior to 219,000. That may be small fry compared to the 1994 heyday, when sales of 246 million cassette albums were recorded. But, nevertheless, it is still significant considering the format was all but dead by the mid 2000s. The revival meant that there was not enough magnetic tape to produce the required tape. So two facilities – one in the American Midwest and the other in western France – have stepped in to meet the need.
New York, NY | Crate News! Brooklyn Is Getting a New Record Store From Co-Op 87 and Mexican Summer: New York’s record store landscape is ever in flux, with the most recent example being the closing of Good Records in the East Village and the opening of a San Francisco import, Stranded Records, in its place. The latest development in Brooklyn: A new endeavor from the owners of Greenpoint record shop Co-Op 87 and neighboring indie label Mexican Summer. Brooklyn Record Exchange, as the shop is called, will open Saturday in the East Williamsburg complex that also houses Elsewhere and Mission Chinese. Later this spring, a sister location will open at 87 Guernsey Street, the narrow space where Co-Op 87 recently closed for a revamp. Ben Steidel, a founder of Co-Op 87, described the new East Williamsburg shop as “just a larger version of what we were aiming to do at Co-Op, with room to do all the things we wanted to do there.” The store will carry new vinyl from Mexican Summer (home of Ariel Pink, Jessica Pratt, Cate Le Bon, and others) and other select labels, but will mostly consist of a wide variety of used records.
