Ottawa’s Vertigo Records is throwing the first Bollocks to Record Store Day Sale, When Vertigo Records scaled back its participation in Record Store Day, it was dropped from RSD’s directory and denied merchandise from major labels: In response, Vertigo Records will hold a customer appreciation party the weekend before Record Store Day, April 9, that Tomlin calls The First Annual Bollocks to Record Store Day Sale. It promises to be a celebration of a real independent record store and its patrons, not whatever that other thing has become.
The Australian Ambassador For Record Store Day Has Been Announced: After the biggest Record Store Day ever last year, the occasion for vinyl enthusiasts is returning and Ella Hooper has been announced as the Australian ambassador for the day. Hooper is best known for fronting Killing Heidi but has since gone onto make up one half of The Verses, appear on ABC music trivia show Spicks & Specks and release solo material. “I’m a lifelong fan of the independent record store experience and am thrilled to support the vital role that these stores still play in the music scene, as this year’s ambassador,” Hooper said in a statement.
Origami Vinyl’s Neil Schield on his Echo Park record store’s closing: ‘It wasn’t sustainable’: The vinyl revival is, in some ways, healthier than ever: Sales are up 30% over last year, the 10th consecutive year of growth for the format in the U.S. But Origami’s closure proves that vinyl’s expanding popularity may come with troubles of its own for small stores…But in the end, he said, “The shop’s been losing money.”
Jazz Record Mart collection is now in distinguished company: The entire contents of Chicago’s iconic Jazz Record Mart now sits in a warehouse in Reno, Nevada. Over 50 years of history were piled onto 25 pallets and shipped to Wolfgang’s Vault, an online music memorabilia seller, after JRM closed for business Feb. 15 The items will be sorted, priced and listed on Wolfgang’s website over the next few months. All that remains in Chicago is an empty store at 27 E Illinois St. and decades of memories.
The Vault in Christchurch to star on The One Show segment about backmasking on vinyl: A little vinyl record shop in Christchurch is set to feature in a programme broadcast to millions of homes on primetime TV. The Vault, which is independently owned by husband and wife team, Chrissy Collier and Alan Rowett, was filmed for BBC’s The One Show as part of a segment about a recording technique called backmasking.
Here’s a Fascinating Look at How Colored Vinyl Records Came to Be: If you have spent any time around records, either 45 RPM singles or albums, you might have encountered the term “colored vinyl records.” You might think that’s a strange term; after all, all records are colored vinyl records, aren’t they? And aren’t they all black? Historically, most records are black, probably because black vinyl is relatively inexpensive compared to other colors of vinyl and possibly because the dark colors might help obscure any impurities that might be in the compound.
Obsolete technology becomes an industry of the future: When Ton Vermeulen bought a pressing plant for vinyl records in Haarlem outside Amsterdam at the end of the 1990s neither he nor anyone else believed he was investing in tomorrow’s technology. The seller, one of the big players in the global music market (Sony Music Entertainment), had watched sales gradually decline since the 1980s and then basically disappear as CDs took over. Today the previously low-valued machines are working at full capacity and the company, now called Record Industry, has laid on an extra shift to meet demand.
