Rock Candy: A few local record stores are moving: Almost Music is relocating from Benson to the Blackstone District, and Recycled Sounds is leaving Lincoln for central Omaha. Drastic Plastic is rebranding and dividing its shop into two businesses. Recycled Sounds and Almost Music plan to reopen in their new locations this week. Record stores have seen something of a resurgence in recent years in Omaha.
Meet the inventor of album cover art: Long before record companies had design teams, albums were sold in simple packaging: either the record store’s own bag or something plain and unmarked. Only very special or limited-edition records came with any sort of notable packaging—even then it was printed separately and glued onto covers. Then came Alex Steinweiss, the designer who pretty much invented album art as we know it today. When he came to work for Columbia Records as an advertising manager in 1939, he realized cover art could be a great advantage when it came to marketing.
J Sainsbury: Shop in spin about vinyl record sales: A record shop owner has accused two supermarkets of ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ by selling vinyl. Sainsbury’s is stocking them for the first time since the 1980s as the format enjoys a revival, following a similar move by Tesco, which announced they would be selling LPs in December. Claire Howell, owner and manager of It’s For You Vinyl in Cleveland Street, hopes music lovers stay loyal to the smaller independent stores which she believes have kept the trade alive. She said: “I didn’t know Sainsbury’s were going to do it as well.”
Atmo Sfera Platterless Turntable Spins Vinyl in the Air: The record player of the future is here: Chicago’s Gramovox already defied gravity with their vertical Floating Record Player, and now Italian start-up Audio Deva offers their own “upside-down” take on a turntable. It eschews the basic design that has “remained the same for about a century.” …Funding through Kickstarter, Audio Deva’s belt-driven Atmo Sfera looks more like a compact drone than record player: it reduces the platter, and paired with a very small, low-torque motor, the vinyl seems to be free-floating in air.
Vinyl sales reach 1980s levels, But streaming eats into musicians’ profits: Revenues from vinyl albums were $416 million in 2015 – and, as RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman points out, this is actually more than the industry made through ad-supported, on-demand services such as YouTube and Spotify. “Last year, 17 million vinyl albums, a legacy format enjoying a bit of a resurgence, generated more revenues than billions and billions of on-demand free streams: $416 million compared to $385 million for on-demand free streams,” he says.
