Ludington, MI | Going vinyl: Record store to open Saturday: A new business aims to find its groove on South James Street — an independently owned record store in downtown Ludington. Vintage Nutz, at 301 S. James St., will sell, buy and trade vinyl records, turntables, cassettes, CDs, VHS tapes and other retro items and memorabilia, said owner Ryan Lloyd. “We’ll be focusing on the music, but we’ll have a little bit of everything — anything old-school,” he said. The store will host its grand opening from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. this Saturday. As a special offer, customers who buy during opening day will get a 10-percent discount off their next purchase, Lloyd said.
How is the resurgence of vinyl impacting our environment? The music industry has marked more than a decade of phenomenal growth in vinyl sales, but the question of sustainability remains. The figures are no doubt impressive: Some 14.3 million albums were shipped in 2017. Sales were up almost 200 percent year over year through the end of April 2019. And that’s only part of the story. Those numbers don’t include records sold directly to fans by touring bands or via individual sites, not to mention second-hand sales. “What the vinyl industry doesn’t really necessarily recognize,” Ryan Wilson of the Concord Music Group said in 2017, “is that there is a vinyl culture that lives outside of the new-release cycle, outside of Nielsen SoundScan and consumption charts that will always be there.” Unfortunately, there are a series of hidden costs associated with all of that great music – costs borne directly by our over-stressed planet.
Lincoln, UK | It’s coming home! Vinyl fans ecstatic after iconic Lincoln record store returns to the place where it first started: It’s moved to the original site where it opened in 1991. Lincoln’s vinyl fans are ecstatic after the city’s only independent record shop ‘came home’ to the place where it began nearly 30 years ago. Back to Mono announced earlier this week that it had moved a few doors down, back to the upper floor at 26 Guildhall Street – to where the shop started trading in 1991. And the business has a slick new promo video to promote itself. Owner Jim Penistan, 48, otherwise known as Jim Sonic, opened the shop’s predecessor, called Sonic Sounds, which operated at the site until around 2007. The music lover said that record sales have enjoyed a renaissance ever since 2009 and now account for 80 per cent of music sales. The shop has also expanded its collection of second-hand and new records to more than 10,000 – it also stocks CDs, which still account for 20 per cent of music sales, and a wide range of music memorabilia, including posters and tee-shirts.
Vinylize Your Sound: Thenatan’s VINYLIZER VST is designed to add old vinyl textures: Thenatan says that their VINYLIZER VST generates the warm sound and drive of old vinyl records and is a handy tool designed to add a wide range of Old Vinyl Textures to any studio toolkit. Here’s the details in their own words…VINYLIZER VST lets you control each nostalgic element independently, giving you all the vintage turntable sounds you love. Add a Non-Stop Vinyl ‘grit & grime’ Texture to your clean, digital tracks Or Give your tracks that old school flavor by adding a touch of noise dust and Hiss As Simple As Press & Hold a Note on your Midi Keyboard. These analog artifacts will add life and warmth to your tracks, just like the old records from back in the days when your record-player had “soul.”
