Garth Brooks Sells More Than 1M Vinyl Records On Pre-Order: Country star Garth Brooks likes to break records and he’s just smashed yet another by surpassing one million in vinyl pre-order sales of his box set “Legacy Collection.” For Brooks, however, this means more to him than just breaking sales records. There’s something special about a vinyl record. “It’s not about the numbers,” he told me. “It’s about the fact that you have to own vinyl, which makes me think that people will never let music just be background noise.” According to Nielsen Music, vinyl sales were up 14.6% in 2018 with 16.8 million vinyl albums sold. Last year marked the 13th consecutive year of growth for the format and it was also a new yearly high for vinyl since Nielsen Music began tracking sales in 1991. In March, Brooks sold over 420,000 in just 18 hours and it was because of this success on the interactive livestream social selling network TalkShopLive that he decided to open this additional sale.
Johnstown, PA | 6 News Throwback: Music forever changed by compact disc: Music is always changing with the times, and so are the ways we listen to music. A WJAC report in the 1990s detailed the limelight coming off cassettes and being put on CDs. “If you wanted to ride around in the car and listen to music and you wanted to listen to your favorite stuff, you bought a CD,” said John George, owner of George’s Song Shop in Johnstown. Take one look at the awning on the outside of the shop, and you’ll know quite the history lesson is waiting for you on the inside. White text across the maroon colored awning reads, “America’s oldest record store.” It’s been in business for more than 80 years. Vinyl, cassettes, CDs – you name it, George’s Song Shop has it. “I carry a little bit of everything. Try to keep everyone happy. Got to have it all to keep them coming back,” said George. And they do keep coming back. One woman coming in to make a purchase says she’s been coming to George’s Song Shop since she was in seventh grade. George says one of the few slow periods at the shop was around the beginning of the digital age.
Billings, MT | New record store opens its doors in Billings: Cameron Records, located at 1440 Central Avenue, held a grand opening Saturday with about 200 people coming through the door. T.J. Goodwin and Andy Brown own Cameron Records. The two used to run getitonvinyl.com, a company that promoted independent record stores selling physical music. They would travel the country buying and re-selling vinyl records. In their travels, they would talk to record store owners and ask how they were surviving in the age of digital, streaming music. After they stumbled upon a large collection for sale, they decided to buy it up and open a record store in Billings. “We just kind of looked at each other and said you know what, we know how to do this. Let’s open a record store,” Goodwin said. “We decided to chase the dream,” Brown said. “The wives were on board. So we jumped in with both feet.”
The Vinyl Restoration Process With Arrow Records: …Arrow Video has a proud history or publishing definitive home video editions of the best of Italian genre cinema, from horror to gialli to westerns… And, as so many of these films have incredible soundtracks, we thought this would be a great place to start. Our first 11 soundtrack editions have largely been drawn from this cinema tradition, with the exception of ZERO BOYS which is a fantastic, very early work from that giant of film soundtracks Hans Zimmer (alongside veteran Stanley Myers). It’s a little-known synth gem! Some of the highlights of what we have published so far are Ennio Morricone’s wonderfully abrasive and atonal soundtrack to the giallo AUTOPSY and Stelvio Cipriani’s stunning scores to the gialli DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS and THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE. Morricone is of course the ultimate maestro but this is one of his more difficult yet rewarding works.
New York, NY | WNBA Star Tina Charles Adds Filmmaker to Her Resume: Tina Charles can add filmmaker to her already impressive resume. The WNBA star produced a documentary about her father Rawlston and his Brooklyn-based record store and music label – known as Charlie’s Calypso City and Charlie’s Records, respectively – and it debuted over the weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival. “I put my heart and soul into this and was so excited to let the world know about my father,” Charles said in a phone interview Sunday. Charles acknowledged she was nervous and excited before the film “Charlie’s Records” premiered Friday night. The documentary was so well-received that the film festival added a second showing on Saturday night. She was so happy that her dad enjoyed the film… Charlie’s Records opened in 1972, five years after his arrival from his native Tobago. He wanted to create a place where immigrants from his area could hang out and where Calypso music, an Afro-Caribbean style that originated in Trinidad, could flourish. The store continues to operate on Fulton Street in Brooklyn – a few minutes’ drive from where the filmmaker’s WNBA team practices now. Mementos from his daughter’s basketball career adorn the walls of the store.
The Degritter ultrasonic record cleaner debuts at Munich show: The Degritter ultrasonic record cleaner will be making its debut appearance at High End Munich 2019. If you have a vinyl collection then you will probably need a record cleaning machine (RCM) – I know that I do and that’s why I have been following the Estonian-based Degritter crowdfunding story over the past few years. Degritter is a relatively compact (37 × 28 × 21 cm) ultrasonic RCM. Using ultrasound to clean the grooves has long been the favoured method by many. Degritter uses the ultrasonic cleaning method where the record is partially submerged and rotated in a water tank. Then there is a separate drying cycle to provide a superb cleaning effect. After testing a range of different ultrasonic frequencies, checking virtual simulations of energy distribution and made multiple physical set-ups to measure the energy levels, the Degritter team built a custom ultrasonic amplifier to power the system and spent long hours under a high-resolution microscope to assess the safety of the device.
