Vinyl record pop-ups pay off for ‘stunned’ retailer: Two years of vinyl record pop-ups for collectors have left retailer Nick Langford stunned by the level of interest in the vintage format. He started his business with a shipment of 10,000 LPs (long-playing records) in 2015, reports Post Magazine. “It’s all about vinyl,” says Langford, who holds the pop-up events each month at SoHo’s Culture Club Gallery. “Every genre from the ’50s onward is covered, including new issues from Hong Kong artists like Blood Wine or Teenage Riot,” says the English expat, who describes the demand as “quite extraordinary.”
Dubai record store is proving that there’s still an appetite for vinyl: The success of a new independent record store in Dubai proves that the emirate is truly a hipster hangout When, in the summer of 2014, Shadi Megallaa made the announcement from the cover of a now-deceased weekly local music magazine that he would open a specialist vinyl record store in Dubai, it sounded like a braver, more eccentric endeavor than it does now. This is in part because of a global vinyl rebirth, which last year unregistered sales at a 25-year high as 12-inch albums were readily stocked by Europe’s supermarket chains and clothing retailers. But this is partly, also, because Dubai’s cultural vogue has evolved at a phenomenal stage over the past three years.
The factory behind Jamaica’s reborn vinyl industry launches crowdfunding campaign: Florida-based SunPress Vinyl has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the expansion of their factory and label. SunPress’ expansion efforts follow recent announcements that new pressing plants are due to open in Japan, Seoul, and Melbourne. The company is housed in the former Final Vinyl HQ, founded in the 1970s by pioneering Jamaican producer Joe Gibbs. In its previous incarnation the factory was responsible for pressing and distributing all of Studio One’s output, including records from Bob Marley, Toots and the Maytals and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.
Classic albums have become today’s coffee table books: Now, with the music industry irreversibly changing due to streaming via very inexpensive monthly subscriptions, a shortage of brick and mortar record stores with the closure of such stores as HMV in Canada and the U.S., and Virgin and Tower Records worldwide in recent years, the actual purchasing of a compact disc, or in some cases, vinyl and even cassettes to a very limited extent, has changed from a common phenomenon to a niche industry. Record companies have tried to find several ways to promote the actual purchase of a CD. In the case of new albums, regular and “deluxe” editions are released, which means one version with a couple of extra songs, at a somewhat higher price and with somewhat nicer packaging.
