Austin, TX | Austin retail space that is home to Waterloo Records has new owner: Waterloo Records has been an Austin staple since it opened more than 30 years ago. The retail center that houses Waterloo Records now has a new owner. According to our partners at the Austin American-Statesman, Endeavor Real Estate Group now owns the majority of the retail space that’s located on West Sixth Street and North Lamar Boulevard. That same shopping space houses Amy’s Ice Cream. Waterloo Records has been an Austin staple since it opened more than 30 years ago. The retail center property has an appraised value of $7.55 million, the Statesman reported. However, the financial terms of this deal were not disclosed. The iconic record store recently tweeted that they have no intention of closing and will keep store-goers in the loop with details as they get them. Bryce Miller, who is a co-founder of Endeavor, told the Statesman that the firm does not have any immediate redevelopment plans for the site. …Last November, hundreds skipped Black Friday shopping to stop at Waterloo Records after 175 unreleased vinyl records were put on sale. Let’s see if that happens again this year.
Missoula, MT | New Record Heaven opens as neighborhood hub: There’s something inherently right about flipping through used vinyl records in a wood-paneled room, with design echoes of a ‘70s basement. That was the old Record Heaven. This is the new Record Heaven, in a Quonset hut warehouse at 845 Ronan St.: bright, tall, open and airy — where a dust cloud from a particularly old record won’t settle into the carpet and boxes of old LPs aren’t crammed under every shelf. “This is almost all the stuff that was in the old store,” general manager Scott Storer said. “It’s just more conducive.” “You can kind of cater it to what you need.” Record Heaven — the vinyl- and audio equipment-specializing offshoot of Rockin’ Rudy’s — was at its location on the Hip Strip for around 11 years, renting the outdated storefront. Rudy’s owner Bruce Micklus purchased the Quonset hut for storage space, but quickly realized it would serve better as the home for Record Heaven, Storer said.
London, UK | 1-800-Dubplate launches Kickstarter to open record store and pressing plant, Disc World: They need £12,500 to make the dream a reality. The team behind London-based dubplate cutting service 1-800-Dubplate have launched a crowdfunding campaign via Kickstarter to help fund a new “specialist ‘underground dance music’ record shop, dubplate cutting house and cultural hub” in South East London. Chris and Lewis, the pair behind 1-800-Dubplate, are hoping to raise £12,500 to help make their dream of opening the venture, which they’re calling Disc World, a reality. They’re offering a number of rewards to those who donate to the crowdfunding campaign, including merchandise and a copy of a limited record featuring exclusive tracks by jungle producer Tim Reaper. “Clients/shoppers will be able to purchase the latest in cutting-edge dance music and also get their own music cut to dubplate to play at gigs or for their own personal pleasure,” the pair’s write-up on Kickstarter explains.
Would you spend $5K to clean your records? The Degritter is a $4550 high-end Ultrasonic Record Cleaning Machine that will launch later this month after its initial unveiling on IndieGoGo in May 2018, but it begs the question, would you spend $5K to clean your records? In what has become a bit of a theme on ChannelNews as of late, is a run of high-end record cleaners that seem to be getting more and more expensive. Now nearly two years later, The Degritter Ultrasonic Record Cleaning Machine has arrived to clean all your records from 7-inches to 12-inch records, available now for preorder from their website for $4550. While there’s no word on Australian availability, Pure Music Group is listed as the Australian Distributor for Degritter products, with Sonic Purity as the Associated Retailer, located in Melbourne. Unlike other record cleaners we’ve featured, the Degritter uses ultrasonic cleaning in a water tank followed by a separate drying cycle to provide a ‘superb cleaning effect’.
Ashland, KY | Vinyl record sales on the rise: The growth of vinyl records has only gone up since its comeback in the early 2000s, and it’s expected to only increase in popularity. Storeowners Earl Mollette and Steve Baron can see that trend continuing. Both have stores that sell CDs and vinyl. According to an article published by Rolling Stone, vinyl records are expected to outsell CDs in the near future — for the first time since 1986. “At first, we were sure it would be a short fad,” said Baron, owner of CD Central in Lexington. “We weren’t sure if it was coming back in a significant way. Very little was coming out on vinyl.” CD Central started in 1995 as an independent CD store. It added vinyl records to its inventory in 2005 at the beginning of records making a comeback. At that time, they had no idea the growth records would have in the music industry. “Now we have gotten to the point where over half of our business is vinyl… It’s been a very significant product for us.”
Why it’s a great time to bring the cassette tape back in your life: These reasons go beyond nostalgia. Vinyl records? Please. We’re on a different wave right now. As a baby of the 90s, I recently began collecting tapes anew as a way to honor my memory for a thing I actually grew up with. The vinyl record boom of the early 2010s was cool, and it was interesting watching Satchmi stores open up all over the country and record players suddenly materialize in my friends’ homes. But those wax discs always felt to me a product of a different era—there was no part of myself to recover from them. Basically, I wanted to exercise my nostalgia to its fullest. A year into this little hobby, I’ve developed a deep love for a medium I took for granted as a kid, one that goes beyond cheap nostalgia. The tape is not an obsolete technology, but a singular format, able to do things that other formats can’t. There’s a very specific aesthetic pleasure that comes with listening to tapes, one that resonates as well with the growing culture and market responsible for bringing them back into our lives.
Marquette, MI | Another pop-up vinyl record sale is coming to the Ore Dock Brewing Company: Another pop-up vinyl record sale is coming to the Ore Dock Brewing Company in Marquette next week, and it promises to be the best one “yeti!” That’s the theme of this show, according to Jon Teichman with the NMU Vinyl Club. (Check out the picture attached to this article.) Teichman says there will be thousands of records, tapes, CDs, shirts, posters and more swag up for sale– just in time for the holiday shopping season. The vinyl sale begins Thursday, Nov. 7 from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. It continues Friday, Nov. 8 and Saturday, Nov. 9 from noon to 1 a.m. and Sunday, Nov. 10 from noon to 11 p.m.
Morrissey has signed a bunch of of other artists’ albums – so how does it affect their worth? Record shop experts have said that Morrissey risks “ripping off” his fans by selling records that he’s signed himself by the likes of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop. The former Smiths frontman made headlines earlier this week after selling the records for $300 (£234) at the merch stand of his Hollywood Bowl show. Alongside some of his own solo albums, Morrissey had also signed copies of records by a handful of his favourite artists – including David Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’, Patti Smith’s ‘Horses‘, Lou Reed’s ‘Transformer‘ and Iggy and the Stooges’ ‘Raw Power‘. However, experts now say that the records are unlikely to be first edition pressings – which mean that the singer is selling them for over ten times their original worth. “His modern autograph on its own? It’s worth £100, maybe,” said Nigel Young – the owner of Manchester’s Reel Around The Fountain record store. “He’s put them up for $300 and I don’t imagine that they’re original pressings. They’re likely to be £20 reissues and he can’t be skint. I don’t think he’s adding any value…”
