Record shop to open downtown: Four young professionals have gone into business together and will be selling what many thought was a product of the past inside a longtime facility under new ownership in downtown Rocky Mount. Kellianne Davis, Richard Draper and Madison and Michael Keith are all partners of a new vinyl record store called Station Square Records; Wax by the Tracks, which will be located in suite 162 in Station Square at 301 S. Church St. Davis said the small store, which will occupy 465 square feet, will have a soft opening and record drive from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. July 1. Angelo’s Pizza will be on hand selling pizza by the slice.
Music and more: Estate Thirty3 Vinyl offers a unique experience: Estate Thirty3 Vinyl is one of the most unique businesses in downtown Ashland. Near the store’s entrance, customers are greeted by images of Johnny Cash and Jim Morrison. Classic albums and beautiful paintings by local artists to enjoy or purchase adorn Estate Thirty3 Vinyl’s walls. A promotional poster from 1980 that reads “John Lennon/Yoko Ono-Double Fantasy-The album now available” appears to be frozen in time. Lennon was murdered in December 1980, three weeks after “Double Fantasy” was released after autographing a copy of it for an unstable fan.
Vinyl-pressing plant breathes new life into recording industry: In the era when G-Dragon’s new thumb drive album causes a dispute over what defines a music album, there are people who return to an antiquated and cumbersome format of music appreciation ― vinyl records. The resurgence of vinyl records is visible all across the globe, emerging from the late 2000s. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, 5 million vinyl records were sold in 2008, but the number jumped some 600 percent to 32 million in 2015. Machang Music & Pictures opened a brand-new vinyl record pressing plant in Seongsu-dong, eastern Seoul, earlier this month, signals the resurrection of vinyl record industry in Korea.
Get in Your Car, Audiophiles — Odessa is Having a Huge Vinyl Record Show July 1st: Most of us up here at the radio station consider ourselves audiophiles — that is, we are highly interested in the production, sound, and quality of audio recordings. MP3s are great, but most of us own many, if not hundreds, of vinyl records. There’s something sacred and special about the buttery smooth sound of a well-preserved record, and I believe if it was recorded in analog, the best way to hear it is in analog. Odessa, Texas is setting out a beacon for audiophiles across the West Texas Area with their Vinyl Record Show, coming July 1st to Vintage Deluxe.
Boxed Sets Are Bigger Than Ever—But Who Buys Them? Back in the days when music was sold only on LP or CD, a large-format package was merely expected to serve as a delivery system for the performances themselves. (Perhaps that’s why one of the first big sets that I ever owned, the 20-CD “Frank Sinatra —The Complete Reprise Studio Recordings” from 1995, was housed in a small suitcase.) Now, in the age of sound files and streaming music, any kind of physical medium seems like a fetish object, and the package in which it is contained even more so. Clearly, size matters, and the past few years have seen huge boxed sets covering the complete catalogs of such legacy artists as Elvis Presley (60 CDs), Johnny Cash (62), Miles Davis (72) and Tony Bennett (76).
