Music Industry at Mid-Year Mark: Drake, Ed Sheeran Rule as Streams and Subscriptions Explode; Sales Still Slipping: The vinyl market continued to see growth, as vinyl album sales were up 20.4% over 2016. Vinyl albums accounted for 4.9% of all physical album sales, up from 3.5% in 2016, with the biggest sales bump, not surprisingly, impacted by Record Store Day, which took place on April 22 this year. Per the report: vinyl sales at independent music stores were up 14% when compared to RSD 2016…Physical album sales were down 2.1% (39.6 million in 2017), but accounted for 53.4% of all album sales in 2017, up from 46.9% a year earlier.
Talking Shop: Resolution Records – Bath: After spending more than two decades working in just about every corner of the music industry, in 2008 Mark O’Shaughnessy swapped the record-making business for the record-selling trade, leaving behind the urban jungle of Brixton for the more urbane tourist magnet of Georgian Bath. Having run High On Hope Records with legendary DJ Norman Jay (now MBE), and the house and funk label Resolution Records, working with The Chemical Brothers along the way, while also operating his own shop in the centre of Brixton, O’Shaughnessy decided it was time to pack up and move west.
IU librarian’s behind-the-scenes work makes thousands of music recordings accessible: Each day, Michelle Hahn walks downstairs to the basement of the William and Gayle Cook Music Library. The sound recordings cataloger and assistant librarian finds her way through blue and gray bins and stacks of boxes containing reel tapes, vinyl records, CDs and cassette tapes. She passes shelves of records labeled with the names of famous composers like Mozart, Handel, Schubert and Wagner. Then she reaches her office. The large window in her basement office lets in the sun, which shines through blue and translucent empty plastic reels that used to hold tape filled with music.
Hamilton panel doesn’t like record store’s sign, paint color: Hamilton’s Architectural Design Review Board, which oversees appearances of buildings in Hamilton, didn’t like the design of a sign installed at the new Main Street Vinyl record store at 227 Main St. And the panel also took issue with the bluish-black paint color on the front of the record store, whose owner said it was put there by the landlord before he moved in. Members of the ADRB voted 6-2 to reject the sign for the record store, and wished the paint color now on 227 Main St. had gone before them for approval. One member called the color choice “gawdawful” and “terrible.”
Premium Vinyl Record Sidewalk Sale This Saturday, July 8 (9am — 3pm): Back by popular demand, we are pulling out some of our premium, private stock. We’ll have over 2,500 premium records in harder to find genres and conditions. All disks command better than average prices online and in retail stores. Boxes of rock, pop, country, rock, jazz, hip-hop, reggae, electronic, house, breakbeat, drum/bass, vocal, 12″ dance singles & EPs, international, soundtracks, and compilations, especially heavy on the rock, jazz, R&B/soul (all eras), and compilations…Many of these are very unique or hard-to-find records that are not in-print recordings and have never been transferred digitally (CD or streaming services).
A Vinyl Lover Presses Records From Unorthodox Found Objects: Michael Dixon cuts gorgeous, intentionally complicated records from humanity’s abandoned ephemera. Anyone who’s ever struggled to get the paper sleeve back into a vinyl record’s cardboard cover knows how physically interactive listening to records can be, and that’s what vinyl record artist Michael Dixon likes about them. Utilizing a diverse array of materials and intentionally overcomplicated packaging, Dixon uses 1940s record cutting lathes to make hand-cut record editions that are works of art in themselves. His unique approach to record production has led Dixon to work with adventurous artists like The Flaming Lips and Aerial Pink to produce limited edition records cut into unorthodox materials like upcycled plexiglass, laserdiscs, picnic plates, CD-Rs, mirrors, placemats, X-rays, and even 90% cacao chocolate.
Let’s get physical, Why media you can hold in your hand still matters: The first record I ever got was a single with “Radioactive” and “See You In Your Dreams” off Gene Simmons’ 1978 solo album. I still own it, although the music is almost impossible to hear through the storm of crackles, pops and hissing. I have great memories of that old 45. Early on, my parents kept it with their records, so if I wanted to give it a listen, I had to have them put it on … then ask them to flip it. It felt like a special occasion every damn time! To me, anyway. Sometimes I’d invite my neighbor over, we’d put our ears up to the speakers of my parents’ coffin-like, wood-cabinet record/8-track player and just grin until the song was over. Then we’d talk about what we heard!
