In rotation: 11/15/17

Vinyl revival sparks Record Store Day: Corporate holiday, Black Friday, has showed to be no foe to the independent record store scene. Instead, indie scene supporters such as Record Store Day are hopping on the Black Friday band wagon due to the recent vinyl revival. The vinyl revival refers to the renewed interest and increased sales of vinyl records, or gramophone records, that has been taking place in the Western world since about 2007. Since, vinyl sales are growing at a fast pace. A main vehicle for pop music since the 1950s, vinyl lost popularity to CDs in the ’80s and ’90s. Since the 2000s, digital downloads and streaming have been all the rage. Ten years into the vinyl revival today, it’s clear that the millennial generation are streamers as well as collectors.

Vinyl resurgence helps Amoeba mark 20th anniversary: Amoeba Music is the only record store Charlotte Parsons has known. The emporium in an old bowling alley on Haight Street opened when she was 6, and right up through high school she was among the masses flipping through the bins of CDs, their plastic cases clacking like the sound of corn in a popper. Then the clacking stopped. “CDs aren’t part of my life at all. When I went to college, I stopped listening to them,” says Parsons, 26, as she flips through the comparatively silent bins of LPs in cardboard jackets. “Now it is vinyl or Spotify.” Regulars like her are the reason Amoeba will live to see its 20th anniversary on Wednesday.

Scooter’s Records plans Wednesday opening: A new independent record store will officially open up shop this week on the fringes of the Cotton District. Scooter’s Records owner Scott Thomas moved into his new location – a former tanning salon – on University Drive in early October and began the task of renovating the space to become Starkville’s only record store. “I wanted to be where there’s walking traffic,” Thomas said. “If I had to be in a strip mall or on Highway 12, I didn’t think that was going to work out for me or I would be happy. I wanted to be in the middle of the students.” The new store is roughly 1,400 square feet and will be open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week to begin with, but Thomas said eventually he would flesh out a day to have the store closed.

Pick out a record and sip a cocktail at Jeffersonville’s newest bar: It’s easy to pass the Vinyl Lounge on Spring Street in downtown Jeffersonville. But once you climb up the bar’s rainbow-lit steps and walk into its ’60s-inspired parlor, typically blasting jazz or alternative hits, it’s hard to forget. The owners of O’Shea’s opened the Vinyl Lounge, situated above their pub, H.M. Franks, around two months ago, but the lounge’s beverage director and manager, Chris Palmer, is quick to differentiate the bar from its Irish-inspired counterpart. “We’re trying to do a little bit more of a cocktail-esque bar here,” Palmer said. “Which, you know, they have some signature cocktails down there, but we’re doing old fashioneds, sazeracs, a rotating seasonal cocktail list. And I think that kind of distinguishes us a little bit from what their typical branding is.”

Ja should go the vinyl way: With the vinyl record market projected to grow by 25 per cent this year, the only area of recorded music set to experience an upsurge, the Jamaican music industry, is being left out of this market. British music insider Matt Downs is suggesting that the local industry take a page out of the reggae music that is being produced and sold outside of Jamaica in bid to capture a piece of this market. “Jamaica still makes the best reggae music in the world. But what I’m talking about is the business of buying and selling records on vinyl, and that’s a huge business of itself. If you want to sell records then you have to understand the people who buy records are those who run the sound systems in Europe. What they want is heavyweight roots music, so it’s two different things…”

How we’re falling out of love with downloads: Young adults fuel boom in sales of books, records and DVDs: A generation raised on apps and digital downloads is turning back to real things you can touch, smell and show off. Sales of real books, vinyl records, DVDs, CDs and video games that come in a box with artwork are seeing a resurgence. More than half – 52 per cent – of Britons prefer to buy physical books, music, films and video games over digital media that only exists on a computer chip or in a virtual cloud. Sales of eBooks are expected to fall this year, down from £339million in 2016, while the figure for physical books is expected to rise 6 per cent to some £1.7billion. The revival of vinyl records has seen the likes of John Lewis start selling record players again.

Beatles, Bowie, Pink Floyd Sales Surge As Music Buyers Get Physical, EBay Says: The Beatles, David Bowie and Pink Floyd are leading artists getting a boost as music buyers get physical in preference to digital streaming and downloads. A survey done for EBay EBAY -0.16% may make the world think again about the death of vinyl and CDs. The Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling have done the same for physical books and DVDs in the face of competition from electronic readers and players. The survey comes as a surprise after reports about the digital revolution, with many teenagers said never to have bought a physical album. To the contrary, the new findings show that 52% of consumers prefer physical formats and it is 18 to 24 year olds who are actually powering the resurgence.

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