Colorado Springs, CO | Independent Records closes downtown location: The Independent Records & Video network of shops has long been a musical fixture in Colorado Springs, as anyone who still enjoys buying physical media surely knows. But as far as local musicians go, the record stores have been more than just a place to cop new releases or rare LPs; they have functioned as a sort of hub for musicians and music junkies alike…Given Independent Records’ inextricable connection to the local music community, as well as its fairly iconic status, news traveled quickly of the downtown location closing its doors after a 38-year run overlooking Acacia Park. And just as quickly the local music community was aflood with memories.
Berkeley, CA | Amoeba Music Is Now Selling Weed: California has legalized weed, which means that lots of businesses are making the drug a little bit more accessible to the public. But this ‘seed’ of this idea was planted years earlier. It turns out that Amoeba’s co-founders, Marc Weinstein and Dave Prinz, came up with the idea to combine the famed Northern California record shop with a pot shop in 2012. That’s roughly when they started noticing a decline in sales. “Music, in some ways, is such an uplifting product for humans,” Weinstein recently told Billboard. “And we thought, weed is just another inspirational product that we can get behind with our hearts and souls.”
Moby is selling off his personal record collection for charity: The sale on online marketplace Reverb LP will include Moby’s personal copies of nearly every one of his own records, along with hundreds of 12-inches he used as a DJ early on his career. His collection is said to be heavy on techno, house and hip-hop from the ’80s and ’90s, with many of the records featuring handwritten markers Moby added to help him during his DJ sets. “These are all the records that I bought and loved and played and carried all around the world,” the artist explains in a video promoting the sale. “I would rather you have them than me, because if you have them, you’ll play them, you’ll love them, and the money will go to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. So everybody wins. Well, except me, because now I don’t have any records.”
Cleveland, OH | Cleveland’s Music Saves record shop finds new life with online store and pop-up events: It’s nearly impossible to think of the Waterloo Arts District without the image of the iconic Music Saves sign glowing next to its Beachland Ballroom neighbor. But at the end of 2017, owner Melanie Hershberger knew it was time to close the door on the record shop’s day-to-day operations. Luckily for music fans in Cleveland (and beyond), the song isn’t over. This June, Music Saves launched an online store. For fans of Hershberger’s sharp curation of records that were always stocked at the shop, you’ll find a wide selection of indie, rock, folk, electronic and more online. Music can be shipped to your doorstep or picked up at the shop at 15801 Waterloo Road.
How the Rolling Stones’ Massive New Vinyl Box Came Together: “…I didn’t have any original master tapes for this. The management of the band archived everything digitally a few years back, and I was loaned a hard drive – they said, “You can have this for 24 hours; take anything you need off of it, and then it has to come back.” They had several high-resolution transfers of each album, or at least high-resolution where the source was analog tape, which was most of it. They just said, “Take your pick, and work with whichever transfer you feel is better with you.” I’d have liked to have got hold of the tape, but old analog tape is starting to get quite fragile, especially the stuff from the late Seventies and early Eighties, because the tape was not great…”
