HMV’s Doug Putman on the future of CD: HMV’s owner Doug Putman has spoken to Music Week about the future of the chain and physical music following its reopening. In the latest issue, Putman calls on the music industry to back HMV as it tries to regain some momentum after lockdown – and warns on a possible change to the product mix if suppliers don’t fully support him. HMV stores were able to open from June 15, in line with other record shops. The entertainment chain introduced strict safety measures, including social distancing signage, screens and sanitiser. Across the music retail sector, sales were up last week and were given a further boost by the Love Record Stores promotion at the weekend Shoppers returned to HMV from last week, and Putman is confident that vinyl fans will accept the new normal. “I think that’s just the culture, if you love being in an HMV,” he said. “We just have really great customers.” HMV also launched a new personal shopper service, which enables customers to leave a list with staff, who could also provide recommendations.
Kirkley, UK | Former restaurant to be transformed into vinyl lounge: A record store is to relocate and expand its business with the opening of a vinyl lounge in a popular former restaurant. Aux Records will move from its Waterloo Road base, in Kirkley, around the corner to London Road South as it prepares to welcome customers to the new vinyl lounge. The new site has been empty for almost a year after the closure of Desmond’s restaurant. Owner Jan Mulder said: “We are relocating to the former Desmond’s restaurant around the corner on London Road South and expanding our current business. “It is still going to be based around our vinyl store, but with a cafe and lounge where people can come and listen to music and have a coffee. People can still come and browse and buy records with a wide range on offer.” The store opened last autumn after Mr Mulder left his job at a care agency to pursue his passion for music. He said: “I’m really excited about the move. The current business has been building since I opened last October and we are ready to take it to the next level.
Move The Record aims to support local vinyl stores with live music streams: A bit like High Fidelity, but online and with many record stores. Want to save independent record stores (who often gain essential revenue from hosting live events and representing acts under their own labels) from closing, as a result of the coronavirus? Good, Rob at Championship Vinyl would salute you – but we’ll stop talking about the Nick Hornby novel and subsequent John Cusack movie High Fidelity now (promise). Move the Record is a global initiative devised in response to the uncertain future that bricks-and-mortar record shops are facing worldwide. And let’s not forget, the 33⅓ vinyl LP only just celebrated its 72nd birthday, so it’s high time for an online event. Move the Record’s first edition is set to take place across Friday 3rd July and Saturday 4th July, and will comprise 2 x 12-hour broadcasts of 2-hour sets from record shops around the world, featuring a diverse range of some of the world’s best DJs, all playing in the world’s best record stores. Organisers say that discounts of up to 20% – as well as various other offers and events – will be in place across partaking stores’ online platforms for 48 hours.
Aberdeen, UK | Aberdeen Vinyl Records shop relocates and announces plans to reopen: Aberdeen Vinyl Records has moved premises and announced its plans to reopen. The store, which was based in Aberdeen Market, stated it has now moved to a new unit on Union Street. Located on 101 -103 Union Street near HSBC, the popular vinyl record store will reopen on Monday June 29. The shop’s spokesperson said: “We’ll be sharing the shop with our good friends at Gift Wrap and we’ll have slightly more floor space than we had in the Market. “We’re getting our shop signage and social distancing measures all worked out and ordered up now.” In addition to more than 5,000 LPs, the store also has some reasonably-priced collectables on offer.
Wellington, NZ | The music’s not over, don’t turn out the lights: Julian Lloyd Webber popped in and bought a Pat Boone album. An obliging Kenny Rogers was getting fish ‘n’ chips next door. One of those Oasis guys dropped by. In the decades of selling music out of Slow Boat Records on Cuba St in central Wellington, Dennis O’Brien has seen a parade of famous musicians pass through his shop. He originally started Slow Boat in a storeroom off Plimmer Steps before moving to Cuba St. Eventually, he bought the former Westpac bank on the street, which has been home base for years. “I bought the bank,” O’Brien half-laughs in the back office, stacked high with music. As he prepares to sell most of the business to current staff and take a step back, it is the old friends that pop in that he’ll miss the most. “
Asheville, NC | Mark Capon brings an analog pastime into the digital age: Mark Capon, co-owner of Harvest Records on Haywood Road in West Asheville, says his shop has been closed to the public since March 17. Despite being allowed to reopen at a limited capacity, he plans to wait to ensure the safety of his staff and the community at large. But while the storefront remains shuttered, the business has started offering curbside pickup, mail orders and the occasional local delivery as Capon tries to reimagine the usual record store experience through a virtual platform. Instead of customers leisurely thumbing through hundreds of vintage and new vinyls — which includes about 10,000 pieces of vinyl among its 15,000-item inventory — Capon says he’s using the store’s social media accounts to present glimpses of its collection and highlight noteworthy offerings. “It’s a physical store with physical media that people like to come in and comb through, so you kind of have to 
UK | Who Needs RSD? British Music Retailers Surpass £1m In One-Day Sales: Though the first of three planned Record Store Day 2020 legs won’t arrive for two months yet, UK-based music retailers enjoyed more than $1.24 million (£1 million) in one-day sales on Saturday, June 20th. The substantial sum derived from the Love Record Stores event, during which fans were encouraged to purchase limited-edition (and vinyl-exclusive) albums from their favorite British music retailers. Importantly, June 20th was the original date of Record Store Day 2020, which organizers have now split into three weekends (across August, September, and October). As part of the Love Record Stores initiative, labels and artists (including Elton John, Tom Walker, and The Rolling Stones, among others) shipped approximately 
US | 19 awesome Black-owned record stores: Racism, racial inequality, and racial injustice have plagued America for centuries, but long overdue conversations on these topics have been happening on a major, mainstream level ever since the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police led to nationwide protests, all of which happened during a worldwide pandemic that especially impacts black and brown communities. Because of this, we’ve seen a recent increase in activism, fundraisers, and the promotion of art/literature that benefit the fight for racial justice. Even beyond that, there are more ways to get involved, including directly uplifting and supporting Black people (those you know and those you don’t) in regard to their ideas and their endeavors, in your everyday life. One of the most direct and sustainable ways to support the Black community is to shop at and support Black-owned businesses as often as possible, especially now that the pandemic has taken its toll on small, independent businesses in general. …We’ve compiled a list of 
New York, NY | Rough Trade NYC to reopen amidst COVID-19crash: Rough Trade’s iconic New York location has announced plans to reopen June 24th at noon following its temporary closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Brooklyn-based record store, label, and concert venue is the final of the five Rough Trade locations, all of which have successfully restarted operation. While the brand and this address specifically is an established mecca for physical music consumption, even the big guys aren’t safe these days. Following news that Amoeba’s original Hollywood location would be permanently closing its doors, the idea of losing the country’s most treasured record markets has become increasingly real. The organizers of Record Store Day told Rolling Stone up to 80% of record stores across the country have had to close their doors completely in respect for the quarantine, although many of them are able to continue accepting orders or sell in another capacity. This unprecedented hit comes at a time when streaming is the preferred vehicle for music consumption and while vinyl sales have trended positively, the massive losses recorded in the past four months have proven to be 
Empire Records: 90s cult classic starring Liv Tyler and Renée Zellweger is ripe for a comeback: What’s not to love about a band of scrappy teenage misfits and a music store so cool even shoplifters wanted to work there? If the idea of a “dream job” is a myth, the employees at indie record store Empire Records didn’t get that memo. For them – self-identifying misfits and weirdos, prone to petty crime – the shop floor was a place where obeying societal norms didn’t count for much. It’s 1995 in Delaware, US, an era in which music was becoming increasingly commodified with the rise of CD sales, and placing celebrities on a Swarovski crystal pedestal was considered the norm. Inevitably, everything that was once good and sacred about music fandom was under threat. The film turns 25 this year and it’s having a moment. A cinematic underdog that bombed on release, it’s now a respected cultural touchstone. It’s not just a heady dose of nostalgia for an era where dancing on rooftops or singing along with the Cranberries was normal. It’s also grown into a go-to comfort watch for a generation who might need to remember 
Hagerstown, MD | Hub City Vinyl turns auto shop into something groovy: Hub City Vinyl, a record store, has opened its doors in the once-vacant and now-restored Massey auto building at 28 E. Baltimore St. Lloyd Thoburn, an owner of 339 Antietam LLC, bought the property from the city and had it renovated. His wife, Sheree Thoburn, owns the record store. Thoburn, owner of Coinopwarehouse, has restored other buildings in the city, including structures on Antietam and Franklin streets. “I’m really thrilled with how it came out,” he said of the Baltimore Street building. “This is our jewel,” Sheree Thoburn said. “This is the one that’s beautiful and fun and functional. … I love it. 
Wirral, UK | Wirral author unearths the amazing story of Skeleton Records: Bebington-born author, Graham Jones, who claims to have visited more record shops than any other person and had one of his books turned into a film, takes us on an adventure into Wirral’s legendary Skeleton Records. Any vinyl fan visiting Liverpool should make the effort to take the ferry across the river to visit the legendary music institution known affectionately as Skellys. As a 13-year-old schoolboy, growing up in Bebington, I would get the bus each weekend into Birkenhead to visit Skeleton, a magical and mystical experience. The shop had no window and to enter you walked along a dark corridor. The throbbing sound of progressive rock could be heard coming from the end of what seemed like a cave, while the air was filled with the heady smell of joss sticks and patchouli oil. 
New York, NY | Record Store Owners Don’t Skip a Beat, Prepare for Reopening: The Limited to One Record Store is the one thing that’s been a constant for co-owners Kristian Sorge and Nichole Porges. The couple was let go from their jobs as casting directors for extras in TV and movies and they lost their main source of income when the coronavirus crisis erupted. “Everything kind of fell apart within a week. I lost my job, I had to file for unemployment for the first time,” said co-owner Nichole Porges. When Governor Cuomo ordered all non-essential businesses to close, the couple had to face the music. They needed the record store to make money, but without physically being open. Before the health crisis they’d focused solely on sales out of their East Village shop. Now they needed to offer an online option and were shocked at the response. “We started selling rare records thru mail order on our Instagram and that had a really positive, we’d sell I’d say, 80 percent of everything posted would 
New York, NY | Record Mart, Manhattan’s Oldest Record Store, Is Shutting Down: Record Mart recently confirmed the unfortunate news on Facebook, writing: “Sad to say it is the end of era!!” Outside of that brief statement, the famed Times Square subway station record shop hasn’t addressed its closure on the internet. Instead, the store taped a typed message on its entrance (penned by Lou Moskowitz, son of the brand’s co-founder). Citing the pandemic as the chief cause of his store’s closure, Moskowitz thanked customers for their support and signaled that his brand “will be moving into the vintage audio business.” Founded by Jesse Moskowitz and Bob Stack in 1958, Record Mart quickly emerged as one of New York’s foremost distributors of Latin music. Following nine years of suspended operations (between 1998 and 2007) as the Times Square subway station was renovated, Record Mart reopened and achieved relative success. Unfortunately, New York City’s total number of 
