How Can We Make the Vinyl Boom Sustainable for Fans? Vinyl sales were up 30 percent in 2015, according to Nielsen, bringing the number of records sold from 9.19 million in 2014 to 11.92 million last year. But it’s hard not to wonder how sustainable that boom is: The highest-selling records of that record 2015 were by Adele and Taylor Swift, favorites of casual fans more so than of the collectors who have long fueled vinyl purchasing.
Tables turned as vinyl sales overtake digital sales for first time in UK: Vinyl sales hit £2.4m last week compared with the £2.1m made from digital music purchases, further proof that record shopping has gone mainstream. The interest in buying a physical format of music on vinyl has experienced a resurgence in the past 12 months. This time last year, the sale of vinyl albums reached £1.2m while digital sales were £4.4m. Vinyl has also experienced eight consecutive years of growth, despite almost dying out around 2006.
Back to Black: The record revival in Nottingham: Jono works at Rough Trade and attributes the recent success as a reaction against download culture. “It makes albums a thing again, people like to listen to a full album in the sequence that it was intended.” He added that while some people say they sound better, that can be extremely dependent. “If you take a picture with a DSLR camera you know it can be technically brilliant, whereas if you take a picture on an old Polaroid it may not be perfect but it’ll have character.
Is this the vinyl countdown? Wellington’s Death Ray Records facing closure: A Wellington record store has put out a desperate plea for secondhand vinyl in an effort to stay afloat. Death Ray Records in Newtown has been stung by a ballooning tax bill, competition from online sellers, and low stock volumes. Now owner Apa Hutt fears he may not make it through Christmas unless people bring in used vinyl as trades, for sale, or as donations. “It’s all up in the air,” he said. “This is a really important cultural hub for Newtown, but it could close and that will be a really difficult decision to make.”
This Christmas season: The tyranny of the boxed set: When shopping for discerning music fans this holiday season, you’ll find it tough to avoid running into tantalizing limited edition releases, boxed sets and vinyl reissues. While this tends to be the case every year — in 2015, Bruce Springsteen issued the highly anticipated four-CD set, “The Ties That Bind: The River Collection” — 2016’s crop of special releases are lavish and impressive. Unfortunately, many of these will also cost consumers a large chunk of a mortgage payment or monthly rent check.
The 20 best record sleeves of 2016: It’s no secret that the size and tactile experience of the artwork is one of the reasons why vinyl records remain the most enjoyable way to listen to music. Whether it’s in the hand made or the mass-produced, the meticulously set-up or the spontaneously created, the sleeve artwork adds a (literal) dimension to the music that a digital thumbnail simply cannot replicate. This year, more than ever, we saw artists and labels push the boundaries of what could be done with the packaging of a record, from interactive experiences like Mondo’s liquid-filled Aliens OST to the lavish Mala box set that included a piece of restorative Peruvian “healing wood.”
Vinyl records sales are rising – and this is what you’re buying: You’ve probably heard that vinyl sales overtook digital downloads for the first time ever last week. Around £2.4m was spent on vinyl from 25 November to 1 December, while digital downloads took in £2.1m for the record industry, says the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA). It’s a big change from last year when vinyl album sales accounted for £1.2m, compared to £4.4m for digital. So what are you all buying? We asked, you told us.
SweetVinyl wants to make your old records sound like new records: Vinyl’s popularity is growing strong, as proven by its recent overtaking of MP3 sales. However, one of the problems with a record’s sound quality can be the numerous pops and clicks that are sometimes heard during playback. That’s where SweetVinyl’s SugarCube, an Indiegogo campaign to bring out a device with a built-in noise-reduction platform, comes in. The algorithm detects unwanted noises, isolates them, and removes them in real time. The inputs to the SugarCube are line level, so the unit can be connected to your existing record player…
Young people are loving this baby boomer classic: They say that’s old is new again and if you ever wanted proof some pretty amazing numbers coming out of the UK today are here to do just that. For the first time ever sales of vinyl records have outperformed digital music sales, in a big coup for those who love that vintage sound. It turns out today’s youth – or anyone below the age of 40 – are loving vinyl records lately and have been buying up big so they can play them on old record players they dug out of their parent’s house.
