In rotation: 5/1/18

4 more record stores in the metro to satisfy your vinyl habit: MANILA — Now that Record Store Day Pilipinas has passed, where can music fans get their vinyl fix? Well, Kagatan 27 is around the corner (May 6 at 1 p.m. at Cubao X). However, if you can’t wait, here are four places I recommend you should check out…One of the best curated re-sellers in town. Located on the third floor of 142 Linear Building, Katipunan Avenue, St. Ignatius Village, Disc Replay Station is an all-in store that sells vinyl, compact discs, cassettes, audio gear such as turntables, speakers, amplifiers, Blu-ray discs, and more. Why you should check this out? Well, it’s one of the better curated stores in town…

Resurgence of the record shop: In an age of instant downloads, Fraser Thompson finds that record stores are thriving. Twenty years ago, if you wanted music you had to leave your house, go to a record store, talk to some people, part with around $30 and return with a CD to pop in your CD player. But today we have near instant, near free access to most music recorded in the last couple of hundred years. So that makes record stores obsolete, right? Well there’s certainly less demand, but the few record stores left are, well, thriving.

No, The Music Business Doesn’t Need To Be Saved: If I read one more gratuitous click-bait headline that says, “Streaming Is Saving The Music Business,” or “Blockchain Is Going To Save The Music Business” I think I’m going to scream. The recorded music business surely is facing many problems now, had them in the past, and will have them in the future, but to say that it will be saved from them by a technology is ignoring its rich history with technology. Look, the “music business” is about the distribution of music, but music now and forever is the product. As long as people want to hear it, there’s going to be a business built around it.

Digital and analog audio’s curious coexistence, Since nearly all music is digitally recorded, why buy a turntable? It’s a funny thing, the ongoing turntable sales surge shows no signs of slowing down, but nearly all new music is recorded digitally. It seems like a contradiction, turntables and LPs are purely analog in nature, but nearly all new (not remastered LPs) made over the last 30+ years were recorded, mixed, and mastered from digital sources. Older, pre 1980 LPs were made in an all-analog world. Today’s LPs are hybrids of a sort, the grooves are still analog, but the music was probably made in the digital domain. Be that as it may, LPs, regardless of vintage, can sound great. While pre-1980s records may be richer in tone and warmth, there are lots of more recent albums that sound just as good or better.

Should a new downtown Ann Arbor library be built on the Y Lot?: As part of Record Store Day, the downtown library recently hosted a pop-up record fair with music, a documentary screening, and vendors slinging used records and music-related gear. Vander Broek said about 2,800 people came to the library for Record Store Day, which she called a good example of bringing the community together…”The space needs to be thought about as an answer to what we want to do in it,” she said of the future of the downtown library. “Right now it’s kind of upside down and backwards where we have a space that was designed to hold lots of books. And now we want to have lots of books, but we want to do things like Record Store Day. So, what we need, I think, going forward is a space that’s going to allow us to do what we want to do now, to be responsive and visionary for the community, but then what we’re going to want to do in 25 years, too.”

This entry was posted in A morning mix of news for the vinyl inclined. Bookmark the permalink. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.
  • SUPPORTING YOUR LOCAL INDIE SHOPS SINCE 2007


  • Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text
  • Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text Alternative Text