UK | Record Store Day UK launches campaign to support indie retail during lockdown: Record Store Day UK has joined forces with independent record shop owners to commemorate what would have been the 13th Record Store Day on Saturday, April 18. The campaign, RSD Fill The Gap, encourages record lovers all over the country to show their support for their local record stores on Saturday by pledging to buy the one record that’s truly missing from their collection and ‘Filling the Gap’. Fans are encouraged to share their pledged album on social media in the run-up to the day by using #RSDFillTheGap and tagging their local record store. All record shops and their online platforms can be found via the store locator here. BBC 6 Music will be supporting the campaign on the day with a range of programming and artist interviews. This year’s Record Store Day UK Ambassadors The Big Moon are joining in the campaign with a message of support.
UK | Here’s a map of all the UK record stores doing home delivery during lockdown: Support your local record store. Record Store Day 2020 may have been postponed in the UK as a result of the continuing coronavirus crisis – but music fans are being encouraged to shop at independent record stores online using the map below. This year’s annual event – due to be held on Saturday April 18 – was set to see hundreds of vinyl and cassette releases sold exclusively through independent record shops for one day only. Up to 230 independent record shops from every corner of the UK, as well as thousands around the world, were set to take part in the celebrations with live in-store performances, mini street festivals and entertainment. But with the ongoing coronavirus crisis continuing to hit the UK music industry, organisers have been forced to postpone this year’s event until June 20. Instead, people are being urged to support their local independent record shop online and pledging to order the “one missing record in their collection” in support of the new #RSDFillTheGap campaign launched by Record Store Day.
Amazon to Resume Stocking Vinyl Records: The online retail giant temporarily ceased selling “non-essential items” as the coronavirus crisis worsened. Vinyl record retailers are finally getting some good news: Amazon has announced it will begin restocking stocking discretionary items, including vinyl records. Last month, as the coronavirus crisis worsened, Amazon ceased stocking “non-essential items” from third-party sellers in order to fulfill the increased demand for hand sanitizer, face masks, toilet paper, and medical supplies. Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon is ready to begin re-stocking discretionary items, albeit in “limited” quantities. “Later this week, we will allow more products into our fulfillment centers,” an Amazon spokeswoman told the WSJ. “Products will be limited by quantity to enable us to continue prioritizing products and protecting employees, while also ensuring most selling partners can ship goods into our facilities.”
How to Organize Your Music Collection at Home: Keep your vinyl and CDs protected, organized and beautifully displayed. You’ve gone through the adventure of building a world-class record collection, and kept it in excellent condition for years or decades — now it’s time to properly store it for easy access, aesthetics, and protection. There are some general rules about where to keep your music (especially records), which boil down to: Don’t store them in any room with a lot of moisture or smoke to avoid mold or unpleasant odors. But that doesn’t matter if you have little piles of music strewn throughout your house collecting dust, or getting knocked over by your robot vacuum. If you’re ready to get more serious about keeping your records or CDs organized, we can help. We’ve gathered a couple of storage options for both types of media that can accommodate collections of various sizes. These shelving units are designed to look really nice right next to each other, so you can get another one as your music library grows. Once your albums properly stored, it’ll be easy to pluck one for listening rather than hunting around for a recent find you swore was right there. Whether you sort your music by last name, genre, or year is up to you, but you can’t get to that fun part without putting in a little work.
Art Dudley, Rest in Peace: The hi-fi world has lost a giant, and we at Stereophile have lost a brother. Art Dudley passed peacefully this morning around 4am after a short illness. The cause was metastatic cancer. Art bought his first record—Roger Miller’s “King of the Road,” the single—at age 8 or 9. He picked up the guitar at 16 and played throughout his life. When he was young, he had a band, The Norm. Starting in the late ’70s, Art worked at Backpacker magazine. In 1985, he joined The Absolute Sound as its managing editor, quitting that gig after precisely a year. After that, he earned his living in other ways while dabbling in hi-fi writing. Then, in 1994, after learning he’d been laid off from his job teaching sixth-graders—not enough fifth-graders, apparently—he decided to start Listener, a highly opinionated journal of music and audio. (It’s safe to say that everything Art ever did was highly opinionated.)
