Solihull, UK | HMV Solihull among 7 new shops in town centre: …HMV marked its 100th anniversary on July 2 by opening a new store in Solihull. Two years after its landmark shop in Mell Square closed down, the record retailer launched a new site in the old Cotswold Outdoor unit next to Dunelm. The 4,500 square-foot store is stocked with over 5,000 vinyl LPs, collector’s edition Blu-Ray and 4K Ultra HD films and series, pop-culture must haves like exclusive t-shirts, sweet treats and collectable figurines and a great selection of classic turntables and the latest headphones. The new HMV also offers a brand new delivery service, allowing customers to order any item not in store direct to their door. Commenting on HMV’s return, the leader of Solihull Council, Councillor Ian Courts, said: “It’s great that such a well-known brand as HMV is returning to Mell Square with a new store. It shows that Solihull is still a good place to do business, remains attractive to retailers and I am confident they will not be the last to invest in the town.”
UK | HMV at 100: why the beleaguered record store is more vital than you think: It’s easy (and fun!) to take the piss out of the retailer, which may seem like a relic from yesteryear, but we’d miss its accessible approach to music. A couple of years ago, a comedy writer called Laura Crisp went viral with her thread of tweets about working in HMV as a teenager. Anecdotes included a man who came in every week and pretended to faint in order to receive mouth-to-mouth, a staff member who was nicking cash and storing it in a Keeping Up Appearances boxset and, hilariously, a bloke claiming he was Paul Weller and asking if he could have some Jam CDs as he’d “lost” his. The stories were brilliant, but I think the other reason it resonated with so many people was that fact that for many generations, HMV played a role in their adolescence. This week, the store celebrates its 100th birthday – or at least that of its flagship store in central London – so despite the fact this has probably just made you aware that HMV still exists, let’s give it up for them for making it so far.
Manchester, UK | Sifters Record Shop: This small record store was a favorite of Oasis’s Noel and Liam Gallagher, who mentioned it in one of their early songs. IN 1977, A 29-YEAR-OLD PETE Howard (now known as Mr. Sifters) opened his own record store using 700 of his own LPs. After multiple“punks,” as he called them, started coming into his store and causing mayhem amongst his collection, he moved Sifters from its original location in Burnage to Fog Lane in 1983, where it’s located to this day. The small record shop attracted a lot of attention from the locals of Manchester and started to become quite popular. The store also caught the eye of two brothers, Liam and Noel Gallagher, who used to visit Sifters in the late 80s, years before they started making music as the band Oasis. Liam and Noel have both said they used to go into Sifters at least once a week to buy, or nick, records. In an interview, Pete Howard said, “The other lads from Oasis have said in the press that they used to come in and nick stuff, but I don’t think that’s true, really, I kept a close eye on them!”
San Antonio, TX | Illness forcing San Antonio-area record collector to find a new home for his 113,000 vinyl albums and singles: On the Facebook page for Stevie Ray Vinyl (@stevierayvinyl), record seller Steve Anderson refers to his collection of more than 113,000 albums and singles as an adoption agency for abandoned and unwanted vinyl. Now the 65-year-old Lakehills resident urgently needs to find a new home for the entire collection. Anderson recently announced on Facebook that he’s selling the Stevie Ray Vinyl inventory because he has been diagnosed with terminal liver disease. He and his wife Suzi run the business but can no longer continue to do so without him being able to work full time. Several callers have expressed interest in buying Anderson’s collection. But after several decades and so many more dollars spent on all those records, he would prefer a buyer whose own love for vinyl is as big as his asking price — about a dollar a disc. “I would like to see somebody take the business and the passion and continue my dream with it. That’s the perfect world,” Anderson said.
Edinburgh, UK | Opinion: For the record, Record Store Day has a lot of problems: With Record Store Day over for another year after last Saturday’s second drop hopefully next year things will get back to normal or even better a new normal as there is much that needs to be changed. The original aim of Record Store Day was very clear and that was to get lapsed customers back into shops – those who had maybe succumbed to the low pricing of the VAT-dodging Amazon An added hope was that new customers attracted by the special releases on offer would return and become new regular visitors. Online sales would not be allowed and remaining stock from the big day would gradually sell through in the shops. After the first RSD which only had releases in the States it was decided to dilute this stand and allow online sales after two weeks. That gradually was reduced to a week and then to after shops closed on the day.
UK | Vinyl Record ‘Melts’ in Sun During Brutal British ‘Heatwave’ Aman with a passion for vinyl records has gone viral on TikTok after posting a video of an experiment in which he left a disc out in the blazing sun and found that the British heatwave caused it to warp. Matt, better known as @mattsvinyl2626 on the video sharing platform, posted his original video on Tuesday afternoon. Since posting, the footage has been viewed nearly 465,000 times and liked by over 91,000 TikTokers. Matt explained in a statement to Newsweek that, after receiving a damaged record in the mail, he wanted to repurpose it to avoid creating waste. “The vinyl in my video was indeed a broken item that arrived damaged,” he said. “The company who I purchased it from were very kind and replaced the product. This left me with a vinyl record that I couldn’t use, so to ensure that it didn’t go to landfill I wanted to upcycle it into a household item.”
