Redwood City, CA | Longtime Redwood City record store caught in middle of housing boom: The deadline for cities in the Bay Area to submit their new housing plans has come and gone, leaving some in a state of confusion. At least one city has done well in planning for the future, even if it comes with a cost. Redwood City is one of only a few Bay Area cities to actually complete their housing elements. On El Camino Real, one can see why, a row of recently-built apartment complexes tower over the busy street. But there’s also a reminder that when you tear down the old to build the new, sometimes you can lose something pretty important in the process. Most new customers who enter “The Record Man” store in Redwood City get a tour from the “Man” himself…Gary Saxton. “We’re going down this way, here…” he said as he leads the way into room after room of records stacked in shelves up to the ceiling.
Stamford, UK | Former Thin Lizzy manager to revive Rock On Records in All Saints Street, Stamford—and pledges all profits to charity. A renowned London record shop which boasted the likes of Bob Dylan and Jimmy Page among its customers is to make a comeback in Stamford. Rock On Records built up a loyal following among music fans and musicians in London from 1971 until its last remaining shop, in Camden, closed in 1996. Owner Ted Carroll, who used to manage rock band Thin Lizzy, is to resurrect the name at 4 All Saints Street, giving the town its first record store in more than a decade. It is scheduled to open its doors on March 9. Ted, from Ketton, has also made an unorthodox business move by pledging all profits from the shop to charity. Last year alone he helped to raise £30,000 for good causes through sales of rare music memorabilia. “I have all the stock already so the overheads will be minimal and I expect it to be quite profitable,” he explained.
Taylorsville, UT | Taylorsville store flooded after pipes burst: Freezing temperatures caused pipes to burst and flood at Graywhale Entertainment in Taylorsville Tuesday. “We heard a very loud thump and rumble and then it sounded like someone turned on every shower in a hotel at the same time,” said the owner Dustin Hansen. Hansen said the extreme cold caused a fire suppression system malfunction that led to pipes breaking. “We’ve had some friends in the industry, their roof caved in. You know, they had flooding and stuff that ruined their entire inventory,” said Hansen. “So that’s kind of the first thought that we all had when we saw what was happening. Like, oh it’s over.” Hansen said his employees weren’t going to let the business fall underwater. “They jumped right into action, immediately started pulling things down and protecting what we could,” said Hansen. Staff managed to save a majority of the music and media. “Most of our inventory is safe,” he said, “All the records all the CDs, the things that people care about the most.”
Kyiv, UA | Kyiv club Closer shuts record shop: The news was announced via the store’s Telegram. The record store wing of beloved Kyiv club Closer is shutting. The closure was announced in a statement on the store’s Telegram channel on Friday, January 27th. “This is the last post from the Closer Record Store page, so it can be considered a farewell,” the post read. “Yes, our store is closing. Of course, we are a little sad, but at the same time, we ask that no one be sad, because changes are a sign of life.” The post went on to reference the Tibetan Buddhist ideology of destroying something that is sacred, summarised with the line: “Everything has its beginning, as well as its end.” Sharing the same building as the club, Closer Record Store was launched in 2015 by residents Shakolin and Gapom. A new record shop opened in Kyiv in August called abo records. Read Closer’s statement in full.
DE | No, vinyl is not outselling CDs in Germany (or the USA…yet) In the wake of our coverage of CD vs. vinyl sales in the UK in 2022 where the former still outsells the latter 2 to 1, I went looking for more data. The most up-to-date figures from Germany’s music industry body, the BVMI, show that 25.1 million CDs were sold in Germany in 2021 but only 4.5 million vinyl LPs. That’s 5 to 1 in favour of the shiny silver disc. In the USA, the RIAA’s EoY report for 2021 reveals a much closer call between these two physical formats: 39.7 million vinyl LPs vs. 46.6 million CDs. However, it could be closer still by year’s end with the RIAA’s report for the first half of 2022 showing vinyl pipping CDs to the post – 21.8 million vs 17.7 million units shifted. It will be interesting to see where those end of year sales figures land once Black Friday and Christmas have been factored in.
Alternative investments: Should you add some ‘blue chip’ vinyl to your portfolio? For a while, it looked like the humble vinyl record was destined to go the same way as its cassette and CD brethren, consigned to the op shops and hard rubbish piles of history. But thanks to a surge in interest from younger generations, the drum beat around vinyl is getting louder, with the 12-inch discs becoming increasingly popular for listeners and collectors alike. In today’s column, we’ll look at how vinyl rose, fell, and then rose again – and what the future holds for one of my favourite alternative asset classes. We all know streaming is the way most people listen to music. Thanks to platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, streaming is now easily the music industry’s biggest revenue driver. But what you may not know is that vinyl is on the upswing. The vinyl revival is real, and the format has now surpassed CDs in annual sales, despite the first record being released more than 50 years before CDs became popular. …So let’s dive into why people are buying vinyl again, and why it makes a good investment.
Cedar Crest, PA | Cedar Crest grad nominated for Grammy Award in album packaging category: Even better, the album being recognized is by his own band (which he started with another Cedar Crest grad). The Grammy Awards draw big audiences each year when they’re aired on television. The show features many of music’s biggest names, as it will on Sunday, Feb. 5. But the vast number of Grammy nominees are much less well known. And the things for which some of them are nominated don’t even involve making music, per se. …Stichter is nominated as art director for Best Recording Packaging for “Divers,” the album he and longtime friend Matt Stone (a Mount Gretna native and 1996 Cedar Crest graduate) released last year as their ambient/ experimental band Soporus. …“I’ve done a lot of projects over the years with a letterpress insert or a wrap around the outside of a record,” he said. “I had been experimenting with gluing together letterpress packaging that was still very simple, embracing the limitations of the process that I had access to.” His goal with “Divers” was making “a package that you can interact with when you’re listening to the instrumental music.”
