Reposting this from the What Are You Reading ? thread.
Interesting take on the current state of record labels.
https://medium.com/@tunesandtales/the-record-label-crisis-37842a67be24
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It was that piece and this one he also did which prompted me to start the thread. The below says vinyl sales are up (but probably driven by heritage buying and people buying not to play a record but to own an artefact) and you can see why smaller physical record shops with a large number of new releases must be struggling.
https://medium.com/@tunesandtales/where-next-for-vinyl-9870b6afe21a
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Not really been following this thread⌠reading about shops closing down sounded depressing⌠but a new record shop has just opened in Deptford (SE London) https://upsidedownrecords.co.uk/
âŚ. Hope it lasts long enough for me to have a look
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I guess record shops (and buying records) is subject to the same pressures as felt everywhere else in the current cost of living crisis. Personally, as iâve stated elsewhere on this forum, i have only bought 1 brand new, sealed record this year. I just canât afford it at the moment.
Me and the wife have just had a few days away seeing family and friends in Cornwall, while there i did have a look in a couple of shops in Falmouth and Truro. Both shops were a combination of used and new, and i was staggered at how expensive they were. I know they have ever increasing overheads, and need to make a living, but ÂŁ45 for a Taylor Swift album??? Used records that i probably would have seen for a fiver years ago now seemed to be ÂŁ15-20 a time (who would honestly pay that for Dire Straits- Brothers In Arms?). Did think that in a back street shop in a small town (Liskeard) there might have been cheap gems waiting to be mined, but not the case. Very much priced as per Discogs guidelines, and interestingly, the owner told me that dealers from âup the lineâ (her expression) regularly descend on the place and offer 40-50% of the advertised price in return for bulk buying.
My conclusion is, yes, the âvinyl revivalâ is probably fizzling out. Many reasons, overheads, the state of the economy, a little bit of greed and also the hard truth that if it is a fad or fashion, then eventually it just goes out of fashion again.
See also the âcraft beerâ thing with plentiful micro breweries under railway arches closing down, and many of them also being acquired by major brewers and merged into there large operations.
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Local town to us, was that in Bay Tree Hill? Town is dying sadly, so many empty shops. Never found anything tempting or interesting record wise, still look occasionally.
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Had a mooch in HMV yesterday. Racks and racks of utter dross at ridiculous prices. Literally tons of the stuff.
â33rd Anniversary, digitally remastered, lacquer cut by Cilla Black, lenticular sleeve, 180g, limited to 50â. Naturally I had to buy it.
Iâm all for the revival dying out tbh. Letâs get back to sensible prices, and fewer scalpers.
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Was called âDunamisâ (worryingly, also the name of some weird branch of Christianity) and is on Fore Street. Predominately a shop selling some way out there religious books and artifacts, but a dozen or so crates of records in the back which i noticed when peering in the window (also had loads of uncategorised stuff upstairs away from the public bit of the of shop, which the woman behind the counter let me dig through). Apparently her husband used to have a shop in Bristol, so is selling off the remaining stock in here, and some of his personal collection is also mixed in with it. . It is mostly 70âs rock, some reggae a bit of funk/soul/disco and many crates of film soundtracks. A few crates of house/techno and hip hop upstairs along with loads of gospel stuff⌠All in really good condition, but pretty expensive and nothing really took my fancy. Killed an hour or so though.
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âŚalso some people just donât deserve it!
Whiny tw*t!
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Gotcha, not ventured in there for ages, saved me the trouble, last time she said I couldnât go in as Iâd just bought a Pasty.
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