Vinyl
Vinyl Prices Might Seem High Today, But They Were Worse in 1978
As far as albums go, 1978 was one for the record books. The Saturday Night Fever and Grease soundtracks topped the Billboard 200 album chart for a combined 36 weeks. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, released in 1977, was the No. 1 album in the U.S. the first two weeks of the year. Billy Joel’s 52nd Street topped the chart for the final seven weeks of the year. The Rolling Stone’s Some Girls and Boston’s Don’t Look Back each topped the chart for two weeks. It was also a notable year for another reason: In 1978, vinyl records were more expensive than any other time since the RIAA began tracking sales in 1973. That year, the average retail sale price of a vinyl EP/LP was $7.32 – equal to $30.18 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation. That was the second-highest vinyl sales year in U.S. histor...
Did Angel Olsen Just Show the Music Industry How to Make Vinyl Green?
Could there be a simpler way for the music industry to go green? While acts like Coldplay and Justin Bieber have been focused on bicycle-powered stadium shows and kinetic dancefloors, for her new album Big Time (out Friday on Jagjaguwar) Angel Olsen took a more straightforward approach that’s replicable for artists of all sizes. Each vinyl or CD copy of the album purchased from her label’s website has carbon offsets built into the pricing, meaning the environmental impact that went into producing — and will go into consuming — the vinyl album (for $1 each) or CD (50 cents each) is effectively neutralized. All the proceeds from these surcharges go to Native, a public benefit corporation specializing in carbon offsets, which will use the money to purchase carbon offsets supporting the Medfor...
Childish Gambino Lands First No. 1 on Top Album Sales Chart With ‘Kauai’ Vinyl Debut
Record Store Day 2022’s fingerprints are all over Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated May 7), as six of the top 10 have sales owed to a special release for the annual indie retailer holiday. Leading the pack at No. 1 is Childish Gambino’s Kauai EP, which debuts atop the list with 17,000 sold in the U.S. in the week ending April 28, according to Luminate. It’s his first No. 1 on the chart, and third top 10. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Kauai was originally released in 2014 as digital download at retail, and charted for five weeks that year. It was issued on vinyl for the first time for Record Store Day (April 23) and nearly all of the album’s sales in the week ending April 28 were from its vinyl LP. Kauai was pressed on three surprise co...
One Nation Under a Stylus
Vinyl Nation, a new documentary from directors Kevin Smokler and Christopher Boone, is, as the title may suggest, as much a chronicle about a growing community than it is about the medium of vinyl records. To be clear, the history of vinyl pressing, from its early market dominance to its later decline due to the advent of the compact disc, to its glorious return over the past decade — nearly 42 million records were sold in 2021(outselling CDs for the first time since 1986!) — is thoroughly covered (occasionally bordering on repetitive) by the filmmakers. The focus, however, is more on the collectors. The film opens outside the Mills Record Company in Kansas City. It’s Record Store Day, an annual celebration of independent record stores across the country, and a long line of collectors, obs...
Disney Announces Vinyl Reissue of Daft Punk’s Iconic “Tron: Legacy” Soundtrack
Daft Punk are the gift that keep on giving. In celebration of the 40-year anniversary of the original TRON film, Disney has announced a vinyl reissue of the 1982 sci-fi classic’s soundtrack. The company is also pressing new vinyl of Daft Punk’s iconic TRON: Legacy score and subsequent remix album, 2011’s TRON: Legacy Reconfigured, which features reworks of the robots’ music by Avicii, M83, Boys Noize and The Glitch Mob, among others. TRON: Legacy remains Daft Punk’s only film score. Featuring an 85-piece orchestra, the soundtrack took over two years to create and eventually debuted atop Billboard‘s Dance/Electronic Albums chart. In late 2021, 11 years to the day, the timeless album reclaimed that top spot. The original TRON film was scored by legend...
Jack White Implores Major Labels to Build Vinyl Pressing Plants Amid Backlog
Jack White is calling on the major labels — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — to build their own vinyl pressing plants amid explosive growth in the format that has led to industry-wide backlogs. White made the request via an open letter and accompanying video released on Monday (March 14). “With industry-wide turnaround times for vinyl currently leaning towards the length of a human pregnancy, it’s obvious, in a world so contingent on being of-the-moment and timed just right (a single, an album, a tour etc.), these timelines are the killers of momentum, soul, artistic expression, and far too often, livelihoods,” White wrote in the letter. White, who owns the Detroit-based Third Man Pressing plant — opened in 2017 — with his independent label Third Man...
Jack White Calls on Major Labels to Build Their Own Vinyl Record Plants
Jack White has issued a new open letter and video calling on major labels to build their own vinyl record pressing plants. “At least once a week, without fail, someone will reach out asking me to help expedite their vinyl record manufacturing,” writes White to begin his letter. “It’s a natural thought… knowing that I own a pressing plant and have my own record label, “if anyone could help, it’s this guy!” As the founder of Third Man Records, White has become one of the leading advocates for and producers of vinyl records. Over the years, several major artists — including JAY-Z and Dave Chappelle — have partnered with Third Man to press their releases on vinyl. Advertisement Related Video But, as White goes on to explain in today’s letter, recent supply chain issues and manufacturing bottle...
Peaky Blinders OST on Blood-Red Vinyl Has Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Jack White, Radiohead
After six seasons, Peaky Blinders’ original soundtrack is finally getting the vinyl treatment via UMe. To celebrate the Cillian Murphy-starring drama’s final season, which is currently airing on the BBC, the album is set to be pressed on blood-red vinyl in a 3-LP package that drops May 27th. Across 49 tracks, the OST will feature two versions of the show’s sinister theme song “Red Right Hand” — one by original artists Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and another by PJ Harvey — as well as tracks by Jack White (“Love Is Blindness”), Dan Auerbach (“The Prowl”), Arctic Monkeys (“Do I Wanna Know?), Radiohead (“You and Whose Army?”), David Bowie (“Lazarus”) and more, along with lines of dialogue from the first five seasons of the series. “The Peaky Blinders story and the music we use a...
Tool Set Retail Release for Ultra Deluxe Fear Inoculum Vinyl (At Much Lower Price Than Signed Version)
Tool raised some eyebrows when they recently began selling limited autographed copies of a new “Ultra Deluxe” vinyl edition of their 2019 album Fear Inoculum at their concerts for $810 ($750 plus service fees and taxes). Now, the band has set a retail price for the unsigned set at the much lower cost of $169.98, with a release date of April 8th. Several days ago, a Reddit thread went viral when someone posted a photo of the deluxe 5-LP collection at a Tool merch booth with the sticker price of $810. Even considering the base price of $750, the newly announced unsigned retail version arrives at a cost that’s $580 lower. That comes out to be around $145 for each band member’s autograph. For diehard Tool fans, perhaps that’s a reasonable price to pay to get all four signatures on the same ite...
Tool’s New Ultra Deluxe Signed Fear Inoculum Box Set Priced at $810
Tool have unveiled an Ultra Deluxe vinyl box set of their 2019 album Fear Inoculum, and are currently selling autographed copies exclusively at their concerts for the seemingly steep price of $810. A post on the vinyl subreddit page went viral after a concertgoer snapped a picture of the price tag as displayed at Tool’s merch table, with the lofty amount generating backlash among several commenters. The irony is that Tool’s price might actually be below market value. The signed editions are already fetching around $2,000 on eBay. Not a bad investment, especially considering that it’s a tangible object in a collector’s market where flipping intangible NFTs has become the new trend. Advertisement Related Video Tool began selling a very limited number of the signed Fear Inoculum Ultra Deluxe ...
The Vinyl Countdown
Blessed (and weird) are the record store saints, who save God-forsaken disks from ending up in landfill graveyards, finding them venerating homes, instead. Unlike most independent record retailers following today’s standard playbook, replacing compact discs and used vinyl in their bins with virgin 12-inch vinyl re-issues and contemporary pressings, a few shopkeepers still operate shrines to holy relics of the 1950s to 1980s–original 45 rpm singles. No new ones are being pressed, so these halo-like plastic wafers inspire religious fervor and even madness Consider Val Shively, who claims to stock over 4 million records in his overstuffed three-story shop, R&B Records. To a western suburb of Philadelphia trek collectors from the Far East and Europe. They come in search of mid-XXth C...
Record Store Day’s ‘Improbable’ Success Recounted in New Book for 15th Anniversary
Record Store Day is getting a book-length origin story. On April 12, ahead of the annual celebration’s 15th anniversary, Rare Bird will publish author Larry Jaffee’s Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century, a book recounting how the long-running event helped save independent record stores across the world and played a major role in relaunching the now-booming vinyl format. The tale is told in the voices of those who were pivotal to the movement, including RSD’s founders, artists who were supportive of the event and independent record store owners, among others. Jaffee is a New York-based journalist who teaches writing at the New York Institute of Technology and Mercy College and serves as co-founder/conference director of the Making Vinyl series of conferences th...
