HOWTO clean LPs, DVDs, and CDs

vinyl grooves close up 2345

REALLY close up of a vinyl groove.

I’ve recently picked up several old vinyl LPs at thrift stores and garage sales. My musical taste is very eclectic, but these discs have one big thing in common: they’re all filthy. Similarly, we have dozens of kids DVDs and CDs in our house coated in toddler goo that would almost certainly beat the adhesive that holds the tiles on the space shuttle. This weekend, I plan to brew up a cauldron of the cleaning solution used by the master preservationists at the Library of Congress. Or maybe I’ll just go with Ivory dish soap, warm water, and an old t-shirt. Anyway, here’s the LoC’s recipe..

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Music Sales in U.S. Fell 2.4% in 2010; Digital Music Accounts for 46% of Purchases

katy perry

A top-selling digital song of 2010 was “California Gurls” by Katy Perry (4.4 million).

U.S. music sales fell 2.4% in 2010 to 1.5 billion units, as CD sales plummeted nearly 20% while digital track sales were up just 1%, according to a report from Nielsen and Billboard. Digital track sales were 1.17 billion in 2010, up from 1.16 in 2009. While CD sales fell precipitously last year, digital album sales rose 13% to 863 million. The report notes that digital music accounted for 46% of all U.S. music purchases in 2010, up from 40% in 2009 and 32% in 2008, and digital track sales broke the 1 billion sales mark for the third straight year.

Continue reading… “Music Sales in U.S. Fell 2.4% in 2010; Digital Music Accounts for 46% of Purchases”

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