Why are vinyl record sales up?
In the era when it seems like all of our music has gone digital, an interesting trend has been reported by Amazon: sales of vinyl records are up 745% since 2008.
Continue reading… “Amazon reports vinyl record sales are up 745% since 2008”
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..
Continue reading… “HOWTO clean LPs, DVDs, and CDs”
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.
A UK company called And Vinyly is offering people the chance to press their ashes in a vinyl recording of their own voice, their favourite tunes or their last will and testament. Minimalist audiophiles might want to go for the simple option of having no tunes or voiceover, and simply pressing the ashes into the vinyl to result in pops and crackles.
The company was founded by Jason Leach, who co-founded the techno group and record label Subhead in the 1990s and has since founded a number of other labels, including House of Fix, Daftwerk and Death to Vinyl…
Korean designer Rhea Jeong says she’s been astounded by the amount of interest in her conceptual Void LP record player. One look at the design and you can see why it’s made so much noise without even uttering a sound. Close your eyes and imagine a little red globe spinning around on top of a vinyl record emitting sound from speakers inside it. The record itself is suspended in mid-air above a simple black base unit – no strings attached, no wires holding it up and definitely no safety net. The imagery is quite simply jaw-dropping. But can such a thing really work?
Continue reading… “VOID Player Spins Your Vinyl In A New Way”
The Hummer Tank
If you’ve got an H2T but you’re not happy with the gas mileage — finding it way too high — your options are limited. Sure, you could bolt on performance mods, but we’d suggest these elegant and subtle tracked belts to replace your efficient pneumatic tires. (Pics)
Continue reading… “The Hummer Tank”
So you’ve got a pile of old cassettes sitting around that you can’t get yourself to throw away. The memories, man! But you don’t want them cluttering up your closet anymore, as you, understandably, never listen to cassettes anymore. What to do?
Continue reading… “Creepy Melted Cassette Skeleton”