Who woulda thunk it? Vinyl is making a comeback, and it is a pretty big comeback. I thought my days of hoisting and heaving heavy boxes of LP's were long gone. Nope. They're baaacckkk! And in a pretty big way. There was an article discussing this in last week's Billboard,( but of course I can't find it now online...grrr), but one of the funny things in the article was that now, the major labels are having problems finding pressing plants that still do vinyl! Hilarious. There was even a story about one plant that had to shut down for a while because the person who's sole job is to glue the inside edges of the LP jacket down broke his/her arm and no one else seems to be able to do that very specialized skill! Help us all, sweet Jesus.
At the indie distributor where I work, we have always sold a fair amount of LP's. Usually these are audiophile remastered major label hits that the majors would license to whoever would pay 'em. Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Norah Jones etc....whatever. They sold well. Now, the owner of my place of work recently bought out another small distributor that specialises in re-releasing more obscure, but just as desirable stuff with a bit more alternative street cred such as Tim Buckley, Nico, Big Star, 13th Floor Elevators and on and on.. And it's mostly LP's! We are blowing this stuff out the door, have a whole new customer base (and a fine one it is - most LP's are sold on a non-returnable basis and I figure these new customers are more than likely not going to give up LP's for digital downloads). Sweet.
So I'll probably bitch and moan about the workload. (And what a load it is - LP's are heavy. A box of 50 CD's weighs 11 lbs. A 50 count box of LP's can weigh about 45 lbs. Imagine the thrill I felt when I was told that 43 pallets of product were going to arrive to be absorbed into our already cramped warehouse over last Labor Day weekend! Grrr). But the good news is a heightened sense of job security. Great. More time to kick myself in the ass for not listening to Mom and getting a real degree in a real job that pays real money. Oh well. At least I'm working.
Gil
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Hi Gil -- I know you posted this a while ago, but I was reminded of it as a fairly legendary vinyl mastering engineer, Ron Murphy of Detroit, passed away a few weeks ago. He "made his bones" mastering Motown records in the 60s, and over the last couple of decades had been mastering techno and house records (i.e. the DJ records that largely kept vinyl alive during the lean years). There's a very nice video of part of the cutting process at that link above, btw.
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