Vinyl Essay

     Not only are the companies themselves facing hard times, but the retail stores that sell music are also suffering their own losses. “Musicland Stores, the largest music retailer in the U.S. continues to report losses and declining sales…For the third quarter, the Minnetonka, Minn.-based company reports a new loss of $16.1 million, compared with a loss last year of $144.6 million” (Jeffrey). The company was even forced to close some of its stores. “At quarter’s end, Musicland operated 1476 stores…During the quarter, the company closed the following: Nine Sam Goody/Musiclands, two Media plays, one On Cud, and on U.K. store” (Jeffrey). This problem hits home in Vermillion, South Dakota, where the local On Cue store, the only place to buy entertainment products like CDs and audiocassettes, was forced to close because of insufficient revenues. Inhabitants of Vermillion are now forced to travel anywhere from 30 to 60 miles away to purchase music offline. While this town obviously reflects a very small percentage of consumers, the lack of immediately available music products certainly will not help the declining record sales.

Radio and record labels have both come a long way since when they were first invented. Radio’s came from being a great source of entertainment among those who were able to afford it. It was a staple within the household. Sometimes the entire family would gather around the radio at a particular time and listen to the boxing match live. Record labels still work under the same concepts as they do today, rather you like them or not, they have created artist and disputed many of the favorite hits that we listen to today. Unfortunately, both are facing its own decline. Radio isn’t as structured as it used to be. Record companies are constantly battling the same forces that made them successful. Both industries face major crisis if they are not willing to reinvent their platforms to a more stable format.

Some people say vinyl long play records (LPs) have a warmer, more honest sound, others' believe the sound of compact discs (CDs) are clear and more precise; a number of factors besides sound characteristics effect both LPs and CDs, the debate about which format dominates has been going on within the disc jockey (DJ) community for over 20 years. Four strong factors in this debate include: portability, storage capacity, sound characteristics, and fidelity; all which help the user decide

Though the projections for the fall quarter look promising the resurge us of books and CD’s is unlikely. Recent reports have sales of books falling as much as 34% over last year and the increase of eBooks over 300%. (Wolman, 2011) It also has CD sales being cut in half over the past decade. The rise of people buying digital music and streaming music is significant.

With the advances in technology and increase in internet broadband availability (The Broadband Commision, 2014), record labels are being forces to innovate and update their business models (M.Coz & Torres, 2013) to keep up with the latest technology (Solis, 2015). Of these technologies, the move away from physical sales (of music) to Digital sales is the most significant. Digital sales have increased over the last 6 years (as shown in Table 1) in terms of revenues, and this is set to carry on this way in the future (Solis, 2015).

In the years that Motown Records was being established there were many successful Independent labels. For example, Paramount and Gennett Records were widely known and successful. Independent labels started in the 1920’s. Independent labels want that big sound feeling, without the dealing with corporate America. Although, Motown Records started small, founder Berry Gordy Jr. had no intentions of keeping it that way by any means. This essay will briefly explain how Motown grew and the rich history of legendary musicians that helped establish Motown. This essay will also discuss how Motown Records impacted the music industry and how Berry Gordy Jr, and artist such as The Miracles, The Supremes, and Stevie Wonder to name a few create a sustainable

The ever-changing landscape of music distribution, due to constant advancements in technology, is sometimes hard to keep up with for artist, producer, and consumer alike. New editions of textbooks in Music Business classes are issued each year, and changes are made in the industry before the semester is even over. Because of this, it is vital for the industry to not only not only be aware of what is currently going happening, but also be able to foresee the direction that the music business is heading in. In this aspect, it seems that we are at a turning point where consumers and artists are taking

This next Saturday April 22nd Las Vegas, and every major city in the US will be celebrating the 10th edition of Record Store Day, an initiative started on the U.S. and now turned into a worldwide event. As the means through which we consume our music have shifted over the past decade, record stores have slowly become victims of new media, like MP3 digital files and more recently, streaming services. Back in the year of 2007, independent record store owners and their employees met to discuss ways to save their industry, and they brainstormed this idea of Record Store Day, which was in part modeled after a similar event, which focused on celebrating and promoting comic book culture. This once a year event has proven to significantly increase the traffic and profits for independent record stores, an achievement made possible through the collaboration of artists and record labels, who prepare special limited releases, which often include vinyl reissues, live albums or box sets to be released on this

We live in an ever changing world, with technological advancements being made every day. Digital formats are everywhere, from phones to watches with music being a part of it all. Musical formats prior to digital formats have, for the most part, faded into the background, but there is one relic that is regaining popularity and that is the vinyl record. Vinyl records burst on the scene at the beginning of the 20th century and are more popular than ever boasting 52% increase in sales from 2013 to 2014, while the popularity of digital downloads are slowly decreasing dropping by 9% (Gibson). As vinyl makes its way back into the hands of audiophiles, new consumers are racing to get their paws on these vintage music format, but where does one go to acquire vinyl records? Luckily, there are several options from the old standard of the record store to the all inclusive online store. There are also some unusual places to find vinyl such as the thrift and discount stores and the occasional jackpot at a garage or estate sale. Overall the record store has the other choices beat due to the overall experience the collector gains through the record store’s various assets such as, locations and instant gratification, a tangible experience, interacting with owners and other vinyl enthusiasts, and special discounts and events like Record Store Day.

Last year more than 13 million LPs were sold in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the highest count in 25 years, making it one of the record business’s few growth areas.

In 1948 the vinyl record was born when Columbia Records introduced the 12-inch microgroove LP (long-playing) recorded at 33-1/3rmp and pressed in vinyl. This important moment in history took place in the city of New York. The vinyl record thrived for generations and with the appearance of the rock-and-roll era its popularity expanded. This expansion led to a turning point within the music industry the birth of the Hi-Fi era and the industry that rose to meet its challenges.

The major music-only stores such as Tower Records (which once wielded considerable influence in the industry) went bankrupt, replaced by box stores (such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy). Recording artists began to rely primarily on live performances and merchandise for their income, which in turn made them more dependent on music promoters such as Live Nation (which dominates tour promotion and owns a large number of music venues.)[6] In order to benefit from all of an artist 's income streams, record companies began to rely on the "360 deal", a new business relationship pioneered by Robbie Williams and EMI in 2007.[7] At the other extreme, record companies also used simple manufacturing and distribution deals, which gives a higher percentage to the artist, but does not cover the expense of marketing and promotion. Many newer artists no longer see any kind of "record deal" as an integral part of their business plan at all. Inexpensive recording hardware and software made it possible to create high quality music in a bedroom and distribute it over the internet to a worldwide audience.[8] This, in turn, caused problems for recording studios, record producers and audio engineers: the Los Angeles Times reported that, by 2009, as many as half of the recording facilities in that city had failed.[9] Consumers benefited enormously from the ease with which music can be shared from computer to computer, whether over the internet or by the exchange of

Since the iTunes music store was introduced on April 28, 2003, gross music sales have plummeted in the United States - from $11.8 billion in 2003 to $7.1 billion in 2012, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (Covert). Counterintuitively, during that time consumers were buying more music than ever. How is that possible? It 's because iTunes had made digital singles popular and was selling them cheap. This would change the music industry forever. In 2000, Americans bought 943 million CD albums (Covert), and digital sales didn’t even make a dent in comparison. But by 2007, those inexpensive singles overtook CDs by a wide margin, generating 819 million sales compared to just 500 million for the CD.

Over the past decade, the use of CDs has been replaced with online streaming and retailing. This has eliminated much of the record companies revenues as they were used to making most of their profit off of distribution and promotion of physical copies of artists albums (Niemen). This has caused for a major shift and remodeling of major players in the music industries business models. Companies such Sony, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group have started to completely rethink the way they conduct business (Forbes). In the past record labels were not only responsible for production, distribution and promotion of an artist and his/her music, but they also acted as a bank (Forbes), funding the artists tours and recording sessions. Recently, these music giants have been moving towards becoming more of a modular network organization. What this means is that they are less occupied with the nitty gritty, and more focused on what they do best which is distribution and promotion. This also allows for more freedom of creativity for the artist as well as fairer split of profits (Forbes). This adaption of new business models clearly shows the versatility of the music industry in adapting to new times and technologies.

Introduction: Setting the trend for the future, the distribution and consumption of recorded music transformed dramatically with the launching of Apple’s iTunes in 2001. The proliferation of online music subscription services and other music sharing services exerted a great pressure on the conventional music distribution business model. Combined with this transformation, piracy of digital music had a profound impact on the whole industry. These worsening conditions in the market place for recorded music forced both established and upcoming new artists to experiment with new ways of selling their music.