Music Industry's best year ever.

Record-breaking year 

 for the music industry 

Vinyl sales soar with other music

I was astounded to read this week that 2021 was the record industry's best ever year in terms of sales.  Just a few dollars short of $15 BILLION, thats up a whopping 23% on last year.  All that time locked down has obviously made people address their home music collections and start filling in the gaps they have wanted to for many years?

All major formats of music grew versus the prior year with the exception of digital downloads. Paid subscriptions continued to be the biggest growth driver, resulting in the sixth consecutive year of growth for music revenues.

Bear in mind that musicians have been in lockdown too - no live gigs, so they are presumably earning more than ever before?  Some have home studios now, which helps and means there has been a continuing flow of new music available, although its in 'back catalogue' that most growth has taken place.  (Information accounts for some of the growth; taking that into account means that 1999 just shades last year).

The advance in digital sources of music has had some effect too of course; streaming and downloads have matured tremendously in recent years, but there is more competition now from screen driven entertainment (YouTube, TV, Til-Tok and games)  though music companies still benefit from those too. 

Streaming accounts for many formats; regular paid subscriptions, advertising-supported music streaming services, digital and customized radio, and licenses for music on Facebook, etc.  All formats together show a growth of 24% in 2021 to total $12.4 billion, which is 83% of total revenues. TikTok revenues for music used are now included too. 

Vinyl continues to grow and now accounts for  $1 billion of sales. Both vinyl and CD both grew last year - that last time that happened was back in the 90s!  Vinyl products accounted for 63% of sales last year, an incredible revival. Considering that most record stores were close most of the year thats even more remarkable. 

 Last year both vinyl and CD sales made the same amounts, with 

Figures provided by RIAA. 

World Record Store Day in the UK and on the radio

       World Record Store Day

vinyl collectors will be in heaven!

Originally an American initiative, World Record Store Day has since been taken up by the UK record retailing industry, or what's left of it. The event gets more successful every year and the 16th April looks to be bigger and better than ever. Many record labels make very limited edition pressings available for this one day only and 2016 is no exception. A full listing of the special releases can be found on the RSD16 page. 

These invariably become collectors' items and change hands for extraordinary amounts. This year many of the prime cuts have been made available some days early by some sharks on EBay, even before their official release! 

Many radio stations are taking part this year, BBC Radio 6 nationally on DAB, and Bauer 's MW network in the north,  from 4 to 6pm will be 

• Viking2 
• TFM2
• Hallam2
• Aire2
• Key2
• City2 

The show will be hosted by avid vinyl collector Stephanie Hirst, who can also be heard on several BBC local stations (e.g. BBC York and BBC Manchester) regularly with more 'all vinyl' programmes. 

The music on Stephanie's vinyl shows are always played in from original vinyl discs, drawn from her own record library at home. She has been an avid collector for many years spending thousands of pounds on old singles. 

The BBC has entered into the spirit of World Record Store Day in quite a big way this year, with items in many of the corporations other programmes. Even Women's Hour on BBC Radio 4 did a feature,  with vinyl addict Mary Anne Hobbs telling Jenni Murray all about how she got rid of her huge vinyl collection by having a party and inviting her guests to simply help themselves to whatever they wanted!  A very kind hearted girl is Mary Anne!

Mary Anne kept only 200 items, real solid favourites that she just could not bear to be parted with.  I know how she feels,  I could not even whittle my own favourite list down to 200! My own 'favourites' list is around 400 (you can see a print out of the Paul Rusling Favourites by clicking the words).

Following Mary Anne's programme (she does breakfasts on Saturdays, from 7 to 10)  Radio 6 had scheduled a Lauren Levine  with a special 'RSD Party' broadcast which has some very special guests who she is keeping close to her chest. 

Your Local Record Shop

Many record shop[s have their own events - in Hull the SoundSystems shop in Bowlalley Lane had the FRONTEERS playing their tunes and signing their 45s in the afternoon.  Steve Mathie's Spin-it in the Trinity Market and Darran Crowther's Disc Discovery on Spring Bank are ALWAYS worth a visit.  Check out  YOUR own nearest independent store with a handy little checker available on THIS WEB PAGE .

The SL1200 turntable reborn

After almost going into extinction ten years ago, record shops are really making a comeback this year, as is vinyl generally.  Turntables too are making an appearance once again as the focal point of many HiFi installations and this week a new turntable, a remodelling of the legendary SL1200, as sold out, despite a $4,000 price tag.  

The orginal SL1200s stopped production about five years ago and have been commanding hefty price tags; I've been itching to take mine to bits for years but it has just never faltered! The new SL1200 GAE models have their own BlueTooth transmitter on board so you can hook up wireless speakers or any other kit around the home. This eradicates the one item that does add some crackle in any turntable installation - those old phono plugs, which are not really conducive to great audio fidelity!

Other Turntables 

The Daily Mirror too has jumped on the vinyl bandwagon for RSD 2016 and has several special HiFi offers available. One is a Zennox music scentre, reduced from £500 down to £299.99, with a 6 in 1 music system reduced to £140.99, and a recordable music centre  allowing connection to a laptop compter for recoding for just £129.99.  Details are on this special RSD16 page.

Other manufacturers have been putting new turntables onto the market too. SONY have a much cheaper option in their PS-HX500 HRA turntable, which is due out any week and will cost around £400.  This model  not only allows users to digitize their records, but offers output as DSD (DSF) files, which SONY claim matches audio CDs. 

It has a  “Hi-Res Audio Recorder” app for PC or Mac so you can edit the raw files, deleting unwanted parts of the recording, such as the pop as the needle drops, or the ubiquitous 'cue burn' that many DJs collections are afflicted by. It seems odd that SONY, who worked so hard to launch the CD, which put paid to vinyl as the major format, should be trying to get back into the vinyl market. They even sold their huge European record pressing plant Record Industry in Harlem, Holland a few years ago, a move they are now regretting.

That Record Industry record factory is now the largest vinyl pressing plant in the world, and is struggling to keep up with demand for its records from all over the world and ships out around 30,000 albums a day, giving it an annual turnover of $5.4 million, and growing. Demand is so heavy that the minimum time they can get releases out is currently 3 months! 

Audio Technics have also jumped on the 'wireless' bandwagon with their  LP60-BT which  has a pre-amp built in and a wired output for the traditionalists. Its now available for approx £135.

Record Store Day New Releases

For fuller details of the many new releases available on RSD (and perhaps for a short time afterwards) see THIS PAGE which lists the special releases, including Alannis, Albert King and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (always very collectable!), Allen Toussaint, The Animals, Ashford & Simpson, the Associates and of course, that doyen of DJs, Alan Partridge! That was just a few from those beginning with A - check out the pages and pages of rare recordings on the Record Store Day page. 

Music and Radio Magazines

Music and Radio Magazines

I've loved magazines from being about ten years old - well, not quite magazines in those days. it was music papers. A friend at school (Ian Colebourne - where is her now?)  had an elder brother who was chucking out his stash of Record Mirror and Mersey Beat issues. These were weekly tabloid size on newsprint, I think I got some Fabulous 208 mags from him too which had lots of pictures of music stars,mainly Cliff and Elvis. 

I began taking Disc and Music Echo myself and then  Record Mirror, especially as they covered the radio stations, and especially those on the ships which Melody Maker and the NME ignored. The Melody Maker had been running since 1926 but folded into the NME in 2000, which itself has recently collapsed to just 20,000 copies a week. The electronic version has not taken off and has less than 2,000 subscribers. 

I continued subscribing to these and more throughout the 1970s - they provided much needed information when I was DJing and for many years kept huge archives of back copies of Mix Mag, Blues & Soul, and those papers. 

Its only pretty recently that I've been persuaded to move most of them on, although I still have about 20 years of Record Collector. It was one of my favourites for many years, as was Radio & Records (an American weekly, now sadly gone). I still have many years of Private Eye, essential reading once a fortnight. 

A while ago we were asked to recommend a library of books and of periodicals  for a radio station to make sure their presentation team were up to date.  I spent a couple of days trawling through whats available, and thought this might be a useful exercise to repeat now, so here is a pretty comprehensive listing of the magazines you can find at your newsagent today.  A far better way though is to subscribe which has five great advantages.  

1. It makes sure you don't miss a single copy.  That's can be very important if you are very busy! You get extra free gifts too - exclusive music CDs, and so on
2. You often get each issue s a few days before it appears in the shops,
3. Your copy turns up nicely sealed in a plastic wrapper,  not dog-eared and well thumbed like some of those at the newsagents!
4. Its often much cheaper as a subscriber - you can get up to a half or so off the cover cover price.

Happy reading -  but don't forgot to come back here for my Blog every now and then!

Paul

Acoustic  Monthly guitar, incl tutorials.

Alternative Press   Live rock music  

Audio Media (for engineers)

Bass Guitar Mag a monthly 

Bass Player Leading UK bassist's Monthly. 

Big Cheese  Fashion & music for teen boys

Billboard (American)

Blues

Blues & Soul  Long running fortnightly

Clash (UK independent)

Classic Pop

Classic Rock

Country Music People.  UK monthly

DJ Monthly  Clubbing DJ monthly (UK)

Downbeat  Jazz and Blues monthly 

Fader   Leading Culture bi-monthly

Fireworks   bi-monthly, melodic rock 

Froots (folk  & roots + world music)

Future Music

Guitarist  Very popular monthly mag

Heat Magazine   Lifestyle and pop / RnB
Hip Hop Magazine US fortnightly urban

i-D   Style & Culture

Jazz Journal    Monthly, since 1948

Jazz Times US monthly, jazz with soul

Jazzwise  modern and stylish jazz

K-Mag   (Drum & Bass monthly)

Kerrang! (World biggest rock music monthly)

Live UK  (concerts, equipment & tours

Living Blues Afro-US with US radio charts

Maverick bi-monthly quality country mag

Metal Hammer Hardcore & loud rock mag

MixMag (dance music and DJs lifestyle)

Modern Drummer  Monthly 

MOJO (rock, Alternative and World Music) 

Mondo DR   for sound & light engineers

Music & Copyright  

Music Tech Magazine

Music Week UK Recording industry

NME rock and pop week paper

PowerPlay  Heavy rock and Metal monthly

Prog

Record Collector bible of vinyl fans

Rhythm Magazine   summers magazine
ROCK
Rolling Stone Iconic pop culture mag

Songlines  World music bi-monthly

Sound On Sound equipment focussed monthly

The Source Monthly hip-hop / urban

The Wire   

Time Out    Listing magazine for London 

Top of the Pops  Teen fashion and charts.

Total Guitar monthly, covers amp's too.

UNCUT  new & classic rock music 

VIBE   Hip Hop Magazine

We Love Pop Teenyboppers monthly

Wire  Monthly underground music mag

XXL  Quarterly American hip-hop mag

ZERO TOLERANCE experimental metal

Favourite TV Advert, and favourite music.

Favourite TV adverts  

I took part in a radio discussion recently and was asked my favourite radio and TV commercials.   I thought that I might share this with you, as they are probably very unique and not ones that many would share with me!

Most haunting tune ever for me would be the Skol International beer commercial aired on Radio Veronica in 1968 and 69 (it may be what started me drinking - that was 1968!). I think not was also used on TV in several countries, maybe even the UK too.  

It was sung by the amazing Patricia Paay, who also coincidentally recorded several jingles for my favourite radio station then, Radio Veronica.  She later had great success in the Netherlands as a singer and made many hits, as well as becoming a well known TV presenter and pundit. 

I also confess to loving the TV jingle that most people find "cringing" for Johnsons 'Shake and Vac'. It starred an little known actress called Jenny Logan doing a manic dance around a suburban lounge with her vacuum cleaner. I'm still not sure if I find it erotic or the song is just a very clever earworm.  

For pure comedy the TV ad that really cracks me up is SMASH - the one where the aliens are sat around a space ship console laughing at the primitive way we cook our potatoes: "Then they smash them all to bits." Sheer Brilliance! 

Favourite Music 

For many years I kept a note of which my favourite music tracks were - its around 400. Tunes that just have a certain magic for me and which i could never be without. If I'm feeling a bit low I just pop on a few of these and they really are like medicine. Who needs drugs? 

Music can really make you feel so good. Many are landmark tracks from kye moments in my life, although strangely there are few from my first radio broadcasts (on Radio Caroline in 1973) although there are many that bring back memories of Radio Veronica, the leading Dutch station in the 60s and 70s.  

My favourites cover many genres, the whole spectrum of music almost and while there are a lot from 1966, a quick run down revelas I am still bvery much "into the music"  right through the 80s and 90s, even into this century. My children will be so surprised to see that!  

One of the most dominat rooms in our home for many years has been the Record library, the singles alone numbering tens of thousands.  One of the reasons we only moved house very rarely! 
Click here for a listing of Paul Rusling's favourite music tracks (mostly singles!) 

Vinyl is booming

VINYL IS BOOMING

My first visit to a record pressing plant.

Vinyl records, they seem to evoke a certain magic in many of us music lovers, and I cant really work out quite WHY this is.

Ive been collecting records since the 1960s. AT first they were simply a tool, if you wanted to work as a Disc Jockey, you simply had to have a decent collection.  My first DJing was in clubs in early 1968, and I can well remember borrowing records from friends at school - William Rosenberg, and Steve Foster were my main sources. God Bless them, they had such impeccable taste. 

(Eventually I built up my own great collection which was either soul, or out and out rock music - always on singles.  We had to have a special room for my collection which went to "several tens of thousands" items, mostly singles. I rarely got chance to play any and got tired of getting offers for individual items, so last year I sadly sold the lot.  But my interest in the things seems to have grown even stronger if anything!)

I was never interested in the actual vinyl itself though - after all, it was just a disc of plastic stuff, i didn't even understand how it was made and remember my excitement at seeing the first pressing plant I encountered in London in late 1969.  But records were not really that attractive - the EMI and Decca group ones had very uninspiring labels. EMI's labels were mostly black, and they often had scant information on them - in fact they printed more nonsense about the "recording rights being protected" than they did about the song or the artiste.  In the UK in those days there were only very occasionally a unique picture cover, unlike our friends in the USA where they tried hard to market the records in shops by enfolding them in a nice colourful jacket (sleeve) often with a picture of the artiste.  Made it worth paying the Dollar and 50 cents.

Prices of Singles

The price of singles in the UK for most of the 1960s was 6/8d, or three for a pound!  I think it was about 1970 that the price began edging up - 7/3d, and 7/6 I remember. or if you were prepared to wait until the record had dropped out of the chart, you would find the hits of the day were often available from market stalls for about 2/6d. They got their supplied from Juke Box operators, who seemed to believe that once out of the Top 40 chart, no one would want to pl;ay a record any more. How wrong they were on that count!

By the 1980s the UK record companies had caught on to the picture sleeve idea and about half of releases were issued in one, though often it was only the initial batch of about a thousand or two.  Suddenly someone hit on the crazy idea of several different picture sleeves for records. Same record, just a different sleeve. the avid fans of certain artistes would order a copy of each one, which gave a good sales push and resulted in the record entering the chart in a high position. Then it escalated into having slightly different pressings of a song, and thing up to 6 different versions of a song might be issued. The fans had to shell out more and more. Different format too became much in vogue, coloured, vinyl, an extended mix on a 12 inch disc, and even the artiste's image pressed into the vinyl.  Different shaped discs; it worked for vinyl (but a nuisance to store them) but not for cassettes. They 

still made up about 15% of single releases as late as the late 1980s.

Advent of the Compact Disc

When CDs came in (1983) record companies were able to sell their entire back catalog again,  with alleged better sound, no scratches, longer playing times and in a smaller, more practical format. The public fell for it and consigned their precious record collections to the skip. Literally millions ended up being off loaded at boot fairs. The cost of a CD was about 14p , compared to a 45 which was nearer 50p. The record companies couldn't believe their luck! 

The CD soon replaced the cassette releases, and for a while the pundits claimed that the 7inch vinyl single would die out too. Around 2000 it looked like it might, as the record business struggled to come to terms with the concept of downloads.  They soon realised that they had to "sink or swim" though and embraced the download MP3 idea, which brought down the cost of music to the consumer. After all, there was no tangible product to press or manufacture, much less distribute.  thats what caused the wholesale demise of record shops. Well, almost.

In 2009 the demand for decent vinyl pressings bagel to rise and was soon over a million pieces a year. Not matching the peak enjoyed by the Beatles and others - in the early 1960s you needed to sell a couple of Million to have a number one hit, more recently its been around 30,000 downloads in a week. The biggest CD and DVD producer are Optimal Media in Germany. They recently installed new presses but still cannot cope with the demand from their customers.  They work three shifts a day and all weekend, but still cannot keep up with the demand.

Problems with Pressings    

"The real problem is not in the pressing – the bottleneck is in the electroplating," explains Silke Maurer of Handle with Care Records. Electroplating is the process of coating the master lacquer in a metal layer to produce stampers. It is time-intensive and requires highly trained personnel.

As well as the lawyers only being produced by two companies, the actual stylus that cuts the record is made by only one company, Apollo in the USA. 

A trip to a pressing plant really opened your eyes.  Many machines look like they are from a museum.  They spit out a records that are either automatically placed in a sleeve or put on a spindle so they can be sleeved by hand.  Its the lacquers that are the big problem now, only two companies in  the world are still making them. 

Shedules are very difficult to predict, and this too is forcing up the value of vinyl discs to unheard of levels. The older material too on original labels is regarded as much superior to new releases. They command silly prices when they are sold, which I will talk about next time.