Retail
LONDON — Proper Music Group, the U.K.’s leading physical distributor for independent labels and artists, has been acquired by Netherlands-based Artone, bringing an end to a tumultuous three-year period during which the firm was owned by Swiss fintech company Utopia Music.
Completion of Artone’s acquisition of Proper Music Group was announced by the company Friday (Feb. 28), one day after Proper was placed in administration (roughly equivalent to Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection).
The new ownership structure sees Proper’s longstanding managing director, Drew Hill, take a minority stake in the British firm, which handles physical distribution for more than 5,000 indie labels, as well as provide a range of digital distribution, publishing and artist and label services for artists and music companies.
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Proper’s clients include Absolute Label Services, Believe, Cherry Red, Concord, Epitaph, FUGA, The Orchard in addition to Warner Music Group-owned ADA and Sony Music Group-owned AWAL. The company says its clients collectively make up around 13% of the United Kingdom’s physical music market, which totaled £330 million ($412 million) in 2024, up 6.2% on the previous year, and accounting for nearly 14% of music revenues, according to figures from the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA).
Announcing the acquisition of Proper, Artone CEO Jan Willem Kaasschieter said the company plays “a vital role in the supporting independent labels and artists in the U.K. By bringing Proper Music Distribution into the Artone family, we ensure its continued success and provide stability for its partners.”
“We now have some certainty about the future,” a relieved Hill tells Billboard. He describes the past three years of Proper being owned by Swiss fintech firm Utopia as being like a “pantomime rollercoaster” that has seen the company often existing “under a cloud” of negativity. “I’m glad it’s finally over,” says Hill, who continues as managing director of Proper Music Distribution.
Got records? A wide view of the Proper warehouse in Dartford.
Proper Music Group
Utopia Music had originally acquired Proper for an undisclosed sum in January 2022 as part of a frenetic buying spree that saw the Swiss fintech firm rapidly acquire 15 companies spanning music tech, finance, publishing, marketing and distribution over a two-year period.
A just-as-quick downsizing followed, encompassing multiple rounds of job cuts, company divestments, numerous legal actions and successive executive departures, including the exit of co-founder Mattias Hjelmstedt.
Early last year, Utopia rebranded as Proper Group AG, named after its core physical music distribution business, but the widespread changes failed to turn the company around. In September, the firm was placed into bankruptcy by a Swiss court over an unpaid debt of 23,000 Swiss Francs ($25,000).
As a result of the court action, Utopia’s two main U.K. physical distribution businesses were placed up for sale with both attracting multiple bidders. Utopia Distribution Services, which was formerly known as Cinram Novum and whose clients include Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and [PIAS], was acquired by DP World Logistics for an undisclosed sum in December.
Artone and Hill’s subsequent joint acquisition of Proper Music Group is “fantastic news for the independent community,” says Gee Davy, CEO at U.K. trade body the Association of Independent Music (AIM).
“Drew’s 18 years’ experience at the helm of Proper Music Distribution combined with Artone’s pan-European expertise will no doubt ensure that the U.K.’s physical music sector continues to thrive,” says Davy in a statement.
“It’s an ownership structure absolutely rooted in what is our core business,” Hill tells Billboard, pointing to Artone’s range of physical music solutions, which includes its own vinyl pressing plant, the Netherlands’-based Record Industry, capable of pressing 40,000 to 60,000 records per day, as well as Bertus Distribution, one of Europe’s largest independent distributors. Artone additionally operates several indie labels, including Music On Vinyl and V2 Benelux, and last year acquired U.K. D2C e-commerce music retailer and distributor Townsend Music.
The production line at the Proper warehouse in Dartford.
Proper Music Group
“Utopia never really understood what Proper was or what we did or maybe even why they bought us,” says Hill. “Day-to-day, operationally nothing really changed under their control but what was always difficult was the negative association. It just became a PR disaster and I was constantly having to reassure labels that whatever they were reading about the parent company, their money and their stock was safe. It’s great that I no longer have to do that.”
Hill says the financial losses suffered by Proper Music Group, which was a profitable company prior to 2022, over the past several years are spun out of Utopia’s kamikaze approach to business, which prioritized turnover over profit. According to its most recent Companies House figures, Proper made a loss of £1.9 million in the year ending Dec. 31, 2022. There will be further losses to be reported in 2023, says Hill.
“Now we can go back to making sure we’re growing as a sustainable business rather than just growing for growth’s sake,” he states. “The physical music business is in a very healthy place right now and Proper will continue to be right at the heart of it.”
Record Store Day on April 12 will feature more than 300 titles being released, including collectible music from Elton John, Post Malone, Prince, Gracie Abrams, Queen, Taylor Swift, John & Yoko, Charlie XCX, the Killers & Bruce Springsteen, and many more.
As usual, the vast majority of the releases are vinyl LPs, many with a color or picture-disc slant; and also as usual, most releases will be in limited supply.
This will mark the 18th year of RSD, launched back in 2008 after the idea emerged at a gathering of indie record store owners and label executives. Since then, the event has single-handedly revived vinyl into a viable music format that sells over $1 billion annually in the U.S. alone. What’s more, RSD has also evolved into an international event.
Each year, stores wait in anticipation to see which titles will emerge as must-haves on the big day — the kinds of drops that bring long lines of fans waiting outside participating stores. With a limited supply for most titles, it can mean fans shuffle from store-to-store seeking their sought-after title. But while searching for those titles, it can also mean finding an unexpected treasure.
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“The whole energy in a record store is just super inspiring,” 2025’s Record Store Day Ambassador Post Malone said in a statement provided by the RSD organization in announcing the event. “I feel at home. It’s really an unexplainable feeling to hit up a shop and dig through crates, just see what grabs your eye.”
Malone will issue his Post Malone Tribute to Nirvana, a 2020 livestream performance of Nirvana covers accompanied by blink-182’s Travis Barker on drums, guitarist Nick Mack and bassist Brian Lee. Moreover, 100% of net proceeds from the release will be donated to MusiCares’ Addiction Recovery/Mental Health division.
Malone will also be participating in another RSD release, which is also expected to be a hot item as its a collaboration with 2022’s Record Store Day Ambassador, who also happens to be the biggest music artist in the world, Taylor Swift. They will release their collaboration track “Fortnight,” on a double sided 7-inch vinyl single.
While RSD brings out plenty of long-time collectors, i.e. older demographics, it was Swift who helped spread the day’s popularity to younger fans in 2023 when she caused traffic jams at stores filled with fans seeking her special release of folklore, the long pond studio sessions — a double LP that year. Last year, keeping the young flowing to record stores included releases from Olivia Rodrigo, Noah Kahan, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.
This year’s titles for younger music fans include: Gracie Abrams: Live from Radio City Music Hall; Beabadoobee’s Live and Acoustic in London; Megan Thee Stallion’s Traumazine on double black vinyl; and two releases from Charli XCX, the first a collaboration title, Guess featuring Billie Eilish, on 7-inch vinyl; and an edited version of prior release: Number 1 Angel, on apple-colored vinyl with a new RSD exclusive cover. That title’s tracks were previously part of a double-LP release Pop 2.
Moreover, RSD continues to diversify its genres offerings as rap and hip-hop fans will be able to seek titles from Cypress Hill, Anderson .Paak, Snoop Dog and a new release from the Wu-Tang Clan in a collaboration with Mathematics as they release Black Samson, The Bastard Swordsman: Wu-Tang, The Saga Continues Collection on 180-gram LP vinyl. What’s more Wu-Tang Clan are expected to make an appearance at the RSD press event today.
Jazz releases include music from Pharaoh Sanders, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, and the Vince Guaraldi Trio; while Harry Potter fans will be treated to five different soundtrack albums from that movie series, all on double-LP, clear vinyl.
Finally, in a move to revive another marketing tool previously used to promote RSD, this year’s event will feature a “Record Store Day Song of the Year,” with the tag being applied to the double-a-sided 12-inch single of “Be Here Now,” done by the song’s author George Harrison on one side, with Beck’s cover tribute on the other side.
Other new RSD titles expected to be popular this year include a 12-inch EP collaboration between the Killers and Bruce Springsteen; a David Bowie live-stream from 2003 will now be available as a vinyl and CD release; and a 12-inch, 180-gram yellow vinyl release of John & Yoko with the Plastic Ono Band of their live 1972 One-To-One concert.
About a year and a half into Gimme Gimme Records’ existence in New York City’s East Village, a leak erupted from an upstairs tenant and landed directly on the only section of CDs. Shop owner and founder Dan Cook says he took the leak – supposedly caused by an upstairs tenant falling asleep while filling the bathtub – “as a sign from God.”
Cook admits that the CD section was quite paltry despite it being the mid-1990s, but he still decided to stick strictly with vinyl going forward.
Plus, he could stick with the tried and tested format since the small space he rented on East 5th Street was incredibly cheap. It was a small storefront, painted forest green with an overhang informing passersby that they both bought and sold records, that Cook shared with “an eccentric dude” who sold items he found on the street and taught piano lessons in the mornings.
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“The building was kind of crummy, honestly,” says Cook of the space he rented out a little over 30 years ago. “We were right next to the 9th Precinct, the police station, so kind of odd vibes for a record store. But for cheap rent, you put up with a lot.”
Despite the eccentric neighbors in the “old East Village,” as Cook puts it, the store was a legitimizing step up from the flea market where he was used to selling his collection. Growing up in Massachusetts, Cook was obsessed with vinyl and would buy records from yard sales and flip them at local record stores for albums he actually wanted. “Then, I moved to New York City and tried doing the same thing, and the stores were not as generous. It was just like, ‘here is 11 cents credit.’” he says, “So, I started saving them up and selling at the Chelsea flea market.”
Dan Cook
Jennifer Black
The store was only open Thursday through Sunday and served as a side business for Cook, who also worked at a bookstore and was the lead vocalist for the Matador Records-signed Lynnfield Pioneers, which formed in 1996 and disbanded by 2000. The band was self-described as “hip-hop-no-wave,” which seems fitting for Cook who calls himself and his store “generalist.”
“That’s something that used to set me apart in New York, being a generalist. I like all types of music. If I go through a box of country records or a box of hip-hop records, I know the good ones,” says Cook. “It broadens my opportunities to bring in stuff.”
The pre-streaming era was ripe with genre purists, but besides some questioning glances, Cook’s love for all kinds of music set him up for success whether it is purchasing new vinyl or sifting through used collections. A genre-agnostic store is more of the norm today and suits the pedestrian traffic of Gimme Gimme’s new location in Highland Park, a retro-leaning neighborhood in Los Angeles.
After 18 years in the New York location (and a rent increase of only $50 from 1994 to 2012), the owner of the East Village location sold the building and Cook decided to move the collection to Highland Park where he and his wife had moved in 2010. For two years, Cook had been assessing vinyl inventory over Skype with friends who were running the shop in New York. But once the building had a new owner, Cook found a 1,200 sq. ft. location on Highland Park’s York Boulevard. The street is full of vintage clothing and furniture shops, small cafes, a 100-year-old bowling alley and plenty of popular restaurants that keep the foot traffic steady in front of the new Gimme Gimme Records.
Gimme Gimme Records
Dan Cook
But the high concentration of vintage lovers also means there’s lots of competition in the area. There are six record stores within a half mile of Gimme Gimme Records, which Cook says both helps and hurts.
“Getting record collections is super competitive,” Cook explains. “I am not just competing with other record stores. There are people with Discogs or eBay and that’s their side hustle.”
On the bright side, having that many record stores in one area makes it a destination for folks visiting. The vinyl enthusiasts and foot traffic are especially valuable since Gimme no longer hosts live shows (they weren’t worth the effort) or sell much outside of its roughly 10,000-15,000 vinyl collection (Cook also collects and sells photography and art books that make up about 2% of Gimme sales).
With about 60% new and 40% used records and a hearty selection of all genres, Gimme is seeing Cook’s generalist tendencies paying off. When the store opened more than 30 years ago, Cook says the clientele was almost exclusively male, but now it’s not uncommon for him to look up from his back counter and see all genders and generations.
“When I first opened the store, it was just sweaty dudes. That’s a cliche, not everyone was, but now its teenagers coming in and grandma/granddaughter duos coming in,” says Cook. “It’s really amazing to see.”
More in this series:
Twist & Shout in Denver, Colo.
Grimey’s in Nashville, Tenn.
Home Rule in Washington, D.C.
Sweat Records in Miami, Fla.
After operating a store on the Sixth Avenue side of Rockefeller Center for a little over four years, Rough Trade is now opening a second location in the complex, the retail chain announced Thursday (Jan. 23).
While the smaller existing store at street level will now be known as Rough Trade Above, and will expand its focus on new vinyl, the new location will cover 4,000 square feet and feature “a large selection of artist/band merch, audio hardware” including turntables and Bluetooth speakers, large sections of new and used CDs and vinyl records, plus movies, collectibles and more.
Since it will be housed in the below street-level retail concourse that connects the world-famous Rockefeller Center to the B/D/F/M subway station, the new store will be known as Rough Trade Below. Just like the Sixth Avenue location, which sees heavy foot traffic walking past the store, located between 49th and 50th Streets in Manhattan, the concourse has a steady crowd flow from the subway. What’s more, the retail concourse, also known as Under 30 Rock, draws office workers from the surrounding office buildings. Altogether, the Rockefeller Center complex — which is home to the annual televised Christmas tree lightening that draws heavy foot traffic during the year-end holidays — enjoys 35 million visitors a year, according to Rough Trade.
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Rough Trade hasn’t yet disclosed a grand opening date for the new store but says it will open sometime this spring, with the company likely targeting an opening before Record Store Day in April.
“We’re extremely excited to be opening Rough Trade Below this spring, helping us further cater to the tremendous demand from music lovers across the five boroughs and beyond,” Rough Trade co-owner Stephen Godfroy said in a statement. “Creating a focus of counterculture in midtown Manhattan has thankfully proved to be a wildly successful move, and we look forward to creating an even stronger creative community as the year progresses.”
One way Rough Trade expects to do that is by bringing back its famed in-store performances, thanks to the new location’s larger footprint. While the smaller 6th Avenue store has hosted acoustic sets — Green Day, for one — and in-store signings, the new store will be able to handle a larger capacity crowd for performances and intends to bring in household names alongside below-the-radar bands across all genres, the company says. Other artists who have held events at the 6th Avenue store include Coldplay, Charlie XCX and De La Soul, among others.
“It’s clear that the ethos of Rough Trade—to narrow the gap between artist and audience—has struck a tremendous chord, here in New York,” Godfroy added. “Creating an even larger mecca for the music lover is an exciting prospect, especially for our intimate live events, where the world’s most exciting artists perform in-store for the admission of purchasing their new album.”
In-store performances were an exciting element of the original New York Rough Trade store, which opened in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood in 2013 and closed in 2021. That store, housed in a 10,000-square foot space, was split about evenly between retail space and the club, with the latter hosting live concerts but also doubling as an in-store performance space, albeit one in another room separated from the retail section by a wall.
The new store will have a performance space directly within the store next to CD and vinyl racks on castor wheels, which when moved aside will allow for greater occupancy. According to Godfroy —who responded to an e-mail—the setup will accommodate more “intimacy and magic” at in-stores and “make performances all the more unique, memorable and special, for both artists and fans.”
The goal, Godfroy adds, is to “replicate the successful model of our U.K. flagship, Rough Trade East,” in London.
Since moving to Rockefeller Center, Rough Trade has continued to curate live public events, including its annual iNDIEPLAZA music festival and a quarterly concert series in the complex’s Rainbow Room. The Rough Trade presence has helped Rockefeller Center’s management company, Tishman Speyer, revitalize the complex, allowing it to remain “a dynamic destination” for New Yorkers and visitors, according to EB Kelly, Tishman Speyer’s senior MD and head of Rockefeller Center.
“We are thrilled to have Rough Trade expanding into a second location on campus, and join our Under 30 Rock collection of shops,” Kelly continued. “In just three years, the store has become one of Manhattan’s cultural touchstones and a pillar of Rockefeller Center’s dynamic transformation. New Yorkers have shown us how much they love the experience of the current store on Sixth Avenue, and the new space in our lively Under 30 Rock community will allow even more people to enjoy the musical taste of this legendary shop.”
The new Rockefeller Center location expands Rough Trade’s retail footprint to ten stores — seven in the U.K (of which four are in London, along with outlets in Bristol, Nottingham and Liverpool); one in Berlin; and now two in New York.
LONDON — Hit albums by Taylor Swift, The Weeknd and Sabrina Carpenter helped music sales in the United Kingdom reach a record high in 2024, exceeding the peak of the CD era in both revenue and volume for the first time, according to year-end figures from the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA).
Overall music spending in the U.K. grew to £ 2.4 billion ($3 billion) last year, a rise of 7.4% on 2023 and comfortably surpassing the previous high of £2.2 billion ($2.7 billion at today’s currency rates) back in 2001 when Dido, Robbie Williams and David Gray were topping the British album charts.
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Driving the growth was a 7.8% year-on-year rise in paid-for streaming revenues, which climbed to just over £2 billion ($2.5 billion). Vinyl sales were up 10.5% to £196 million ($245 million), while CD sales were more-or-less flat with 2023 — when revenues increased for the first time in two decades — at £126 million ($157 million). Download sales fell 3.2% to £41 million ($51 million).
The biggest selling album in the U.K. last year was Taylor’s all-conquering The Tortured Poets Department with just under 784,000 equivalent sales, including almost 112,000 vinyl purchases, which also made it 2024’s biggest-selling vinyl album.
Behind Swift in the year-end U.K. album charts was The Weeknd’s The Highlights, followed by Carpenter’s sixth studio set Short N’ Sweet. Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” was the year’s number one single, topping the British charts for seven weeks and selling 1.9 million equivalent units, the London-based organization reported Wednesday (Jan. 8).
Streaming now makes up 88.8% of music sales in the United Kingdom, a marginal 1.1% rise on 2023’s figure and more than double streaming’s share of the U.K. market six years ago, according to labels trade body BPI, which published its preliminary year-end listening figures last week.
BPI reports that just under 200 billion music tracks were streamed in the U.K. last year, up 11% on 2023’s total, with the equivalent of 201 million albums consumed across streaming, CD and vinyl sales, a year-on-year rise of 9.7%. Streaming alone generated the equivalent of 178 million album sales in 2024, says ERA.
ERA and BPI both use Official Charts Company sales data as the basis for their reporting, although the two organizations take different approaches to measuring the vitality of the recorded music business. ERA’s figures are based on retail spending in the U.K. alongside information provided by streaming services and label trade income, whereas BPI’s analysis measures music consumption levels. Both trade groups will publish their full annual reports later in the year.
The historic low point for the U.K. music industry came in 2013 when rampant piracy and a fast-eroding physical market saw sales fall to just over £1 billion (£1.2 billion in today’s currency). Since then, sales have more than doubled.
“2024 was a banner year for music, with streaming and vinyl taking the sector to all-time-high records in both value and volume,” said ERA CEO Kim Bayley in a statement. She called last year’s retail sales figures “the stunning culmination of music’s comeback” and triumphantly declared: “We can now say definitively – music is back.”
According to ERA, combined physical sales totaled £330 million ($412 million) in the U.K. in 2024, up 6.2% on the previous 12 months, with CD and vinyl sales accounting for nearly 14% of music revenues. The benefits of such a “mixed physical-digital ecology” is key to the music’s industry’s revival, said Bayley.
“We continue to believe that digital and physical channels are complementary and vital for the health of the entertainment market overall,” she said.
Overall, revenues across the U.K. entertainment market – comprising of music, video and games retail sales – were up 2.3% on 2023’s total to a record high of £12 billion ($14.9 billion), marking the 12th consecutive year of growth and an eighth successive all-time-high.
Of the three sectors, the growth of recorded music sales outpaced both video (comprising of video-on-demand subscription services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and DVD sales) and games, but music remains the smallest of the three entertainment industries in revenue terms.
Video was the largest sector with revenues growing 6.9% year-on-year to £5 billion. Games sales totaled £4.6 billion, down 4.4% on 2023 but still nearly twice as large as the recorded music business.
ERA has been reporting on the U.K. entertainment industries since 1999 when music, video and games sales totaled £4.1 billion ($5.1 billion).
To achieve the bright sound in his famous 1965 solo for The Who‘s “My Generation,” John Entwistle bought a cheap Danelectro bass, removed the strings designed by John D’Addario Sr., and transferred them to his Fender. The plan worked until one of the strings broke — and Entwistle had to buy two more Danelectros just for the strings.
Jim D’Addario, who built a multimillion-dollar guitar-strings empire on the foundation of his late father John’s early innovations, tells this story in a 50th-anniversary video series called Jim’s Corner. D’Addario, which sells drumheads, saxophone reeds, pedalboards, earplugs and other musicians’ gear in addition to its signature guitar strings at 3,300 retail outlets, earned $220 million in global revenue last year and employs 1,100 people, has taken a corporate victory lap throughout, combining history with “When You Know You Know” ads starring younger players like Chris Stapleton, Herman Li of DragonForce and Yvette Young of Covet.
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“Most people are very apathetic about their strings, and they usually listen to their teacher, or an artist that’s endorsing the product, to get them to try our strings,” says D’Addario, now chairman of the board of the company he named after his family in 1974. “The ones that know really know ours are better — and consistent.”
In addition to the video series, the company that started with teenaged Jim accompanying his guitar-playing father to music-business trade conventions in the ’60s launched a beer, Eddie Ate Dynamite (GoodBye Eddie), in early December; held a beer-launch party at the time starring a member of the Infamous Stringdusters; and spent much of 2024 releasing limited-edition merch and packages of strings in retro containers.
D’Addario acknowledges the company faces industry headwinds — the musical-instrument business, he says, is declining 2%-3% per year, which affects a company whose guitar strings make up 45% of its business. “People buy a guitar for their kid, and if he doesn’t play, they don’t put it in the attic or the basement anymore. They put it on eBay,” D’Addario says. “Everything a dealer sells, he’s going to compete with that instrument. That has had a very serious effect on the instruments bought at retail.”
But mostly, D’Addario is upbeat, describing the guitar pedalboards his company has spent two years designing, pedalboard power supplies containing USB batteries and coated strings that resist “moisture, perspiration, skin, debris.” Says D’Addario, “We keep an ideation list for each brand. We’ll have crazy things on there. When we have bandwidth, we’ll throw one on the active-project list.” Here, he discusses the company’s past and present in an hourlong Zoom from his home workshop in Farmingdale, N.Y.
What do you hope people learn about D’Addario from the 50th-anniversary campaign events?
It’s not the 50th anniversary of the family making strings, it’s the 50th anniversary of the brand name D’Addario. My dad and my grandfather were afraid to put their name on products. Italians would be discriminated against and it was a difficult name to pronounce. They felt like, in certain markets, it might not be accepted. In August of ’74, I said, “Nah, we’re going to get credit for making certain stuff, and our name’s going to be on it.”
Can you hear when a guitar player on the radio uses your strings?
No, that’s impossible. There are a lot of good strings out there that sound good. It’s very hard to discern that just from listening to it on the radio.
In the early 1990s, a package of strings had an envelope for each of the six strings — a paper envelope for each one, identified for each note, in a vinyl pouch with a fancy label. So there was a minimum of eight pieces of packaging; sometimes there was a little advertisement as well. My daughter Amy was in high school, and they were studying environmental friendliness and recycling and packaging, and I was changing my strings on the bed and I had all this garbage when I was done. She said, “You should really do something about that, that’s really criminal, you’re putting so much junk in the waste-stream just to change a set of strings.”
So it got me thinking. I came up with a system of color-coding the ball end on the string a different color, then coiling those together in one corrosion-resistant plastic bag and having them color-coded, so the silver one is this note and the brass one is this note. It eliminated 75% of the packaging. Since that time, we’ve saved billions of trees and millions of pounds of carbon not released into the atmosphere. That was one of the things that distinguished our strings. That’s one way we can tell onstage if our strings are being used. Otherwise, it’s very difficult. You can put branding on the package but when they’re playing on stage you can’t see it.
What music stars are your most loyal customers?
A lot of jazz guys, like Pat Metheny, who’s a good buddy, and Julian Loge. But there’s also a whole contingent of new people that I might not know. John McLaughlin, Blake Mills, Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings, Chris Thile of Nickel Creek, Sierra Ferrell, a mandolinist [who’s] going to be a superstar — those are the artists that really gravitate to our brand because they know they’re going to get the very best product.
How has the musical instrument market changed since you started?
It’s quite different. We also make drumheads and drumsticks and snare wires and guitar straps and cables. We make drumheads for acoustic drums and drumsticks and other accessories for drummers. The acoustic-drum market is 40-60% of what it was in 2004. Drums have been digitized. Instead of 20,000 drumheads a day, we’re only making 10,000. The other thing is the guitar was really the solo instrument, but it’s not anymore. You don’t hear a guitar solo in every hit; you hear repetitive rhythms and electronic sounds and synthesized sounds.
How much does this worry you?
We’ve seen this so many times — in the early ’90s, it was video games, and for three or four years, the guitar market didn’t have much growth. But then it came back. The acoustic guitar market was in the tank for the whole decade of the 1980s, and “MTV Unplugged” happened, then bingo, the acoustic guitar took off again. It always comes back.
What are your retirement plans, if any?
We don’t want to sell our business. Our family name is on the product. D’Addario strings are like the Titleist of golf balls, like Scotch Tape. When you walk into a music store, 40% to 50% of the strings on the wall are our brand, and that’s in almost every country around the world. I’d have trouble walking into a store and seeing my packaging screwed up or listening to people complaining about the quality.
Over the past decade, vinyl has grown from a can-you-believe that comeback story to a serious business. Vinyl sales revenue in the U.S. grew 10% in 2023 to $1.4 billion, the same size as the market for Latin music. (The latter brings in far more money overseas. So, over the last few years, to feed demand, labels have started to release a growing array of products, from “collectible” color variations of hit pop albums to high-end products aimed at the audiophile market.
Rhino Entertainment, the catalog division of Warner Music Group, will announce today (Dec. 10) that it is launching a new premium reissue series, Rhino Reserves. The albums will retail for $31.98, with a level of quality higher than many reissues, for a price lower than higher-end audiophile reissues from Mobile Fidelity, which licenses albums from labels, or the company’s own Rhino High Fidelity albums. The first two albums, out Jan. 31 as part of Rhino’s annual Start Your Ear Off Right promotion, are Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel’s 1977 album Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs and New Orleans icon Allen Toussaint’s 1975 Southern Nights.
One impetus for Rhino Reserves is the success of Rhino High Fidelity, an audiophile line that sells for $39.98 online, in numbered editions of 5000 (although the company often releases more unnumbered albums, if demand is high). The High Fidelity releases are sourced from analog tape and pressed on high-quality vinyl, and a few have sold out, including box sets of Doors and ZZ Top albums.
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“This is High Fidelity without the bells and whistles,” says Rhino senior director of A&R Patrick Milligan. “But these are in retail,” unlike the Rhino High Fidelity releases, which are only sold online. Milligan says the series will be sourced from analog masters, with the same attention to detail as the High Fidelity Series, and that the records will be pressed at Fidelity Records Pressing, the new plant owned by company behind Mobile Fidelity reissues. (The High Fidelity series is pressed at Optimal, in Germany.) They will be cut by mastering engineer Matthew Lutthans, although the first two releases will be done by Chris Bellman.
There is already some competition at this level. Blue Note has done well with its audiophile Tone Poet jazz reissues, as well as a high-quality but lower-priced set of reissues. Mobile Fidelity, which has been releasing high-end reissues for decades, is now more active than ever, as is Analogue Production. Both of those companies license the rights to reissue albums from the labels that own the rights.
Rhino Reserves will not release albums on a particular schedule, and the hope is that it will feature some hard-to-find classics, like the first pair of reissues, both of which are beloved by crate diggers but hard to find in high-quality pressings. Reissue buyers seem to be becoming a bit more varied in their tastes, as the generation that grew up with songs from the sixties gives way to one raised on seventies and eighties music.
Like a lot of independent record shops, Nashville-based Grimey’s New & Preloved Music and Books sometimes offers giveaways for customers, with prizes such as tickets to local shows and vinyl pressings. But given its location in the creative hub of East Nashville, Grimey’s co-owner Doyle Davis says those giveaways have led to some unusual moments.
“We’ll take a picture of the winner and tag them on social media when they pick up their prize,” Davis tells Billboard. “One time, we posted a photo of a guy showing off his prize — and [rock icon and former Led Zeppelin lead singer] Robert Plant was walking up the aisle right behind him. When we posted that [photo], all the comments were like, ‘Robert Plant photo-bombed your guy.’”
Grimey’s has been a hotspot and refuge for music lovers — celebrity or not — for 25 years. The East Nashville store is Grimey’s third location: it was launched in 1999 in Nashville’s Berry Hill area, before moving to 8th Ave. S. and finally to its current location at 1060 East Trinity Lane in 2018.
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“John Prine used to shop here regularly, especially at our old location. We were right down the street from [meat-and-three restaurant] Arnold’s, where he would get his meatloaf every week,” Davis recalls, also noting artists such as Kacey Musgraves and Emmylou Harris stopping by Grimey’s over the years.
Grimey’s is housed in a former Pentecostal church that offers a homey vibe, with stained glass windows; arched, wooden ceilings; a performance stage (Davis remodeled the area into a space for more intimate musical performances); and two floors filled with vinyl, CDs, books and more. The 4,000-square-foot space continues to be an essential component of Nashville’s music community, with Davis estimating that roughly 70% of the store’s sales come from vinyl, with the other 30% coming from books, CDs, DVDs, etc.
Based in the heart of East Nashville’s creative community, the store counts Americana as its best-selling music genre, with the store’s best-selling artists being Jason Isbell, Musgraves and Sturgill Simpson.
“We recently did a signing with Kacey and her [2024] Deeper Well album and it was the only signing she was doing for the whole album release cycle,” Davis says. “We had over a thousand people and she signed for four hours. That was the most records of a single new title that I’ve sold in one week. Jason Isbell was my previous record at 850.”
Grimey’s
Courtesy Photo
Davis co-owns Grimey’s with the store’s namesake and founder Mike Grimes, who launched the store in a small Berry Hill-area home. In 2002, Davis, who had been an executive at another Nashville record shop, The Great Escape, joined Grimes as a co-owner. At the time, Davis suggested that they focus on selling new vinyl.
“Nashville had great record stores. The Great Escape was a great record store, but it was all used [records],” Davis says. “If people wanted new records, they either mail ordered them or you bought them at Tower Records. Tower had a pretty lame selection, in my opinion, at the time, and it took them forever to restock something if they sold out of it. Being a real record store guy my whole life, I just thought, ‘There’s a niche we can fill here. We’ll carry all the cool indie music the chain stores don’t carry.’ We really centered on new vinyl, and this was when Steve Jobs had just opened the iTunes store, Napster was on the wane, and they were finding new ways of legally selling digital music — everything was gravitating to no physical media.”
In 2004, Grimey’s relocated to the 8th Ave. S. location, where it quickly became an indie music hub. The live music venue The Basement (founded by Grimes) was located downstairs, while the building at the time also served as office space for Thirty Tigers and indie radio station WXNA. As Grimey’s expanded on 8th Avenue, they leased the building next door and opened the bookstore Grimey’s Too.
At the same time, Grimey’s began supporting artists through in-store performances that allowed bands to promote their new records. In 2008, rock band Metallica recorded the album Live at Grimey’s at The Basement before their performance at Bonnaroo Music Festival.
“We carried it for 10 years until it went out of print,” Davis recalls, also noting that Nashville resident and Americana luminary Isbell once played a show in the back parking lot of Grimey’s, with more than 1,000 people in attendance.
“[Jason] did an in-store performance with us for every solo album he ever released until the pandemic hit, and he wasn’t able to do that one,” Davis recalls. “We had The Black Keys early on when they were still playing clubs. Years ago, the band fun. did an in-store, and then Black Pumas did an in-store performance, and six months later they were huge and on the Grammys. I had always hoped we would get Wilco to play here, and they finally did in November 2019, right before the pandemic.”
After the landlord did not offer Grimey’s a long-term lease on the 8th Ave. location and noted the building would be put up for sale, Grimes and Davis knew they needed to scout a new site for Grimey’s, which led to its current location.
“My real estate agent showed me a photo of the building and it was the right size, it was beautiful, and it was affordable,” Davis recalls, noting that he did have some concerns at the time about relocating to East Nashville, where the area was already home to at least two other record shops, The Groove and Vinyl Tap.
“What I hoped might happen seems to be what happened: that the customers coming over to East Nashville to visit our store would also visit the other stores,” Davis says, noting that in the ‘90s, he visited London’s Berwick Street, which was known as “Record Road” for its large number of record shops. “Each store had its specialty and if you’re an omnivorous music fan, you would hit all the shops. I know from talking to folks that on Record Store Day, for example, lots of people will hit Grimey’s, Vinyl Tap and The Groove, because we’re all in the same neighborhood.”
Paramore + Doyle & Grimey
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While streaming rules the modern-day music marketplace, vinyl has seen steady growth over the past nearly two decades, something Davis attributes to the popular Record Store Day that started in 2007. Grimey’s focuses on buying from original source distributors but also uses one-stop distributors, with Davis estimating the shop has approximately 12,600 new vinyl records and 3,000 used records.
“By 2010 or 2011, we were seeing 30% and 35% increases year over year — and that’s broadly, not just in my store,” he says. “Vinyl was back, but it wasn’t mainstream at the time.” Since the pandemic began, Davis says vinyl has “reached a whole new tipping point,” nodding to pop artists such as Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo moving large numbers of vinyl units.
“We’re selling tons of Taylor records and Olivia. For a while, we couldn’t keep enough Harry Styles records in stock,” Davis says. “That’s new to me. We’ve got high school kids coming into the store. We’ve always had some percentage of college students, the early adopter kids. Vinyl was seen as a hipster thing for quite a while, but I don’t see anybody looking at it that way. If anything, it’s seen as a pop trend.”
While Davis does acknowledge commerce challenges in pricing and direct-to-consumer sales, he sees indie record shops as an enduring part of the music ecosystem.
“If you can only afford one record a month, just due to prices, then even the used ones are not cheap,” Davis says. “You’ve always had the dollar bins, but records that were straight to the dollar bin previously are sometimes $5 records. I also see the direct-to-consumer initiatives, but we’ve faced that pretty much most of the way. And there’s an experience in a record store you can’t get online — it’s a physical space, with like-minded people; I love watching my employees interact with customers. If you’re really into this culture, there’s nothing like an independent record store, as far as experience goes.
“Vinyl never went away and it’s here to stay. I do believe that,” Davis says of the future of the format. “We’ve seen steady growth now for well over a decade, and it’s already moved into a new generation. Now you have kids [buying vinyl] whose parents did not grow up with vinyl — their parents were CD and digital natives. Vinyl is a way to slow down. You get the lyrics, the inserts, the art — the artist’s whole vision.”
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Vinyl releases from Noah Kahan, Olivia Rodrigo, Paramore, Pearl Jam and more were among the top-sellers from Record Store Day (RSD) 2024 in the United States, according to data tracking firm Luminate.
The annual independent record store celebration was held on April 20 this year and boasted a bevy of unique and limited-edition albums and singles (mostly vinyl pressings) created for the festivities. More than 350 titles were released for RSD 2024 at independent record stores across the United States.
Kahan does double-duty with both the top-selling RSD single and album, according to Luminate (see lists, below). The top-selling RSD-exclusive single was a joint effort from Kahan and Rodrigo: a two-song, 7-inch colored-vinyl. The single features Rodrigo’s cover of Kahan’s “Stick Season” and Kahan’s cover of Rodrigo’s “Lacy,” both recorded in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge. The top-selling RSD-exclusive album was a blue-colored vinyl pressing of Kahan’s 2021 sophomore album I Was/I Am.
The Nos. 2 to 5-biggest selling RSD-exclusive albums were: Paramore’s This Is Why / Re: This Is Why (double vinyl set, bone and ruby red-colored vinyl), Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter (on yellow and black ghostly-colored vinyl), Paramore’s Re: This Is Why (on ruby red-colored vinyl) and Talking Heads’ Live at WCOZ 77 (double vinyl). (Paramore was also the RSD 2024 Ambassador, following in the footsteps of such recent previous RSD Ambassadors as Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires (2023), Taylor Swift (2022), Fred Armisen (2021), Brandi Carlile (2020) and Pearl Jam (2019).
While most RSD 2024 titles had a fairly limited pressing — under 5,000 each — a few titles this year earned larger production runs (such as I Was/I Am and the Kahan/Rodrigo single, which each had a run of more than 30,000).
Top-Selling Record Store Day 2024 Exclusive Albums at Independent Record Stores in the U.S.Rank, Artist, Title1. Noah Kahan, I Was/I Am (blue-colored vinyl)2. Paramore, This Is Why / Re: This Is Why (Standard + Remix) (bone and ruby red-colored double vinyl)3. Pearl Jam, Dark Matter (yellow and black ghostly-colored vinyl)4. Paramore, Re: This Is Why (ruby red-colored vinyl)5. Talking Heads, Live at WCOZ 77 (double vinyl)6. The 1975, The 1975 Live at Gorilla (white-colored double vinyl)7. The Weeknd, Live at SoFi Stadium (triple vinyl)8. ATEEZ, The World EP.Fin: Will [X. Ver.] (clear or black-colored vinyl + 7-inch vinyl)9. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours (picture disc vinyl)10. David Bowie, Waiting in the Sky (Before the Starman Came to Earth) (vinyl)11. Wallows, Nothing Happens (5th Anniversary Edition) (aqua splatter and aqual with white splatter-colored double vinyl)12. Young Thug, Jeffery (vinyl)13. Team Sleep, Team Sleep (gold-colored double vinyl)14. Neil Young with Crazy Horse, Fuckin’ Up (clear-colored double vinyl)15. Ramones, The 1975 Sire Demos (vinyl)16. Gorillaz, Cracker Island (Deluxe Vinyl Version) (pink and magenta-colored double vinyl)17. The Replacements, Not Ready for Prime Time: Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, January 11, 1986 (double vinyl)18. Grateful Dead, Nightfall of Diamonds (180 gram four vinyl LP set)19. Soundtrack, Lost in Translation (Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack [Deluxe Edition]) (double vinyl)20. The Cure, The Top (picture disc vinyl)21. Bill Evans, Everybody Digs Bill Evans (180 gram vinyl)22. Lil Uzi Vert, Luv Is Rage (vinyl)23. The Doors, Live at Konserthuset, Stockholm, September 20, 1968 (triple vinyl)24. Various Artists, South Park: The 25th Anniversary Concert (Towelie-Blue-colored triple vinyl)25. John Lennon, Mind Games EP (140 gram glow-in-the-dark-colored vinyl)Source: Luminate, for the week ending April 25, 2024
Top-Selling Record Store Day 2024 Exclusive Singles at Independent Record Stores in U.S.Rank, Artist, Title1. Olivia Rodrigo & Noah Kahan, Stick Season (Rodrigo) / Lacy (Kahan), Live from the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge (7-inch colored vinyl)2. David Byrne & Paramore, Hard Times / Burning Down the House (12-inch vinyl)3. U2, Atomic City (Live at Sphere, Las Vegas) / Atomic City (Mike WiLL Made-It Remix) (10-inch transparent red-colored vinyl)4. 100 Gecs, Hey Big Man / Torture Me / Runaway (10-inch vinyl)5. Daft Punk, Something About Us / Veridis Quo / Voyager (Dominique Torti’s Wild Style Edit) (12-inch vinyl)6. The Beatles, She Loves You (3-inch vinyl)7. G.B.I., The Regulator (7-inch vinyl)8. Lil Peep, Star Shopping / Star Shopping (Live in London) / Star Shopping (Live in Belgium) (7-inch vinyl)9. Holly Humberstone/MUNA, Into Your Room (with MUNA) (7-inch vinyl)10. Chappell Roan, Pink Pony Club / Naked in Manhattan (7-inch baby pink-colored vinyl)Source: Luminate, for the week ending April 25, 2024