Vinyl
Page: 2
Trance fans rejoice, and prepare to open your wallets. On Monday (Aug. 12), 12-inch vinyl editions of more than 50 classic trance tracks and albums are going up for auction via Amplyfied, the online auction platforms that specializes in music collections and experiences and has previously hosted auctions for artists like Danny Tenaglia and events […]
According to 2023 Year-End data from the Recording Industry Association of America, revenues from vinyl records grew 10% to $1.4 billion, and accounted for 71% of physical format revenues last year. 2023 also marked vinyl’s 17th consecutive year of growth.
As vinyl’s vital place in music’s ecosystem continues, Nashville-based United Record Pressing also celebrates 75 years of pressing vinyl for artists including Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, Adele and Stevie Wonder and numerous other artists.
“The sustained growth of the vinyl record market has been going for nearly 20 years at this point in the U.S., but particularly cool is how the medium has evolved into the people’s art object, and a creative opportunity for artists to tailor their records to reinforce aesthetics, inspiration, ideas or cultural touchpoints for more curious fans,” Cam Sarrett, United Record Pressing’s head of sales and marketing, tells Billboard in a statement. “Plus, it impactfully benefits artists big and small at the merch table on tour and bolsters community at independent record stores, a vital culture all its own.”
URP has been a central contributor to vinyl sales since 1949, when the company was formed by John Dunn, Joe Talbot and Ozell Simpkins. The pressing plant was an offshoot of Bullet Records, one of Nashville’s first indie record labels. In 1949, the same year that RCA created the first 45 and seven-inch records became popular in jukeboxes across America, Bullet Records earned a massive hit with Francis Craig’s song “Near You,” which spent 17 weeks atop Billboard’s pop charts. They opened Southern Plastics (which would later become United Record Pressing) to keep up with the demand for the song. By 1962, the company had moved operations to Nashville’s Chestnut Street. The company’s founder Ozell Simpkins also designed the building and URP’s machines.
John Dunn and Ozell Simpkins
Courtesy of United Record Pressing
By the 1960s, Southern Plastics had established a deal to handle singles record pressings for Motown Records. Given that there were few accommodations available to Black artists, producers and executives in the South during that time, the company also created what would become known as the “Motown Suite,” a space to host Black artists, producers and executives when they visited Nashville. Today, that space has been preserved and is used to host special events, such as album release parties.
In the 1970s, Southern Plastics was renamed United Record Pressing. As in-house labels began shuttering their in-house pressing operations, soon URP became the foremost independent record pressing plant in the Southeast. Two decades later, URP acquired Dixie Record Pressing, which allowed the plant to begin pressing 10-and 12-inch records in addition to their 7-inch records. As vinyl began to reemerge and surge in popularity, especially in the mid-2000s, URP began pressing new versions of albums from Johnny Cash, Jimmy Hendrix and Bob Dylan as well as new vinyls from contemporary artists including Adele, Swift, Harry Styles and Kendrick Lamar.
In 2017, URP consolidated operations into a new, larger facility on Allied Drive in Nashville, in order to keep up with demand for the company’s vinyl pressing services. In 2021-2022, the company added nearly 50 presses and added approximately 15,000 square feet to its facilities.
United Record Pressing
Tennessean/USA Today
Today, URP’s more than 120 staff members oversee 64 on-site pressing machines, with the capacity to press over 80,000 records per day.
Beth Proctor, United Record Pressing’s longest-standing employee, has been with the company for approximately four decades.
“I came to United in the ‘80s, and quickly learned there rarely is a dull moment pressing vinyl records. I fell in love with the owners, employees and the family environment,” Proctor told Billboard via a statement. “Then, [with] our customers, a lot of whom have become great friends over the years.”
Here, as URP celebrates 75 years of providing vinyl for consumers, we look at 15 distinct recordings that the company has pressed over the decades, ranging from the 1940s through to the 2020s.
Francis Craig Band, “Red Rose”/ “Near You”
Jack White has some tricks up his sleeve. The rocker seemingly released a brand new album on Friday (July 19), and employees at Third Man Records’ retail shops have been secretly slipping it into customers’ bags. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news According to Stereogum, a fan […]
“I don’t know if there’s ever a perfect time to open something like this,” says Jim Davis with a laugh.
Davis, president of audiophile retailer Music Direct, is standing at the front of the newly unveiled Fidelity Record Pressing, a high-end vinyl pressing plant in Oxnard, Calif. And while he doesn’t believe there can be a “perfect” time to open a new pressing plant, he does believe in the “right” time, adding: “Our niche in this industry is the high-quality end, and there’s always room for someone making a better quality product. So I’d like to think it’s the right time because we have the right people who put this plant together, and that’s going to make all the difference in the world.” Plus, as he admits while scanning the state-of-the-art facility during an invite-only preview, it’s “very encouraging that people wanted to see what’s going on here.”
Davis co-founded Fidelity with the father-and-son team of Rick and Edward Hashimoto; the two have over seven decades of pressing plant experience combined and have emerged as leaders in quality and proficiency. Rick sees Fidelity as an opportunity to bring high-end vinyl back into focus. “I think that commercial records have been kind of pushed out the door [lately], and I think it’s important for the vinyl industry to maintain a high-quality presence,” Rick says.
Fidelity Record Pressing Plant
Courtesy of Fidelity Record Pressing
One way Fidelity’s practices help set its products apart are the burnished edges, which Edward says is an “extra hassle” but well worth the quality. “Whether you realize it or not, [the edges of vinyl are] one of first things people notice,” he says. Another way is through the plant’s record cooling process, in which only five vinyl are stacked on aluminum plates (as seen above) to help preserve disc integrity by drying slowly. Specially designed spindles also run through the center to hold each disc and prevent warping.
Trending on Billboard
But perhaps Fidelity’s biggest differentiator is that the plant presses both vinyl and SuperVinyl, a proprietary compound developed by PVC manufacturer Neotech and Record Technology Inc. (RTI) exclusively for Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs (MoFi). The composition features carbonless dye, resulting in a quieter surface that reduces noise floor and enhances groove definition. (Manufacturing costs for SuperVinyl can be eight times more than regular vinyl.)
After a two-year build, Fidelity officially opened at the start of 2024 as the pressing plant for MoFi; it soon started accepting vinyl orders from outside clients. There are currently six presses (manufactured in Nashville by Record Pressing Machines LLC) that can churn an estimated annual capacity of around 1 million records. Another four presses are on the way (the plant can accommodate a total of 12). As of now, one employee operates up to three machines, with additional employees focusing full-time on quality control, which includes spot listening to every 40-50 records for around 30 minutes.
“If you have a flawed record, you may as well just stream it on Spotify,” says Rick. “But if you have a great sounding record, you’re going to want to play that record over and over and that’s what’s going to keep people coming back to vinyl. It’s got to be great — and I think that’s what we do here.”
Rick and Edward Hashimoto
Courtesy of Fidelity Record Pressing
In May, Taylor Swift notched her 14th No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with the help of 14 different vinyl versions of The Tortured Poets Department, which sold an astounding 859,000 units in the album’s debut week. She has now stayed atop the Billboard 200 for eight consecutive weeks by rolling out additional variants, proving the pop megastar has mastered the art of giving superfans what they want.
Swift isn’t alone in upping her variant game. Luminate looked at the number of physical variants — defined as distinct UPCs per project — in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart each week since the beginning of 2019 and found that the amount has trended upwards since that year, when the average number of physical variants in the top 10 was 3.3 per week, according to data shared with Billboard. While that number fell to 2.8 per week in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on release schedules and supply chains — physical album sales also fell, from 73.5 million units in 2019 to 68 million units in 2020 due to a sharp drop in CD sales — the average number of physical variants in the top 10 has increased sharply in the post-pandemic years.
Trending on Billboard
Making albums available in different colors, formats and packages has proven to be a shrewd move for prominent artists aiming for the top of the chart. In 2021, Adele’s 30 debuted atop the Billboard 200 with a Target-exclusive CD, vinyl exclusives at Amazon and Walmart, and three items sold through her official webstore: a cassette and two deluxe boxed sets.
Like she did with The Tortured Poets Department, Swift has frequently topped the Billboard 200 with the help of physical variants. Her 2022 album Midnights had the biggest week for an album in nearly seven years. And in 2023, her 1989 (Taylor’s Version) had the biggest week in nearly a decade with the help of 15 collectible physical formats.
Also in 2023, Travis Scott’s Utopia reached No. 1 thanks to 84 variants, as the album was made available in three different track lists and multiple CD and LP variants including zine and merchandise bundles. The same year, Fall Out Boy’s So Much (for) Stardust had a whopping 116 physical variants, according to Luminate, although it reached only No. 6 on Billboard 200.
CD variants have helped numerous K-pop artists achieve high Billboard 200 debuts. K-pop fans have long clamored for collectibles from their favorite artists, and in South Korea, labels employ lottery-style marketing strategies and package CDs with merchandise — even though many fans don’t own a CD player. In March, With YOU-th by TWICE debuted atop the Billboard 200 with the help of 14 CD variants. “To the fans, it’s not just an issue of buying music,” Bernie Cho, the head of DFSB Kollective, a Korean music export agency, told Billboard in 2020. “You’re showing your loyalty.”
But physical variants aren’t the exclusive domain of albums popular enough to land in the top 10. “For certain records, multiple variants can support a chart position, but it’s not the main driver for Concord,” says Joe Dent, executive vp of operations at Concord Label Group.
“Fans want to support their favorite artists of course, but oftentimes they want to support a particular shop or webstore that they love as well,” Dent continues. “We strive to meet those fans wherever they are.” For example, Concord’s Rounder Records made vinyl variants of Sierra Ferrell’s Trail of Flowers available as exclusives to indie record stores, Magnolia Record Club and Spotify Fans First, while several other vinyl variants sold through her website and the Rounder Records webstore, says Dent.
AWAL, home to such indie artists as Laufey and JVKE, has a similar mindset. “The way we look at physical never starts with the commercial opportunity,” says CEO Lonny Olinick. “It starts with how the artist wants to express themselves and what the fans are likely to love. And what it really comes down to is how an artist can deepen the connection they have with their fans.”
Variants can also be a marketing strategy for catalog albums that aren’t likely to achieve a high chart position. “We use the variants as an opportunity to excite the market,” says Rell Lafargue, president/COO at Reservoir Music. “For example, if we have something that has been out of print for decades, we might want to do a color variant to reintroduce it into the marketplace as a new, distinct and fun physical product.” Reservoir’s Tommy Boy Records took this approach for the upcoming reissue of Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force’s 1986 album Planet Rock by opting for a limited edition pressing with a three-color splatter.
Each additional variant adds to the complexity of releasing an album. That challenge was exacerbated by COVID-related supply chain issues, leading to longer lead times and searches for alternate manufacturers. But while logistical challenges remain, says Lafargue, they aren’t as persistent. “While it can be challenging to manage multiple variants or exclusives instead of a singular version, it is worth the extra effort to expose the record to different retailers and get it into the hands of even more fans,” he says.
The proliferation of physical variants doesn’t come as a surprise. Streaming has made music both plentiful and easily accessible — almost to a fault. Some artists are now releasing physical albums a week or two before making them available on streaming platforms. So while chart position remains a big motivator for many, there’s also something to be said for the way physical variants can foster a feeling of closeness between artists and fans.
Artists “look to cut through the volume of digital music being released,” says Olinick. “Bringing that connection into the real world, whether through live shows or physical products, is hugely impactful.”
When NxWorries, the duo of Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge, released their second album on June 7, they made it available on vinyl, CD, and cassette. But fans had to wait a week to stream Why Lawd? The goal was “to recreate the nostalgic feeling of truly appreciating the experience of a physical product that we all grew up with in the pre-streaming era,” says Anna Savage, who manages Paak.
Not only that: “We wanted to do something special for their fans by giving them an opportunity to experience the record a little earlier,” adds Jason McGuire, general manager at Stone’s Throw, the label that supports NxWorries. Combined with a pop-up event in L.A., hopefully “more people [are] talking about the record leading up to the streaming date.”
Trending on Billboard
Most modern albums are released simultaneously on streaming services and in an array of physical versions — or they hit streamers first and the vinyl edition comes later. But as the streaming model is increasingly under attack from all sides, for undervaluing music and limiting artists’ ability to cultivate relationships with their fans, more acts are experimenting with alternative rollout strategies.
There shouldn’t be “a one-size-fits-all strategy,” says Andrew Jervis, chief curator of Bandcamp. “We’re talking about art here — we’re not talking about widgets.”
The hope is that different approaches can fire up the base and serve to re-engage some listeners at a time when album releases are increasingly rote, with all the magic of a morning commute. “The consumer is not happy with the way that they are consuming music right now,” says Enrique “Mag” Rodriguez, founder of EVEN, a platform that enables artists to sell albums and experiences directly to fans before their releases hit streaming services.
Testing alternate release strategies may also allow musicians to generate more money from their biggest followers. “If you permanently emphasize pointing your fans somewhere where they can simply listen to whatever they want, whenever they want, for this rental fee, it’s kind of hard to convince them to come back and open their wallet,” Jervis notes.
As former Spotify chief economist Will Page wrote recently, “for a streamer to provide a record label the same amount of value from an album as a vinyl buyer, a customer would need to press play over 5,000 times — or stream for almost two weeks straight without sleep,” a virtual impossibility.
“Consumers are paying more for the same with vinyl,” Page continued, “but paying less to access more with streaming.”
Notably, a lot of alternate rollout ideas echo debates from roughly a decade ago, when the music streaming model was starting to take hold. Rodriguez points to Nipsey Hussle, who famously sold 1,000 copies of his 2013 release Crenshaw for $100 a piece while also making the project available for free on various mixtape sites. The rapper said at the time that he was “focused on fully serving the [fans] that have connected already.”
Around the same time, multiple stars like Adele kept albums off the platforms for a time — 25 didn’t make it to Spotify until seven months after release, for example, which helped ensure a massive first week of sales. (Adele said new releases “should be an event” and called the streaming model “a bit disposable.”) Some artists debuted albums exclusively on Apple Music or TIDAL before making them available more widely, or made them available only for premium subscribers.
But these “windowing” strategies went out of fashion in the mainstream music industry. Major labels and prominent indies often want streams and physical sales to hit the same week, so they can maximize the first-week numbers that the industry uses to judge commercial success. More than 600 million people around the world now listen to music on Spotify every month — any artists looking for global scale are unlikely to turn their back on that potential audience. Plus they are wary of offending the streaming services by withholding releases.
Smaller artists and record companies are making different calculations, however. At this level, earning even just a few hundred extra CD or LP sales by temporarily withholding an album from streaming can provide a nice boost.
While Jervis “encourage[s] people to put their music in as many places as possible,” he has seen this boost firsthand. Last year, the duo Knower released Knower Forever exclusively on Bandcamp. “They were pretty forthright about, ‘we need to make some money, here’s where you can come and support us by buying this record,’” Jervis says. And that’s what fans did, purchasing “something like $85,000 worth of vinyl and some similar amount in digital.” The album didn’t appear on Spotify until several months later.
One of the Top 25 labels on Bandcamp is International Anthem, the jazz label co-founded by Scott McNiece; for about six months, the company has been experimenting with putting out physical releases and digital downloads a month before uploading albums to streaming platforms. Like McGuire, McNeice says, “we want to be serving people who care enough about that particular album or artist to directly purchase the music.”
International Anthem hasn’t “received any pushback yet from streaming services as far as other people getting the album before them,” according to McNiece. And as an added bonus, indie record store owners are thrilled with the label’s approach. “Especially with the dwindling media market for music, having people care about your music on the ground level at independent record stores is one of the main ways to get the word out,” McNiece continues. “We’ve gotten an enormous amount of positive feedback” from record store owners who are excited to have an exclusive release to tout to customers.
Both McGuire and McNiece believe that offering physical releases first will not cannibalize the streaming audience. The people who buy the record will probably stream it at some point anyway.
Not only that, “before, when all the different formats were released on the same day, our energy was split with our messaging,” McNiece adds. Stream the album! Buy the vinyl! Under the new regime, though, “we’re able to focus a lot more energy specifically on driving traffic to those streaming platforms” once the albums are uploaded to the various services — a later streaming date provides a second marketing moment.
Rodriguez is also adamant that selling directly to fans before putting albums on streaming services is additive. “As fans purchase, they are more likely to share on social media, boosting artist algorithms,” he says. “This also translates to increased visibility on streaming platforms.”
EVEN, which raised more than $2 million in 2023, has run more than 3,500 campaigns for artists to date. Rodriguez likens his platform to traditional movie theaters and music streaming services to Netflix. “Most campaigns go live on EVEN 14+ days before their wide release,” he says. “The average album sells for $25, and the average single sells for $9. It’s all done in a pay-what-you-want model, where the fan decides its value, with a minimum preset by the artist.”
“We aren’t taking away from the traditional models that exist,” Rodriguez adds. “No one is squeezing the lemon in this way.”
Vinyl sales were up 14.2% across all U.S. independent retailers in 2023, according to Luminate, marking the continued growth of a format whose renewed popularity has coincided with a growing industry focus on sustainability — one that has consistently identified vinyl’s carbon footprint as problematic.
Now, the Vinyl Record Manufacturer’s Association (VRMA) and the Vinyl Alliance (VA) have released a study that looks at the carbon footprint of the manufacturing process and offers recommendations on how to mitigate it.
“We hope this report — and a series of subsequent updates — encourages everyone in the vinyl record industry to be radically transparent about the environmental impact of making vinyl records, and what steps we can take to reduce that impact,” the report reads, adding that the data backing it up is “based on a very limited number of businesses in the supply chain.” However, it continues, “we have a range of other companies who are in the process of contributing their carbon footprints, and we hope this report will encourage many more businesses in the supply chain to participate as well.”
Trending on Billboard
The study considers the vinyl industry’s scope one, two and three emissions, which are involved in the entire lifespan of a vinyl record. Respectively, they encompass a company’s direct emissions; indirect emissions from electricity purchased; and all other indirect emissions in a company’s value chain. The study was made in accordance with Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, which standardizes, on an international level, how businesses measure, report and manage their greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the report, the “cradle-to-factory gate” footprint of a single vinyl album is approximately 1.15 kg CO2e, or the equivalent of driving a car for three miles. Fifty percent of those emissions come from the plastic PVC compound used to press the records, another 30% are from energyconsumption at the factory and 13% of emissions are from print packaging like jackets, inserts and sleeves. The remaining percentage includes the manufacturing of lacquers, cutting tools and stampers, and other packaging.
But while vinyl emissions are an oft-cited problem, the report goes a step further by offering five recommendations vinyl manufacturers can take to reduce carbon emissions from their production processes.
The first is to eliminate air freight. “If a label or artist presses at a single location, then ships records to global markets by air freight,” the study states, “these shipping emissions will dwarf anything else you might do to reduce the carbon footprint of your release.”
The next recommendation is to switch to “bio-attributed” PVC compound. A relatively recent invention, “bio-attributed” PVC is made from a waste product created during paper production and uses plant-based raw materials to replace the petroleum that PVC is typically made with. Such usage could cut an album’s carbon footprint by roughly 44%, according to the report.
The report also recommends that manufacturers press on lighter 140-gram, versus 180-gram, vinyl. Heavier weights can increase a record’s footprint by between 14% and 26%, as can the use of splatter vinyl, which entails sprinkling various colors onto a background color before the record is pressed. The report also advises manufacturers to keep their packaging simple, noting that a jacket gatefold on a single record adds 10% to 15% to the typical footprint of a record compared to a standard 3mm spine jacket.
Finally, the report advises all companies in the supply chain to transition to zero-carbon energy. “Pressing plants often have gas boilers, and replacing these with electric or hydrogen boilers represents a huge challenge,” the report states, “but one that has to be grasped.”
The inaugural report was compiled by a working group led by Peter Frings of Stamper Discs alongside Adam Teskey and Alex Deninson of Vinyl Factory Manufacturing Ltd; Ryan Weitzel of A to Z Media; Karen Emanuel and John Service of Key Production; Ian Stanton of Beggars Group; Kamal Nasseredine of Precision Pressing; Vladimir Visek of GZ Media; Ryan Mitrovitch of Vinyl Alliance; Bryan Ekus of VRMA; and Ruben Planting of Deep Grooves.
About a decade into his career with Universal Music Group (UMG) — primarily heading A&R and working as a staff producer for Harvest Records — Tim Anderson had a front-row seat to the late-2010s vinyl boom. “It was still an archaic, dinosaur thing,” he recalls of how labels approached record pressing. He started to wonder why records were so hard to manufacture and had such long lead times — and what he could do about it.
By the time the pandemic hit, Anderson — who is also a songwriter-producer, composing for Suits and working with acts like Banks, Halsey and twenty one pilots — had left his major-label gig and had little interest in producing. Unsure of what to do next, his wife kept reminding him that music is what he knows best and suggested he tackle the vinyl issue that had plagued him years ago.
Twenty minutes later, Anderson made his first call to Scotty Coats, an old friend of his wife’s and Capitol Music Group’s one-time vinyl marketing manager. Coats immediately expressed his belief in the idea of a more sustainable approach to vinyl manufacturing. The call motivated Anderson — who doesn’t have an environmentalist background, admitting he gets confused trying to properly sort his recycling — to figure out how to make his vision a reality.
Trending on Billboard
He found a video online posted by Dutch company Green Vinyl Records, which detailed the development of an environmentally friendly alternative to record manufacturing that is free of polyvinyl chloride. “I’d been told my entire life that you needed the PVC to make a record sound great, and I just believed it,” Coats says. “Until Tim came along and inspired me to find a better way.”
“We saw it right when we met them that they had made something that could be this huge unlock,” Anderson recalls of GVR. He says the company needed a partner to help scale what it had built, and Good Neighbor was able to provide production contacts at many independent and major labels, especially in the United States. “They needed us and we needed them,” he says.
Soon after, Anderson met Reyna Bryan, president of innovative packaging company RCD, and in late 2023, he quietly launched Good Neighbor, a first-of-its-kind record-pressing company that manufactures fully recyclable discs, with Reyna as CEO and Coats as vp of sales and marketing. He later hired Coats’ friend and UMG manufacturing veteran Jonny O’Hara as vp of productions and operations. “As more people were stepping back into the world of vinyl, a lot of artists were like, ‘Is there a more eco-friendly alternative?’ ” O’Hara recalls. “There were better options coming online, but they were never to the same degree as Good Neighbor.”
“In my business of transforming supply chains, any opportunity to reduce carbon production or eliminate chemicals of concern from the process is a major win,” adds Bryan. “Good Neighbor achieves both.”
Key stakeholders of Good Neighbors, from left: Tim Anderson, Scotty Coats, Reyna Bryan and Jonny O’Hara.
Ryan Kontra
Instead of a traditional hydraulic press, which uses energy to heat up and cool down, GVR’s “futuristic-looking” machine (as O’Hara describes it) uses injection molding of polyethylene terephthalate (PET plastic), which reduces energy by 60% and increases manufacturing by three times. (GVR’s single press in the Netherlands, running three eight-hour shifts, has an estimated capacity of 1.2 million records a year.) A second press will arrive in the United States in mid-September. (Good Neighbor is currently raising money through the team’s pro-skater friends and music managers.)
GVR’s Pierre van Dongen and Harm Theunisse say they looked to the pressing process for CDs and DVDs as inspiration, noting how precise and adaptable it was. And while they say some research on trying this process with records was done in the 80s, it was never finished — until now. It took them six years to “perfect the development,” as they say, which included testing over 200 materials, optimizing molding and developing the direct to record label printer.
Coats and O’Hara are particularly excited about how this new process eliminates paper center labels that require high-heat baking in order to stick to PVC. Instead, Good Neighbor’s labels will be directly printed onto the PET plastic, allowing for individual customization of records — a sustainable step forward for exclusivity. Meanwhile, Anderson is thrilled that the machine is “material-agnostic,” meaning it can mold any material into a record, but Anderson says most don’t sound great — yet. The company is currently testing recycled bottles.
And while Anderson says he leaned on his “purist” friends for feedback on test pressings of the PET plastic and that no one pushed back on quality after listening, he still acknowledges that “audiophiles might not be our target consumer.” With Good Neighbor, he says, the goal isn’t to shame vinyl connoisseurs for their existing collections but to set a new precedent for sustainability in record production.
“If this industry keeps growing at this pace, it’s got to change … When the biggest artists in the world start selling millions and millions of these shrink-wrapped [vinyl], that’s when I was like, ‘This feels like something that would be fun to disrupt.’”A version of this article will appear in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Warner Music Group’s revived Record Store Crawl returned to New York City last weekend after a five-year absence, complete with a bus full of music and vinyl fans — including Billboard’s Retail Track — that kicked things off at Tower Records’ Tower Labs space in Brooklyn with a rocking performance from 300 Entertainment recording artists Quarters of Change.
The crawl’s bus, transporting about 40 music fans, went on to visit Academy Records in Brooklyn, Audio-Technica showroom in lower Manhattan, Generation Records in the West Village; and finally, Rough Trade Records up in Rockefeller Center, all on Saturday (May 18).
Upcoming crawls are scheduled in Seattle on June 14; Austin on July 20; Nashville on Aug. 10; Chicago on Sept. 28; and Los Angeles on Oct. 19. Tickets for each crawl costs $77.45. Just like the New York Crawl, those cities will likely feature an artist performance and so far, Joe P has been lined up for the ones in Seattle and Austin; Knox for the one in Nashville; Deux Visages for Chicago; and Alicia Creti for Los Angeles.
Trending on Billboard
What’s more, vinyl and music lovers can visit the Record Store Crawl website to vote for which U.S. city will be the winner of a crawl slated for Sept. 7. All the crawls are sponsored in partnership with Audio-Technica and HeadCount. When fans vote on the WMG Record Store Crawl website for which city should receive the September crawl, the site asks if the voter is registered to vote in U.S. elections. If they aren’t, or are simply unsure, a link takes them to the headcount.org website where they can either check their status or register to vote.
The last time WMG had a Record Store Crawl was a year prior to the COVID-19 shutdown. Before the pandemic, the then-named WEA (now named WMX) held 40 Crawls in cities across the United States from 2016 through 2019, according to WMX senior director of retail & platform marketing (RPM) Gina Williams. In NYC, they were mainly held on Record Store Day. However, nowadays record stores have plenty going on that day, Williams said, so WMG’s team chose other days to bring a traffic boost to stores.
While the Record Store Day Crawl was happening in New York, WMX’s RPM team was hosting some 165 early listening events for Twenty One Pilots‘ new album, Clancy, out now on Fueled By Ramen. According to a statement issued by the company, “thousands of fans nationwide packed into their local record stores to hear the album early, connect with fellow fans and experience what independent record stores are all about: community and love of music. Moreover, in the prior year, 2023, the RPM Team hosted 972 listening party indie store activations in 2023 for 12 releases. The RPM Team and Atlantic Records were nominated for a 2024 Music Biz Bizzy for our Barbie, The Album listening events.”
In New York, Record Store Crawl fans lined up at noon outside Tower’s performance space in Williamsburg to get a bag of swag from the Warner family of labels. Retail Track’s bag contained the Keith Sweat Make It Last Forever limited-edition black ice vinyl album and a “Brother” 45 from Needtobreathe, plus stickers and other tchotchkes; as well as a raffle ticket, which would come in very handy on the bus ride between stops on the crawl.
Inside Tower, the crawlers were treated to a high-energy seven-song set from Quarters of Change, who performed tracks from its debut album, Into the Rift, and its just released follow-up, Portraits.
Quarters of Change perform at Tower Records’ Tower Labs space in Brooklyn on May 18.
Rita Vega
After the band’s set, the tour loaded onto the bus and headed to the next stop: Academy Records Annex in Greenpoint, where Retail Track scored a few singles: O.V. Wright’s “Precious Precious” on Hi Records; Arthur Prysock’s “I Wantcha Baby,” on Hy Weiss’ Old Town Records; and Shirley Brown’s “Woman To Woman” on Truth Records.
After that, the bus headed to Manhattan via the Williamsburg Bridge and the mother of all traffic jams, moving literally an inch at a time. That led to plenty of opportunities for WMX’s RPM senior manager Ross Srodo to show off his emcee prowess, while WMX RPM creative manager Eden Mili supplied pithy embellishments in her role as ace ticket number reader as the duo raffled off plenty of Record Store Day exclusives and other limited edition and/or deluxe vinyl records — all from the Warner Music family of labels, naturally. During that ride, Han Mu, one of the crawlers, said he heard about the Record Store Crawl through an Instagram post. He also hailed the crawl’s pricing, saying, “it is totally worth it.”
In Manhattan, the first stop was at Audio-Technica House, the audio equipment brand’s collaboration space in SoHo, where crawlers were treated to Banshee Winery wines and a music trivia game with the winner taking home a turntable. The rest of the crawlers got an Audio-Technica record cleaning kit.
Up next, a quick ride to Generation Records, where crawlers had the pleasure of flipping through the stacks while dining on Williamsburg Pizza. Retail Track hit the downstairs used records bargain bin and scored 10 vinyl albums, including ones by The Association, Dakota Staton, Gene Pitney, Jimmy Ruffin, Joan Armatrading and Renaissance — the latter on Warner Bros. Records.
The Record Store Crawl itself wasn’t the only attraction, as Hannah Tebo bought a ticket especially to see the performance by Quarters of Change, as did Ellen Cainsford, who flew in from Austin because she said she wanted to “see the band in a special venue for an intimate performance.” Besides her, two others traveled in from North Carolina for the Record Store Crawl, while two more music fans came from Philadelphia, WMX RPM manager Mel Hoch reported to Retail Track.
Finally, the day culminated at Rough Trade where Retail Track scored Quarters of Change’s Portrait LP. “It was great to have a busload of eager record fans of all ages pop in and take over our store briefly,” store manager George Flanagan tells Billboard. “It was a very good day already and then the music fans from the bus provided a nice spike. We sold a lot of music.”
Much like last month’s Record Store Day, Retail Track once again heard the siren call of (this time) a cold Budweiser, which was easily scored around the corner from Rough Trade at the Pig & Whistle pub. After all, Retail Track needed something to wash down the wine taste from back at Audio-Technica House.
Retail Trackback: Taylor Helps, But Olivia & Others Also Bring Big Sales to RSD 2024
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