Eric Astor of Furnace MFG
Billy Fields, the vinyl guy at Warner Music

Hot on the tail of this year’s Record Store Day, we’re taking a fresh look at an old medium — vinyl records. About this time last year, we did our first show on the state of physical music retailing, and we concentrated on vinyl. We took a look at how Record Store Day helped revive a segment of the music industry and saved local record stores — but there’s more to the vinyl story than the retail effect.

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In this episode of Musonomics, we look further up the vinyl production line to see how the format is maturing, and what’s still holding it back. Josh Friedlander, the RIAA’s data guy, talks about the continued growth of vinyl records. Billy Fields, the vinyl guy at Warner Music Group, chats with us about whether vinyl might be heading for a plateau.  And Eric Astor of Furnace takes us into the factory and through the vinyl manufacturing process, from finished audio to a pristine, pressed record.

As always, you can listen to the new episode above via Soundcloud, or you can find it on iTunes, YouTube, and Stitcher.

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Adele’s highly anticipated album, 25, releases November 20th, but questions still remain. Will she release 25 on Spotify and other streaming platforms on the same day as the physical release, or will she bait more sales by staggering the release on streaming platforms?

Continue reading “To Stream or Not to Stream: Adele’s Question”

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The very first episode of Musonomics is here!

We’re very excited to share the first episode of the Musonomics podcast. In this episode we’ll delve into the current state of physical music retail in a conversation with James Donio of the Music Business Association. Then we’ll hear about Record Store Day, how it started and what it means to the vinyl industry from co-founder Michael Kurtz, and lastly we’ll talk about what the future of the industry looks like with Russ Crupnick of MusicWatch.

One of our songs this week was provided by Dedric Moore’s band, Monta At Odds. The band’s new album, Robots of Munich, is available via Haymaker Records. If you like the rest of the music from this week’s episode, you can listen to it whenever you like on our Spotify Playlist.

You can find the Musonomics podcast on iTunes or Soundcloud.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe — and give us a great review on iTunes! Your reviews will make a huge difference.
Continue reading “Record Store Day, the Vinyl Resurgence and the State of Physical Music Retail”