There are oh, so many reasons to declare this a summer of vinyl:
- Firstly, it was the fine folks over at Insound who originally declared a 'summer of vinyl', which is music to my ears, of course. They're running a new vinyl-related promotion starting every Tuesday for eight weeks. Today's your last day to buy a turntable and get a free record (I highly recommend the Vestax Handy Trax) and starting tomorrow you can get 10% off their Best of 2008 (so far). Check out their Summer of Vinyl calendar for full details.
- I went record shopping yesterday at Open Mind Music. I didn't see my friend and owner Henry there, but I did pick up a few gems that I'll tell you about later this week.
- Last week I bought my final piece of furniture for my living room, an Ikea number which gives me lots more room to expand my vinyl collection.
A great retail and art space near my neighborhood, Lower Hater, is currently displaying their Vinyl Apocalypse collection featuring new and original art painted on records. I stopped by yesterday and might have bought this piece if it weren't already spoken for.
- In the article "Retailers give vinyl another spin", CNN.com claims "manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million." If you ignore the raw numbers and just look at the percentages, vinyl purchasers are blowing up!
The summer of vinyl has begun. Who's with me?
Related post: Why I love my Vestax Handy Trax.