Top 5 eBay Vinyl Record Sales

Week Ending 10/24/2009

1. 45 - Peacheroos "Be Bop Baby" / "Every Day My Love Is True" Excello - $3,000.00

2. 45 - Ellipsis "People" / "Gregory Moore" Briarmeade - $2,927.00

3. LP - Slayer "25 Years Of Not Showing Mercy" Test Press Fan Club Release - $2,716.00

4. LP - Militia "The Sybling" - $2,550.00

5. LP - The Beatles "White Album" UK Mono #0007192 - $2,532.62


As always, a special thank you to Norm at http://ccdiscoveries.blogspot.com for this great data. Stop in and listen to their unique radio show Accidental Nostalgia with Norm & Jane On Radio Dentata - 60 minutes of rare records and nugatory narration. Every Tuesday 4PM PT/7PM ET, Sunday 9AM PT/12PM ET & Monday 12AM PT/3AM ET

Music News & Notes

Fall Out Boy Announce Greatest Hits Album And Tracklisting

Fall Out Boy are to release an eighteen-track collection of their greatest hits next month.

'Believers Never Die', which is due out on November 16, will include two rarities and two new songs.

The album will also feature a DVD comprising of fourteen of Fall Out Boy's videos with commentary from the band.

The tracklisting for 'Believers Never Die' is:

'Dead On Arrival'
'Grand Theft Autumn'
'Saturday'
'Sugar, We’re Goin Down'
'Dance, Dance'
'A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me'
'This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race'
'Thnks fr th Mmrs'
'The Take Over, The Breaks Over'
'I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off (Me & You) '
'Beat It'
'I Don’t Care'
'Americas Suitehearts'
'What A Catch, Donnie'

Bonus Tracks

'Alpha Dog'
'From Now On We Are Enemies'
'Yule Shoot Your Eyes Out'
'Growing Up'

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Juliana Hatfield Announces New CD "Peace And Love" For February

"Peace And Love," Juliana Hatfield's latest album, will be released on February 16, 2010 on Ye Olde Records. Hatfield, of course, has a long history of DIY endeavors - from her trailblazing days with Boston indie band the Blake Babies to her recent releases on Ye Olde Records, the label she founded in 2005 - but with "Peace And Love" she reaches a new level of independence. She produced and engineered the album herself and played all the instruments, including acoustic and electric guitars, piano, harmonica and drum machine.

"I've produced records before but I was always in a studio with professional engineers. So it was definitely a learning process for me," says Hatfield, who was ready to strip things down after her critically acclaimed 2008 album, "How To Walk Away," which was a full studio production. "I always like to try things I've never done before and I'd been yearning to record myself."

Hatfield had just purchased her brother's eight-track digital recorder and moved into a Cambridge apartment with a back room that had excellent natural acoustics, so the time was right. "I was able to follow every instinct without worrying that anyone was going to think it was a kooky idea," she recalls. "I just wanted to do something simple."

The result is an incredibly intimate collection of songs, expertly capturing the loneliness and collateral damage borne of broken relationships yet adamantly refusing to remain broken. In the liner notes, Boston Phoenix music editor James Parker gives it a name: "Survivor-music - because even at their most palpitatingly fragile, your songs have always been built to last. Well-made, strong-boned, fit to be played on streetcorners and station platforms."

"Peace And Love" is Hatfield's 11th solo album and follows last year's "How To Walk Away," which was hailed as "rueful and gorgeous," by Entertainment Weekly, which gave the album an A-. "After 20 years, the songstress still packs a wallop on her 10th album, featuring edgy tales of heartbreak sung with that classic sweetness," said Newsweek, naming it a "Checklist" pick of the week upon its release while Spin pronounced it "vital," awarding it three out of four stars. Her autobiography, entitled When I Grow Up, was published by Wiley & Sons in September 2008.

Hatfield first came to prominence in her teens as a founding member of the Blake Babies. After four independent albums with the group, she signed to Atlantic as a solo artist and had a string of modern-rock hits (including "My Sister," "Spin The Bottle" and "Universal Heartbeat"). She left the label in 1998, signing to Zoe Records (a Rounder Records imprint) and releasing four well-regarded albums, including 2004's "In Exile Deo," named as one of that year's 10 best albums by The New York Times' Jon Pareles. In 2005, Hatfield came full circle, returning to her independent roots and founding Ye Olde Records.

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Jackson’s ‘This Is It’ May Make $400 Million in Sales

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Jackson’s movie and CD may generate as much as $400 million in sales worldwide as fans turn out to see and hear the last live performances of the late King of Pop.

“Michael Jackson’s This Is It” album, featuring one new song, goes on sale starting today. The movie with the same title opens Oct. 28 in more than 90 countries, including 3,400 theaters in the U.S., according to Hollywood.com Box-Office.

More than 1,000 U.S. shows were sold out as of Oct. 22, according to the online ticket vendor Fandango.com. Cinemas in London, Sydney, Bangkok and Tokyo also reported sellouts, according to Sony Corp., which is releasing the film and the album. In the U.K., sales topped those of “Harry Potter” and “The Lord of the Rings” at the Vue Entertainment Ltd. chain.

“It’s a true phenomenon,” said Tim Richards, chief executive officer of London-based Vue, whose cinema near the O2 Arena, where Jackson was scheduled to perform a series of comeback concerts, is among those that sold out.

Jackson’s work may be prized more after his death than it was in life, said Robert Sillerman, CEO of CKX Inc., the New York-based operator of Graceland, Elvis Presley’s Tennessee home, and co-producer of “American Idol.”

“In death, people remember the best of somebody,” Sillerman said. “Certainly that is turning out to be the case in Elvis and the Beatles. I think it will turn out to be the case in Michael’s situation.”

Ticket Sales

Jackson died at age 50 on June 25 in Los Angeles of a drug overdose, three weeks before the concerts were set to begin. Sony, the singer’s music label, won a bidding war for a documentary film built around footage compiled during rehearsals, agreeing to pay $60 million, according to court documents.

The film may generate $300 million to $400 million in global ticket sales, said Jeff Bock, a box-office analyst for Los Angeles-based researcher Exhibitor Relations Co. U.S. sales in the first five days may be $55 million to $60 million, said Jeffrey Hartke, an analyst with Los Angeles-based Hollywood Stock Exchange, which forecasts film performance.

The two-disc album, with the new track “This is It,” as well as “Billie Jean,” “Smooth Criminal” and “Thriller,” may sell 200,000 to 500,000 copies in the U.S., according to Silvio Pietroluongo, director of sales charts at Billboard magazine. The suggested retail price of $17.98 has been marked down to $9.99 at Amazon.com Inc.

The releases may help dent the hundreds of millions of dollars in debt the entertainer ran up during his lifetime.

Making vinyl records the old-fashioned way

At United Record Pressing in Nashville, Tenn., LPs are still made the old-fashioned way: with lots and lots of vinyl. This is a bin full of little vinyl pellets that will be melted into records.


NASHVILLE, Tenn.–When people think of the Beatles coming to America, they usually conjure up images of The Ed Sullivan Show and screaming teenage girls chasing the Fab Four on the streets of New York.

But here in Music City, there’s something else to commemorate the earliest stages of the British Invasion: the fact that the first American Beatles 7-inch record was produced by United Record Pressing–then, as now, one of the largest makers of vinyl in the world.

On Monday, as I swung through Nashville on Road Trip 2008, I was lucky enough to get to visit the production facilities of United Record Pressing here and get a firsthand look at how LPs are made. Before you scoff at the notion of making records, consider that over the last few years, the format has made a big comeback, with sales skyrocketing and turntables moving off store shelves like they haven’t in years.

Why? The reason is pure irony.

According to Jay Millar, the marketing and sales manager for United Record Pressing, it has everything to do with the emergence of Apple’s oh-so-ubiquitous MP3 player.

“It really started picking up when iPods started coming onto the scene,” Millar said. “Everything got so sterile with digital that people were not spending time” with the physical manifestation of their music.

A record-pressing machine at United Record Pressing. The company is one of only three in the United States that still produces LPs in any meaningful amounts.

In other words, as iPods began to dominate the music world, people were leaving their CDs on the shelves, and iTunes downloads, as well as those via file-sharing services, took over.

But for audiophiles used to actually handling some sort of disc, this change has led to a reversal of fortune for the LP, a format long thought to have gone the way of the floppy disk.

For a company like United Record Pressing, that’s been great news, as its sales have been going up steadily as more and more artists turn to records as a way to get their music into the hands of people who care about it.

So how is a record made?

First, a separate company with facilities nearby takes the original recording–which can come in the form of an audio tape, but (audiophiles, cover your eyes here) more often comes on CDs since many artists are using software like ProTools to cut their tracks–and uses it to cut the familiar circular grooves into an object called a lacquer.

The lacquer is then delivered to United Record Pressing, which begins the process of actually making the LPs.

First, the lacquer is sprayed with a layer of silver, which, after it sets, is then peeled off. The resulting sheet is known as the master, and it is the opposite of a record, because it has ridges rather than grooves.

The master is then used to make what is known as the mother, a metal version of the record that can, itself, actually be played.

At United Record Pressing, black is not the only color of vinyl that is used. There’s also red, orange, blue, gray, and even a mixture made from the cuttings of the other colors.

The mother is then pressed into what is known as the stamper, and this, too, has ridges. The stamper actually is the basis of every record that comes out of this factory.

At this point, it’s all about raw vinyl, millions of little chunks of the material that resemble Pop Rocks.

And it’s not just black either. The company also makes records that are red, orange, blue, and gray. Sometimes, it takes all the discarded vinyl from several pressings and mixes them together into a kind of hodgepodge color.

First, the vinyl is melted down into what is called the biscuit. This is the center of the record, the round part with no grooves and the little hole. To this is added the label, which is pressed onto the biscuit, a step that doesn’t require any adhesive. Rather, the biscuit is so hot from the vinyl being melted down that the label sticks right on.

The labels, which are printed here by the thousands, are actually baked in a special oven so that they retain no moisture, something that could cause bubbling on the actual record.

To ensure that labels don’t bubble up after being pressed onto a record, the labels are baked in an oven to remove any moisture.

Then, the biscuit is placed in the middle of a machine and then it is joined together with a fresh supply of vinyl, and together they are smashed between a plate and the stamper. A blade then shears off the excess vinyl, and voila! A brand new record slides out of the machine and onto a rack.

When all is said and done, it’s actually a remarkably simply process. But there’s still much more that must happen before an LP leaves the facility.

First, at least one of each new album run must be tested. So on one side of a room that long ago was used as a room for record release and signing parties–Hank Williams Jr. had a party thrown for him here when he was 16, Millar said–a woman is sitting and bobbing her head as she listens to songs on headphones, making sure the new record has no problems. If it does, United Record Pressing will have to tell the record company what the issue is.

There’s also the small matter of putting the records in their sleeves–something I saw two people tucked away in a corner of one room doing. They had their process down pat: grab an LP, inspect it quickly for obvious defects, pick up a sleeve, slide in the record, repeat.

Millar showed me a room in the basement of the building that contained thousands and thousands of folders–really, they seemed like extra-thick album covers with no art–that contain the masters of every record the company has produced over the years. This is a treasure trove bar none, since United Record Pressing works with pretty much every major label you can imagine.

Inside each folder is the master, and a full set of all the associated materials: the master, a label, an album jacket, and anything else that might be included, such as liner notes. And these days, as with an Elvis Costello album Millar showed me, the folders may also hold an insert with information for a digital download of the album.

In fact, it is these digital downloads that may be heralding the re-emergence of the LP and the death of the CD. That’s because many artists are now offering record buyers a one-time free download of all the tracks on the album as a bonus.

This is still a small enough phenomenon, of course, to barely register on Apple’s radar. iTunes is safe, in other words.

Still, for audiophiles who used to buy CDs, this gives them a way to have a physical disc to listen to the music on, as well as a way to easily tote it with them.

“People don’t need their discs to be compact anymore,” said Millar, “because you can’t get much more compact than MP3. So it’s back to the big discs.”

SOURCE: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com

'Vinyl Junkman' Howard Fischer uses record expertise to sell vinyl to collectors

written by Clem Richardson

Howard Fischer makes a convincing argument that selling old vinyl records is best left to experts.

The market for old 78, 33-1/3 and 45 records is so specialized that most times the casual seller will have no idea what they're selling or what it's worth.

"That's the problem," said Fischer, who ships to collectors worldwide. "All over the world they want these records, but they have special things they look for. The label, the condition is important. Is it a reissue or an original?

Then there are things in the deadwax - the wax around the label that doesn't have any grooves. "The producers scratch things in there, original things, and some people want to know what is in the deadwax.

"There is a guy named Rudy Van Gelder from New Jersey, who produced a lot of major, collectible records," Fischer said. "His name is in the dead wax in a lot of records. Collectors want to know that.

"People collect album cover art. David Stone Martin covers are very collectible. Some people even collect the inner sleeve, the paper envelope inside the album which holds the records.

"It's wild. It is not easy. I'm still learning myself."

Fischer, 72, has made several hundred dollars on albums he found or bought for pennies. But even he makes mistakes. He says the Smithsonian was interested in a collection of early radio comedies he found on the curb last year, and even agreed to up the offer at Fischer's urging.

Then the recession hit and the entire deal fell through. Fischer still has the recordings.

Fischer came by his passion honestly - his father, Hyman, collected 78s.

"I used to watch my mother and father dance around this little record player," he said. "They were great Lindy hoppers."

Those dances may have influenced his career choices. "I was involved in the music business, first as a lawyer, then I represented musicians," said Fischer.

He founded the New York Jazz Museum in 1972, but it went out of business in 1977. Fischer also wrote a book, "The New York Jazz Museum and the Power Struggle that Destroyed It," which he also sells at his shop.

For eight years, Fischer published Treasure Chest, a newspaper of antiques and collectibles. He also produced a documentary, "The Holland Avenue Boys; a Success Story," about several of his boyhood friends.

His office on W. 72nd St. in Manhattan, is stuffed with nearly 10,000 albums, as well as numerous books and movie posters. There are few classical albums, and no movie soundtracks or Broadway scores, which Fischer says do not sell.

Nothing gets in the shop that Fischer won't listen to himself.

"When I find an album I like, I take it home and play it," Fischer said. "I have over 2,500 albums at home that I play all the time. When I decide I've listened to them enough, I bring them here to try to sell them."

Fischer, who also goes by the name "Vinyl Junkman," finds much of his merchandise at flea markets, garage sales and sitting on the curb - thrown out as trash for any number of reasons.

"A lot of times, parents or grandparents pass away, or people find stuff in their attics they want to get rid of," he said. "I always say check your ABCs: your attics, basements and closets, for old records because they may have value."


SOURCE: http://www.nydailynews.com