A whistle-stop guide to the year’s most important developments.
“Record Collectors despair as IKEA discontinues EXPEDIT shelving range”. The record collecting equivalent of a #breaktheinternet moment came in February this year when news began to filter through that Swedish furniture giant IKEA was to phase out the EXPEDIT shelving units whose 12” x 12” dimensions made it the shelf of choice for collectors the world over. Such was the cult status of the shelf that news of its demise spread as far as the BBC and Huffington Post, with the latter publishing a statement from IKEA a few days later to reassure sweaty palmed Twitter-happy collectors that their new Kallax would retain the same dimensions. “But what of the famous thick-as-your-forearm frame?” fretted the forums “how could Kallax’s skimpy skeleton hope to hold that many Record Store Day exclusives with the same efficiency?” In truth, the fallout of this news is yet to be seen.
Speaking of Record Store Day, as the annual celebration of independent record shops grew once more so did the suspicion that it was slowly being co-opted by record companies exploiting the feeding frenzy by putting out ever more meaningless reissues and limited editions. While One Direction’s Midnight Memories picture disc was the obvious scapegoat, the fact that reissues outnumbered new releases at this years event suggested that the creeping malaise and message board backlash was part of larger conversation about commodification and saturation of the market. Liam Gallagher actively discouraged Oasis fans from buying their box set reissues of Definitely Maybe, obviously not taken by the need to own that bonus key ring. That Oasis’ reissues are in the top 5 vinyl sellers of 2014, in a year that has seen the biggest UK sales since 1996, when What’s The Story Morning Glory? was the year’s second top selling album, tells a slightly different story about the health of the industry.
You can read the rest of this great article courtesy of The Vinyl Factory here
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