Get spinning on August 12th with National Vinyl Record Day! Whether it’s the Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Monkees, Johnny Cash or the BeeGees, vinyl records have a sound all their own. Most will agree, vintage vinyl is almost as much of a classic as the bands themselves.
- When vinyl records first came on the market they had other names. Some of them were gramophone record or a phonograph record. They’re also called records for short. It is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc. The sound is recorded by inscribing it on a modulated spiral groove.
- Depending on the speed the sound was recorded, the vinyl record will need to be played at a specific speed on the record player. This is referred to as rotational speed. The revolutions per minute (RPMs) of the more popular vinyls are:
- 45s
- 33 1/3
- 78s
- Other features of vinyl records included reproductive accuracy or fidelity (High Fidelity or Hi-Fi, Orthophonic and Full-Range), their time capacity (long-playing or single), and the number of channels of audio provided (mono, stereo or quadraphonic).
- Vinyl records were also sold in different sizes such as:
- 12 inch
- 10 inch
- 7 inch
- By 1991, vinyl records left the mainstream. However, manufacturers continue to produce them. Collectors and audiophiles increasingly desire the unique sound that only vinyl can produce. Since 2006, vinyl record sales continue to increase according to Pitchfork.com. Even more dramatic sales started hitting the markets beginning in 2012.
- Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877.
- Half Of Vinyl Record Buyers Are Under 25
- When the 45 rpm single was introduced in the late 1940s the vinyl was made in different colors depending on the genre of the music. The combination of cuteness and color made the 45 an instant hit with the younger generation. Popular songs were on the standard black vinyl. Country songs were on green vinyl, children’s records were on yellow vinyl, classical on red and R&B and Gospel were on orange vinyl. Semi classical instrumental music was on Blue vinyl/blue label and blue vinyl/black label were international recordings.
- Elvis Presley had a nice round total of 200 records counting singles, EPs and albums during his lifetime. That number could very easily been doubled if he had not died at a young age.
- Elvis made 31 movies. 25 of these had either an EP or LP soundtrack recording issued with the same name as the movie.
- The first Elvis song ever recorded was “That’s All Right/Blue Moon of Kentucky in August 1954
- Elvis’s biggest hit was “Don’t Be Cruel”. A complex point system was devised to calculate each song depending on several factors such as length of time in the top 100 and a few other metrics and Don’t Be Cruel was number one followed by “All Shook Up”.
- Perhaps the most famous records in the universe – certainly the ones with the widest distribution – are the two Golden Records aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts. The Golden Records include spoken greetings from Earth-dwellers in 55 languages, musical selections from different eras and cultures, and other messages and information. Each record is housed in an aluminum jacket, along with a cartridge and a stylus. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain how the record is to be played and tell of the origin of the spacecraft. Today, Voyager 1 is 11.7 billion miles from Earth, and Voyager 2 is 9.5 billion miles away.
- RCA Victor released Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in 1931, performed by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, making it the first 12-inch recording ever released.
- Columbia Records dropped the needle on history’s first successful microgroove plastic, 12-inch, 33-1/3 LP on June 21, 1948. According to the Wired.com article “Columbia’s Microgroove LP Makes Albums Sound Good,” engineer Peter Carl Goldmark “set out with his staff to evolve the 78-rpm record to 33-1/3 rpm” in an effort to “extend playback time to more than 20 minutes per side and shrink vinyl grooves to an accessible, acceptable millimeter size.”
- The best-selling album of 1967 was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles which sold 250,000 copies in the first week in the UK alone. Fifty years later the best-selling vinyl album was Blurryface by Twenty-One Pilots which shifted 49,000 units. The fourth best-selling album in 2016 was The Beatles’ Abbey Road which shifted 39,000 units.
- In spite of how proud you are over the size of your vinyl collection, a Brazilian billionaire has you beat. His personal collection has over 6,000,000 albums and is growing – he buys out the entire stock of stores that go out of business and he has a staff of buyers that regularly travel to Europe and the United States to buy close-out stock and attend auctions.
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