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The History Of Vinyl

Music Alive

Music Alive

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Vinyl Care

Some simple steps to help maintain the life of your records.

  1. Remove record carefully from jacket and sleeve trying not to touch the playing surface with hands or fingers.
  2. Store record with open end of sleeve going in to closed side of jacket to form and anti-dust seal.
  3. Always keep record in sleeve and jacket when not being played.
  4. Hold record by edge and avoid touching music surfaces.
  5. Protect record from heat sorces such as fires, sunlight, radiators, hot water pipes, amplifiers, and the like.
  6. Store away from heat and dust in a place of moderate uniform temperature.
  7. Always store in a an upright position, with appreciable applied pressure and without leaning either way.
  8. Clean record occasionally with one of the mean cleaning applieances offered by your dealer.  D4+ does the trick - pick up a bottle here!

White Label Record

wikipedia content
White label records are 12" vinyl records with plain white label stickers. They are usually produced in small amounts (<300) by small record companies or DJs. White labels are most popular with house music and hip-hop DJs. In the United States, the traditional term "White Label Promo" refers to a promotional pressing with a label that has mostly the same text and label logo/artwork as the commercial label, but with a white background instead of the color or artwork found on the commercial pressings. Originally white labels came about when competing DJs would tear the labels off their records so that others would not be able to find out their most special, rare, or "secret weapon" tracks. Today, white labels are commonly used to promote new artists or upcoming albums by veteran artists. In some cases white labels are even issued to conceal artist identities (two successful examples of this would be songs by Traci Lords and LaToya Jackson, whose record companies issued white labels so that DJs would have no pre-conceived notions about the music just by seeing who the artist was). Many dance music producers press copies of white labels in order to test crowd response in dance clubs to their own musical productions. Many white labels contain unsolicited remixes and/or tracks that are not yet licensed or released (also called "bootlegs"). White labels can be referred to as "promos" (short for "promotional copies") that many top-name DJs receive and play weeks or sometimes months before a song gets general release to the public. As artists using samples pay very high fees for the privilege of such, they must be able to gauge the market potential before handing over the money. The industry itself seems to be aware of this necessity and white labels are commonly accepted as a necessary evil within the industry, which has only ever prosecuted an extremely small number of those artists using white labeled pressings of uncleared samples and compositions. White labels can be found at most music stores that carry vinyl.
content from memory.loc.gov
1910-1919 Edison's Diamond Disc ::: Cylinders peaked in popularity around 1905. After this, discs and disc players, most notably the Victrolas, began to dominate the market. Columbia Records, an Edison competitor, had stopped marketing cylinders in 1912. The Edison Company had been fully devoted to cylinder phonographs, but, concerned with discs' rising popularity, Edison associates began developing their own disc player and discs in secret. Dr. Jonas Aylsworth, chief chemist for Edison, and later after his retirement in 1903, a consultant for the company, took charge of developing a plastic material for the discs. The aim was to produce a superior-sounding disc that would outperform the rivals' shellac records, which were prone to wear and warping. Another difference from competitors' discs was that the vertical-cut method was to be used for the grooves. In this manner, the stylus would bob up and down in the groove, rather than from side to side or laterally. Ten-inch records would run for 5 minutes per side at approximately 80 r.p.m. Although Edison associates initially worked on the project in secret, when Edison discovered it, he took control of this new project and gave it much of his personal attention. Aylsworth molded phenol and formaldehyde mixed with wood-flour and a solvent into a heat-resistant disc. This material always remained absolutely plane (flat), which was essential as it formed the core of the disc record. A phenolic resin varnish called Condensite was applied to the core, and then the disc was stamped in the record press. The finished 10" disc weighed ten ounces, heavier than most, partially due to the 1/4" thickness of the record. A diamond point was obtained for the stylus. The Disc Phonograph and the Edison Discs were designed to be an entire system, incompatible with other discs or disc players. The new Edison Disc Phonograph was shown for the first time publicly at the Fifth Annual Convention for the National Association of Talking Machine Jobbers at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 10-13th, 1911. The press reported that the new machine was based on Edison's British 1878 patent in order to deter claims of copyright infringement with Victor or Berliner. The new machine was also mentioned in the Edison Phonograph Monthly in July of 1911, but it was over a year before disc players or discs would be offered for sale. By the end of 1912, three basic models of the Edison Disc Phonograph had been designed, ranging in price from $150 to $250, and the company salesmen took them around the country. Soon after, the choice of models was extended to feature less expensive players and luxury machines in stylish wood cabinets. Prices for the discs ranged from $1.15 to $4.25, but later were changed to $1.35 to $2.25. The discs were expensive to make because of the complicated chemical processes used for them.
content from BBC
1920-1929 Jukeboxes and talking pictures The record industry had spent the first twenty years of the century convincing the public that they needed a source of music in the home but they didn't foresee the possibility that it may be free. Unfortunately, The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) had by the early 1920s started mass-producing commercial radios which, while acoustically inferior, offered a far wider range of news, drama and music. The Record Companies retaliated by drawing up contracts for their major artists, forbidding them to work for this rival medium. This move to limit radio's output was doomed to failure as new vacuum tube amplification rapidly improved reception and sound quality. Record sales plummeted. The only weapon was fidelity of sound. In 1916 Western Electric laboratories had developed the superior condenser microphone. When Western combined with AT & T to form Bell Laboratories in 1925 this, in turn, led to the development of the first fully electronic High Fidelity recording techniques. It extended the reproducible sound range of phonograph records by more than an octave on high and low ends and it was dubbed "Orthophonic". Victor subsequently brought out a machine that could reproduce these innovations, and the increase in fidelity finally ended the drop in sales. These new machines also started to incorporate innovations such as the magnetic stylus and fully electronic playback with volume control and loudspeakers. Shortly afterward, players and radios were combined, ending rivalry between media. In fact, the new entertainment conglomerates could now use one (radio) to promote the other (records) and a whole new age of marketing was upon us. Simultaneously, a whole new medium for sound was arriving. Western Electric had combined with Warner Brothers to form the Vitaphone corporation and as a result the motion picture could now utilise the innovations in sound recording as well. Film was shot while a 16 inch disc recorded the sound. Revolving at 33 1/3 rpm, it lasted the same time as a reel of film and, naturally could be played back synchronously creating the world's first talking pictures. Following Al Jolson's appearance in "The Jazz Singer", record companies now had a new rival.
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1960-1969 Golden Age of Vinyl ::: 1961 RCA Victor release the compact single 33 - a 7inch playing at 33 1/3 - it didn't last long 1961 EMI sign The Beatles ::: By 1960 the golden age of vinyl had arrived. The shellac 78 was, by now, virtually defunct and the LP and single formats, supported by affordable turntables, amplifiers and loudspeakers were working well in the marketplace. The consolidation of dependable sound reproduction in the home and a burgeoning youth market meant that record presses were working overtime to keep up with demand. However the classical market, having led the way in the new binaural stereo market, had begun to decline. It was time for the youth market to take advantage of the technological advances and move them a few steps forward. As with today’s recording industry with its manufactured boy bands, no one in 1962 saw the youth market as anything but an ephemeral, transient phenomena that would eventually disappear. Elvis was in the army, Buddy Holly was dead and the charts seemed doomed to be filled with pale copyists and banal substitutes such as Adam Faith, Pat Boone and Ricky Nelson. Everyone now knows the story of how an employee of Decca records rejected a young four-piece with the advice that guitar bands were "finished". Unfortunately EMI records had a better ear and on signing The Beatles (for it was they) and pairing them with producer George Martin they prepared the way for the next giant leap in the history of vinyl. Meanwhile in America the importance of the producer as shaper of the sounds that were possible to cram onto a vinyl disc was also being proven. On the East Coast there was Phil Spector’s "wall of sound" productions. Utilising hundreds of musicians, often doubled up on various instruments, the "Tycoon Of Teen" had the US singles charts in his grip. On the West Coast Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was cashing in on the teenage crazes, such as cars and surfing, as a way to craft what he would come to call "teenage symphonies to God". All through the sixties these rivals would compete in pushing the sonic envelope to create the most contemporary sounds. The songcraft of Lennon and McCartney immediately demanded a more considered approach as to how it would eventually sound on the record players of the masses. Martin was a consummate craftsman who had enough cross-genre experience to provide this technical wizardry. In the space of three years The Beatles conquered the 7 inch singles market and then, by paying as much attention to every track on their long players gave birth to a new market for albums amongst a younger audience. By 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had set a whole new standard in the public's audio expectations. A hidden track was even placed on the runout groove at the end of the second side, as if to say that the way in which we listened to music had been changed forever. A whole book could (and has) been written concerning the new techniques developed during these years at EMI's Abbey Road studios. Multi-track recording on magnetic tape advanced from two to four and then to eight and sixteen tracks by the end of the decade. The stereo mixing effects this afforded gave the sound of vinyl a whole new dimension only hinted at by classical recordings, where a guitar, cymbal or voice could be placed anywhere in the stereo "picture". Effects such as panning (where sound sweeps from one speaker to the other), ADT phasing (a rushing effect caused by two tapes of the same sound running slightly out of synch with each other) and the use of synthesizers to create new sonic landscapes, all originated in these heady days and were rapidly adopted as the norm by studios around the world. On top of all this, the emergence of solid state electronics to replace valve technology was leading to any technology being drastically reduced in size and cost. It was not only the sound of the vinyl that was irrevocably altered. The whole package was altering to enhance the notion of the 12 inch album as a coherent concept to be taken as a whole and not just as a collection of tracks gathered together for ease. Again Sgt. Pepper led the way with its gatefold sleeve (a device only previously available to classical albums), lyric sheet and playful cardboard inserts. From this point on the design departments of all major companies expanded and the sleeves in the racks of the stores became more and more colourful and elaborate. Even labels at the centre of the discs took on more inventive hues and logos. The "swinging sixties" with all its visual, musical and cultural upheavals had changed the significance of vinyl from that as either the domain of the snobbish classical audiophile or the throwaway single. By the end of the decade the world was rushing to buy the cheaper stereo systems that allowed them to immerse themselves in a whole new audio experience. AND STILL TO THIS DAY - WHAT A BEAUTIFUL SOUND!

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