Word on the street is that Syntax Music, a longtime dance distributor in the US, is going under. This is of course in addition to the closing of Watts and Nemesis over the past few years. Anyone who spent lots of time in dance record shops in the 90’s and 00’s should know these names, they did a huge amount of distribution for many genres.
It’s tempting to mourn, but I like to think that this is a case of the market correcting itself. The dance vinyl market was a pretty ludicrous one for many years, it seems that just about any piece of crap was getting picked up by these distributors. Some of them were not so good about paying labels, either, so it must have been mighty nice work while it was available.
Hopefully now the quality control that was missing for these distros for so long (and is currently missing from Beatport and other mp3 sales sites if what I hear is to be believed. I wouldn’t know from personal use!) will be more judiciously applied by those who remain and any new distributors that might pop up. Buyers should be true experts in the music they are in charge of, they should be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and not be swayed by any other considerations. The vinyl market will never completely go away, there just needs to be a more concentrated effort to only bother with music worth preserving on wax. Good timeless music will never go out of style, and it will always be in demand. Let’s hope that people get it right (Forced Exposure and Groove Dis are two who are doing it right now and seem to be continuing successfully) in the future!
Thats a very fair point about the over abundance of releases and distributors. People freaking out that its the end of vinyl, when its just not yet. It will be interesting to see what happens with somewhere like beatport, who will probably host and sell anything, going by the abundance of shit digital labels knocking about (though there is still just as many shit ones putting out vinyl too ha)
[Reply]
i really think that economics will finally put the stop to most of the really bad vinyl records coming out. sure, something that isn’t so hot with “cult” status could move some copies but i imagine the people who will be sticking with wax will be paying more for new shit and thus will be even more picky than before. we’ll probably end up seeing more “specialty” distros that really know their shit and they will be able to take the smart risks by taking on new things that are actually high quality. i’m more than glad to pass the quality control problems on to mp3 sites and deejays!
[Reply]
Hopefully there’s some digital shops like whatpeopleplay
who do some kind of (necessary) filtering, compared to beatport who has it all but it’s so overwhelming it’s no fun.
[Reply]
syntax is not the only one…Unique and Downtown 131 are next on this list.
[Reply]
Unique is actually gone already (as of today!), but they were more hiphop than dance. hiphop is already in far far worse shape than dance music in terms of people moving over to digital deejaying. but of course most modern hiphop is not the kind of timeless music that causes people to care about it, so that isnt exactly surprising. is 161 really doing that bad? it seems like theyre doing alright to me, theyre charging alot more for their records these days, over $5 for most domestics wholesale. ouch.
[Reply]
Tom you think $5 is alot for a record?, iam lucky if i pay less than £7-8 for a 12″ in th UK now and dont even get me started on the price of fuel here!!
[Reply]
$5 is the wholesale price, that’s what the shops pay to the distro to buy the record (plus shipping, of course) before the shop marks it up so that they can make any money! so if the upfront cost for the domestic record is $6 altogether, the price has to get up to like $8-9. just a few years back, domestics were selling for $5.99 each in the shops, with a wholesale of between $3-4. i dont even want to talk about imports, their wholesale price is above $10 per 12″ in many cases before shipping and the shop’s markup!
[Reply]
And the price of fuel?, its currently £1.05 per Ltr here, i may have to get out and push soon…
[Reply]
my wife is a photographer,and recently i joined their discussion analog vs digital – and actually in photography this vs story is finished – digital won.
could you imagine doing blogs by taking picture,then taking it to develop,then scan it, and upload it to server – if the process will be like that – it will not be any music blogs. and if we look on blogs as media (and of course we look), they are very important in music industry – and talking about media, blogs are seriously taking part of the cake from established old school music media – why – maybe simply they didn adopt – but at the same time, they are writing about music, and don’t have any music on their web site.
they used economy of scale in old analogue word – but now quality won – not economy
in a way all stakeholders in music industries are going through major shift related to technology, and who adopt – will survive.
Just read recently, that from the 1st list of top 100 companies in US published 1911 i think, only general electric survive till today
regarding vinyl – i agree that will stay, but not in model where distributor gets more money then artists – didnt you mentioned that shipment charges are on top of whole sale price, charged against shop. So for what distributor takes 2 $ or euro ? for stocking vinyl – i think that in new york central station you could hire box for less money
At the other side – labels giving away t-shirts and selling the vinyl. I prefer to get vinyl from label, instead of t-shirt (price is the same, even vinyl is cheaper)
And DJs – big shots – most of them playing CDs and Serato/FS
And young DJs – how many of them going for vinyl ?
i understand that this topic is disscused million times, but probably is good – we all going through shift and its much easier if know that we are not alone
big respect to all from croatia
[Reply]
I am in no way worried about these distributors closing down. In the US it is bad but it just means now if you want to survive in this business you better not release bullshit. I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen. There needs to be more quality control and in today’s info age, people (I hope :/) are getting smarter and finding out about more music than ever before so this also helps tiny labels who release wonderful music to get that exposure that is needed when they don’t have to compete for spotlight with all the frisbees sitting on the wall at the record shop.
[Reply]