Vinyl LPs desperately seeking grandpas

01 June 2015 - 02:00 By ©The Sunday Telegraph

The most pressing problems facing the music industry today are probably the rise and rise of music streaming and the exorbitant prices of concert tickets. And then there's the inability of the industry to produce sufficient vinyl discs.Harvey Goldsmith, the music promoter who has worked with everyone from Led Zeppelin and Van Morrison to Madonna and Elton John, said music makers were desperately looking for craftsmen who knew how to make vinyl.He said factories were springing up to meet the recent revival in demand for the old-format discs."Sales of vinyl have gone up 100-fold in the past two years," he said. "The biggest problem we've got is that we can't find the factories to press them."Sales of vinyl LPs have risen by almost 70% this year.Last year, sales of vinyl albums soared past the million mark for the first time in 18 years, with releases from Pink Floyd, Arctic Monkeys, Jack White and Royal Blood fuelling the demand.This year the Official Charts Company launched a separate chart for vinyl."All the kids I know want to know about Jimmy Hendrix, they want to know about The Doors, to learn about their heritage," said Goldsmith.Despite the return of albums on vinyl, he said, the British music industry was facing an issue in rock, with no up-and-coming new artists ready to carry on the legacy of the likes of The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and The Who.Musicians are now thrust into the limelight quickly and have their music streamed, he said."The difficulty in creating the next generation of artists is that it is going to take time," said Goldsmith. ..

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