Vinyl Is Poised to Outsell CDs For the First Time Since 1986

Sales of vinyl records have enjoyed constant growth in recent years. At the same time, CD sales are in a nosedive. Last year, the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) mid-year report suggested that CD sales were declining three times as fast as vinyl saleswere growing. In February, the RIAA reported that vinyl sales accounted for more than a third of the revenue coming from physical releases.

THE SLEEK MCINTOSH MTI100 WANTS TO BE THE ULTIMATE TURNTABLE FOR VINYL LOVERS

Thanks to the brilliant minds at McIntosh Labs, there’s a new way to listen to your old school records: the ultra-modern MTI100 Integrated Turntable.

Yamaha’s latest turntable streams multi-room audio via WiFi

You can pair a turntable with a multi-room audio setup (Sonos even offers a bundle), but that usually means wiring your record player into that setup at some point. Yamaha thinks it can do better. Its newly launchedMusicCast Vinyl 500 turntable uses WiFi to stream records wirelessly to MusicCast speakers in your home. If you don’t insist on that distinctive vinyl sound, the machine will natively stream digital services like Spotify, Pandora and Tidal.

Sony plans to revive its vinyl record production

Sony was late to the vinyl resurgence with a new turntable of its own, and it’s going to be later yet with its effort to jump back into pressing records. Nikkei reports that thanks to demand, the perpetually tardy tech company will first start putting Japanese music (and some modern hits) to wax, with production starting next March. In fact, the company has already outfitted a recording studio with a press so it can produce masters in situ. If there’s a roadblock, it’s that Sony is apparently having a hard time finding engineers to help guide the pressing process.

Discogs’ vinyl-tracking app goes wide February 29th

Whether you call it “vinyl,” “wax,” “black crack” or something else entirely, we can all agree that poring over shelves for new records can be a time-consuming, but ultimately rewarding, process. And now, the folks at Discogs are making it easier to see if that copy of the Lost Highwaysoundtrack you found is the real deal or just another bootleg. Come Monday, the internet’s preeminent destination for music collectors is taking its iOS app out of beta.

Technics Will Release a New Turntable In 2016

Vinyl is on the rise these days, and so Technics is getting back into the the turntable game. The venerable brand showed off an aluminum prototype of a new model set to be released in 2016. Here’s what I know: I’m really excited.

How to Get Started With Vinyl Records

So you want to start spinning records in your living room. Here’s a collection of the advice I’ve given n00bs just like you over the last couple of years. Getting started can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t have to be expensive either. Here’s how to get going.

Yuna – Castaway ft. Tyler, The Creator

Action Bronson – Mongolia ft. Hologram, Meyhem Lauren

KAYTRANADA – The Worst In Me ft. Tinashe

Future & Lil Uzi Vert – That’s It

H.E.R. – Damage

TOBE NWIGWE – EAT

A little bit of soul

This image of the Soul Nebula (IC 1848) combines 21.1 hours of exposures through Hydrogen-alpha, Oxygen-III, and Sulfur-II filters. This object resides in the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen.

Jellyfish in the ocean of space

Supernova remnant IC 443 has the common name the Jellyfish Nebula, and it lies at the top right of this image. The other, larger, nebula is IC 444. Both objects are in the constellation Gemini the Twins. Terry Hancock from Grand Mesa, Colorado

Seven sisters

The Pleiades (M45) is the most famous star cluster in the sky. It lies 444 light-years away in the constellation Taurus the Bull. The clouds of gas seen in this image are not connected to the stars, but are a dust cloud through which the cluster is passing. Dave Doctor from Las Cruces, New Mexico

Old friend

The Orion Nebula (M42) may be the most photographed deep-sky object of all. It’s a huge emission nebula and star-forming complex. In addition to the glowing hydrogen, however, the object also has regions of both reflection and dark nebulae. James Esch from Lovettsville, Virginia

Boom goes the star

The Cygnus Loop is a huge supernova remnant some 2,500 light-years away. It has many components, and this image shows two of them well. At the top is the Witch’s Broom (NGC 6960), and Pickering’s Triangle (which doesn’t have its own designation) lies down and to the lower left of the Broom. Naresh Singh from Saint Petersburg, Florida

Natural satellite