SUN SENTINEL: FAU’s Vinyl Giveaway Starts Jan. 6

By , December 23, 2013 1:52 pm

By

Credit Matthias Rhomberg / Flickr CC

Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archives at the Wimberly Library will be purged this January. Well, sort of.

The library’s sound archive is digitized, and duplicate records or those that don’t fit with the school’s collection will be given away Jan. 6-10, the Sun Sentinel reports. Possible finds include Glenn Miller, Barbra Streisand, Broadway, Christmas and Jewish albums.

The Nielsen Soundscan reported vinyl to be 2 percent of all albums sold. FAU archivist Ben Roth says the medium has a “warmer sound” than digitally reproduced music.

For more information on FAU’s vinyl giveaway, read the Sun Sentinel story.

Original Sourcehttp://wlrn.org/post/sun-sentinel-faus-vinyl-giveaway-starts-jan-6

FAU sound archive has free vinyl records up for grabs Jan. 6-10

By , December 20, 2013 1:56 pm

By Scott Travis, Sun Sentinel

 

Alethea Perez, an operations coordinator at Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archives, holds a damaged children’s record that will be repaired, digitized and archived. (Mark Randall / Sun Sentinel)

Florida Atlantic University is offering a free and legal way for music lovers to add to their collections, with no downloading required.

The university’s Recorded Sound Archives at the Wimberly Library, which collects and preserves music, is holding its third annual giveaway of vinyl records Jan. 6 to 10. The retro collection includes more than 2,000 albums from some of the biggest stars from the 1940s to the 1990s, including Glenn Miller, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow.

There are also a number of Broadway cast albums, including “Fiddler on the Roof” and “South Pacific,” Christmas albums, Jewish albums and some specialty records like “25 Polka Greats.”

And if you think vinyl is dead, think again. It was the fastest growing music format for the first six months of 2013, according to Nielsen Soundscan, which compiles music sales. During that period, 2.9 million vinyl albums were sold, a third more than the previous year. Vinyl accounts for about 2 percent of all albums sold.

“Five years ago, 80 percent of my sales came from CDs and 20 percent from vinyl. Now it’s 90 percent vinyl,” said Ritchie Siegrist, owner of the Record Rack, which sells new and used music in Pompano Beach. “People have found that the quality of sound is far superior to a CD or an MP3.”

The FAU music archives has been accepting donations of old records since 2002. It started with a focus on Jewish music and later expanded to include classical, jazz, opera and children’s records. The music is digitized and archived, and available to students, faculty and researchers. Some recordings are also available to the public online.

The records that FAU is giving away either don’t fit into FAU’s collections, or they are duplicate copies.

“These excess recordings pile up over time, so each year we give the community a chance to browse through them and take what they want,” said Maxine Schackman, director of the archives.

Ben Roth, an archivist for the FAU Sound Archives, said vinyl has a “warmer sound, not as sterile,” as digital music.

Today every major music label is releasing new albums and re-releasing old ones on vinyl, Siegrist said. Turntables and needles are easy to find in stores. In addition to specialty shops, vinyl records and accessories can be found inside big chain stories such as Best Buy and Urban Outfitters.

Classic rock is particularly popular on vinyl, including albums by the Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, Siegrist said.

Roth said he was surprised at how popular the giveaway was last year, particularly with students. The collection started with more than 20 cartons of boxes, and by the last day, only two cartons were left.

“Some gave them to their grandparents. Some kept them for themselves and played them on turntables given to them by their parents,” he said.

The library will also offer a small collection of music on cassettes and 8-tracks, but demand for those has remained relatively low, Roth said.

stravis@tribune.com or Twitter @smtravis

If you go:

What: FAU vinyl music giveaway

When: Jan. 6 to 10, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Where: Fifth floor of the Wimberly Library, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton

Original Article – http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-12-20/news/fl-fau-vinyl-giveaway-20131220_1_vinyl-christmas-albums-music-sales

Fiddler on the Roof

By , December 17, 2013 8:00 am

You may ask yourself… how did a Yiddish story by Sholem Aleichem, based on a surrealistic painting by Marc Chagal, become one of the world’s most popular shows?

You may ask yourself…. how could a 1964 Broadway musical touch audiences after 50 years?

But, of course…. if you know “Fiddler on the Roof” you wouldn’t have to ask!

“The Fiddler,” as depicted by Marc Chagal, symbolizes the struggle for survival and balance in a precarious world.  A precarious world?  That is something Jews know a little something about.

From Tevye’s confident reliance on “Tradition” to the sweet naiveté of “Matchmaker, Matchmaker;” from Tevye’s ultimate acceptance of his life in “If I Were a Rich Man”  to the bitter-sweet realization that life is an ever-changing landscape in “Sunrise, Sunset;” the collaboration of Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) touches our hearts with one of life’s greatest lessons.

We yearn for stability and tradition while, at the same time, we are compelled to adapt to change.

The Judaica Sound Archives at FAU Libraries is proud of its role in preserving the traditions of Jewish culture despite our ever-changing world. Please consider making a financial contribution to help us fulfill our mission.

Click here to see albums and hear snippets.

Best events this week: Record Giveaway at FAU Libraries

By , December 10, 2013 1:47 pm

SouthFlorida.com
Monday – Record giveaway

( Patricia Koppisch/Courtesy / December 10, 2013 )

Further proof that vinyl records are reasserting themselves in the collections of audio junkies are figures from music sales-tracker Nielsen SoundScan, released last week, which revealed that retailers moved 6.1 million wax units in 2013. That’s a 33 percent upswing over 2012’s haul of 2.55 million, making vinyl the fastest growing music format of the year.So there may be abundant interest in the free records that Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archives are slinging starting Monday at the Wimberly Library (777 Glades Road, Boca Raton). About 2,000 retro records are in FAU’s third annual giveaway, harvested through private donations and duplicates that don’t fit with the university’s own collection.Up for grabs are albums from Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Glenn Miller; Broadway recordings from “Fiddler on the Roof,” Gilbert and Sullivan and others; and genre music spanning jazz to polka. The giveaway runs 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday through Friday, Jan. 10, on the library’s fifth floor, and then resumes Jan. 27-Jan. 31.

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