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This business turns vinyl records into mixtapes
A business is combining the vinyl resurgence with another personal music keepsake: the mixtape.
Vinyl record junkies find a lot to love at Utica's Record Riots
Kirkland was one of hundreds of vinyl record enthusiasts to brave the chilly temperatures Saturday morning, Oct. 17, to attend the Record Riots traveling convention at the Deerfield Fire Station. Based in New Jersey, Record Riots is one of the largest network of vinyl shows in the country, with pop-ups stretching from Utica to Ohio to Virginia. The Utica Record Riot typically takes place three times a year.
3 science-backed reasons you prefer vinyl over streaming
Research can help you better understand why some people genuinely consider vinyl to be the superior format for listening to music.
‘Never going to play a song the same way two times live’: BR record shop jam features ‘monster rotation’ of talent
The goal for Classic Vinyls’ weekly jazz jams is for people to learn, network, appreciate jazz and build community.
Prince live album leads Record Store Day’s Black Friday list
MINNEAPOLIS — The Prince estate is offering fans something they can all agree on for Black Friday this year: a new live album. The three-LP vinyl or two-CD set “3121
Music-themed District Sound Lounge is coming to Wyandotte
The new bar is connected to live music venue District 142 and will have a full bar, food, acoustic performers and vinyl DJs.
What’s your music consumption medium of choice?
Are you streaming only? Have you dug out your old iPod? Have a massive vinyl collection? I want to know which music formats you listen to most and why. I’ve been buying more on Bandcamp, ripped all my CDs, and started carrying around an iPod again. But I haven’t been able to ditch streaming completely.
Zara Larsson Hits Her Career Peak As Her Album Mounts A Comeback
Zara Larsson’s ‘Midnight Sun’ debuts in the Vinyl Albums top 10 as the project and its title track surge across multiple Billboard charts.
Ruffnation's Chris Schwartz Unveils Vinyl Subscription Service
Ruffnation's Chris Schwartz has unveiled the company's new vinyl subscription service, Vinyl Societe.
A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is a startup from former Spotify employee offering fun music apps
Former Spotify exec's company releases experimental "singles" that involves users in music making.
A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is a startup offering fun music apps without any AI prompting
Former Spotify exec's company releases experimental "singles" that involves users in music making.
Why Alliance Entertainment Stock Surged Today
CDs and vinyl records are popular again.
Alliance Entertainment Fiscal 2026 Revenue Rises 8% to $1.15 Billion
Alliance Entertainment (AENT) reported fiscal 2026 net revenue of $1.149 billion, up 8% from $1.063 billion in fiscal 2025. GAAP net income was $13.1 million, or $0.26 per diluted share, compared with $15.1 million, or $0.30 per diluted share, a year earlier.Gross profit rose 15% to $152.3 million and gross margin expanded 80 basis points to 13.3%. The fiscal year ended June 30, 2026.Vinyl revenue increased 13% to $383 million, while CD revenue r
Nine Bands, One Stage, Seven Months: “The Showcase” debuts
Velvet Fudge opened its doors in February 2026. Since then, it has seen vinyls come and go from bins and shelves as customers search for what to add to their
A 1920s Glenside bowling alley gets a new lease on life as a bustling micro-mall
The new micro-mall has coffee, vinyl records, yoga — and an antique bowling lane floor.
How Alliance Entertainment Is Helping Drive the Physical Music Boom
Alliance Entertainment is the biggest indie physical distribution company in the U.S. and is helping drive the vinyl and CD boom, per CEO Jeff Walker.
Sony's PlayStation disc plant is losing 10 percent of its volume in 2028, not 90
Sony’s PlayStation disc plant is losing 10 percent of its volume in 2028, not 90 Sony won’t license disc pressing to anyone else, Microsoft does, and a former PlayStation boss thinks that’s the whole problem. When Sony DADC chief Dietmar Tanzer spoke with an Austrian broadcaster in July about PlayStation disc production at the Thalgau plant, a number of press outlets misunderstood the report, writing that production would fall to a tenth of current levels. It won’t. Sony DADC confirmed to Game this week that the figure is a 10 percent decline, not a decline to 10 percent. “To clarify and avoid any misleading information: in that statement Dietmar anticipated an overall product volume decline by 10 percent, not a decline down to 10 percent,” a spokesperson with Sony DADC told Game. That figure covers 2028. Tanzer didn’t put a number on the years after, and the spokesperson declined to comment further. What we do know is that on July 1, PlayStation announced that physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028 and that the transition has no impact on games that have already released in disc format or will be releasing in disc format prior to that month. “So, there will be reorders going to the market after January 2028,” the Sony DADC spokesperson said. “For details around that I would ask you to liaise with the PR team from PlayStation, as we can’t speak or comment on their behalf.” PlayStation officials did not respond to questions about reorders or other disc-related matters. But I did recently speak with Shawn Layden, Game Industry Strategic Advisor and former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, who called a future without physical PlayStation discs “depressing, but solvable.” then added, “I think.” The chief hurdle to third-party manufacturing of collector’s editions or any other version of a PlayStation game disc is that Sony owns the proprietary process to press those discs, Layden said. “And unless they decide or determine a way to license that to some of these bespoke disc manufacturers, there’s no way to make it happen,” he said. Layden was careful to add that he understands the concept but doesn’t have “line of sight on the particulars.” “Depressing but solvable, I think.” — Shawn Layden Microsoft already licenses replication to outside plants. Xbox discs are pressed by manufacturers Microsoft certifies as Authorized Replicators, a term defined in its publisher agreements, with the approved list set at the company’s sole discretion and Microsoft retaining the right to halt manufacture. The structure is still in place today: publishers select an Authorized Replicator in Partner Center and submit a bill of materials created with a Microsoft representative. Sony, by contrast, presses PlayStation discs through Sony DADC, its own manufacturing subsidiary. No one I spoke with said they were in discussions with Sony about doing that, and PlayStation hasn’t responded to questions about whether it would be open to a licensing deal. There is an obvious reason Sony might not want to. Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad pointed it out on the day of the announcement: it’s a platform-led decision, he wrote, designed to cut costs, eliminate the resale market, and drive all revenue through the PlayStation Store. The math is not subtle. On a $70 third-party game sold through the PlayStation Store, Sony keeps $21. Sold at retail, Ahmad says, it earns about half that. Licensing disc replication to an outside manufacturer might not be worth it. And even if it were, it seems unlikely that such a deal would come from boutique companies like iam8bit, which sells collector’s editions of video games. “We would absolutely love to find a way forward to continue making physical PlayStation games,” said Jon Gibson, co-owner and co-creative director of the company. “We are big believers in giving humans the option to truly own media. If we can play a role in helping make that a reality for the future of PlayStation games, count iam8bit in!” If it were to happen, it would most likely be with a company like Conectiv Supply Chain Solutions, a Memphis-based manufacturer of optical discs and vinyl records that also runs third-party logistics, fulfillment and distribution for packaged media. The company, which was formed in 2025 when Los Angeles private equity firm Variant Equity Advisors purchased Vantiva’s Supply Chain Solutions division, traces its lineage back to Technicolor. When it sold the division, Vantiva described the business as having served video game creators for more than 25 years. Conectiv is also buying, not shrinking. Last month it acquired SDS, the distributor for Universal and Warner Bros. home entertainment, consolidating those studios’ packaged-media pipeline from pressing plant to retail shelf. I reached out to Conectiv and its CEO, but haven’t heard back. Layden pointed to music and books in our discussion about the ongoing value of physical media. “No one ever saw the comeback of cassette tape,” he said. “And vinyl didn’t so much come back. The flame went down, the fire’s dying, but the ember was always there, and it just kind of came back. Much like the book business. We thought we’d all be on Kindles right now. “I believe that physical media is crucial and important. One of the things that makes us gamers, one of the core game mechanics, going back to the beginning of time, is collecting stuff. “Did you get all the diamonds in Crash Bandicoot? Did you get all the stars in Mario? And we like to collect our games. And we have a game shelf. And we put all our boxes up there. And if you’re super hardcore, when you buy a game, you buy two copies, right? One stays in the shrink wrap, and you play the other one. What happens to that important cultural part of the gaming world? You know, we buy the steelbook and the three-disc Final Fantasy set and the figurine and, you know, you can’t download any of that. “What happens to that?” And Layden believes it shouldn’t have been a revenue question for PlayStation. “This was a core thing to the experience of our most devoted fans,” he said. “Yeah, it’s fan service. Why would we take that away? Well, we can’t afford to. It’s already 120 bucks, you know, limited edition special purchase onyx box version of whatever, and those sell at a higher rate than the box selling at $69.99 does. So yeah, the market has said they will continue to buy them. You’re just saying you just don’t want to make them anymore.” Layden said he was recently talking with someone about these sorts of business decisions and how they’re made. Too often, he said, it’s all about the financials and nothing else. “OK, we can do this and save this much money, or we can invest this to look at that outcome, or we can do this and have this happen over there, or move this team to Sri Lanka,” he said. “But each one of those, someone also has to have a ledger there saying, ‘OK, what is the brand impact from that move?’ “Iif you can’t resell it, do you really own it?” — Shawn Layden “If we do that, dollars and cents work out. I get it. That’s just math. But what’s the brand impact? Are people going to say, ‘Good move, you guys?’ Or are they going to say, ‘We hate you guys. Quit doing that.’ And sometimes they say, ‘We hate you.’ Then you take a note and say, OK, how much of that can we live with? How much ‘we hate you’ is OK. And when does it go over the line? “I see a lot of companies making decisions which, objectively speaking, I don’t know what the dollar end of that was for you, Mr. Company, but your brand value just dropped 30 percent. So I hope it was worth it.” Of course, shifting to a digital-only model for games raises other issues beyond simply wanting to collect. The biggest is ownership. Layden pointed out that once you go to a streaming-only or download-only model, it’s just a digital footprint on a hard drive. “What does ownership mean anymore?” he said. “It’s a genuine question. Well, in fact, it’s not even a question anymore. It’s like you are shifting the model from ownership to accessibility. “And what’s always been true, which people forget, is you’ve never been able to sell your iTunes library. And you can’t sell your PlayStation download library. So if you can’t resell it, do you really own it?” The touching tribute found in the credits for Star Wars Zero Company. Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy Interview and Hands-On with a Minoan Masterpiece Star Wars Zero Company hands-on: Attack Astromechs, permadeath, and delightfully fatal Rube Goldberg tactics Control Resonant opens up as you get stronger — and as characters start trusting you
Deko Entertainment Releases Remastered Vinyl Collection of Hard Rock Live Albums
Deko Entertainment just dropped three live albums from 1980s hard rock acts. Remastered. 180-gram colored vinyl. The lineup includes Dokken, Slaughter, and Warrant, with signed bundles on offer for die-hards…
Phone-free Seattle events invite people to unplug, connect in person
Check your phone at the bar for a $1 beer, or gather for phoneless crafting or vinyl listening at these phone-free events around Seattle.
With help from KEXP DJ, Seattle musician releases vinyl album
Tinsley hadn't planned to record a debut album, let alone release one in a physical format. With some help from John Richards, that dream became reality.
Saber's newest game trailer takes a shot at Gearbox's CEO, if you look closely
The first hint that something might be up with the recent debut trailer for Saber Interactive’s Rideshare Stimulator is an unusual choice of words—aside from that second one in the game’s title. “Don’t take your passengers too seriously,” the trailer’s narrator says, as he describes this upcoming game. It a car game about the gig work of driving eccentric people to their destinations, a riff on Crazy Taxi. And then, he says: “When I think I’ve met the randiest of passengers, someone even stranger gets in.” “Randiest”? That suggests “randy,” which usually means having strong sexual desire. Yet none of the oddball backseat occupants featured in the trailer seem particularly lustful. One is an old man who considers his grandson a failure, another shares the theory that birds might control traffic lights, another says he’s banned from an aquarium. A little later, there’s a license plate, shown 63 seconds into the trailer, on the front of an SUV: USB DRV It’s a Texas plate. The symbol between those letters is a cog wheel. If you know, you know. That’s a reference to Texas-based Borderlands game development studio Gearbox Software (their logo features a cog wheel). More specifically, it’s a reference to Gearbox’s CEO Randy Pitchford, who in 2018 found himself explaining the nature of video he’d saved on a USB drive that was found at a Medieval Times restaurant before being returned to the studio: “It was ‘barely legal’ porn. This girl’s handle was ‘Only 18.’” The “girl” in the video had committed a solo sex act that Pitchford, an avid practitioner of magic, found remarkable. “I realized, this is not a sex worker…This is a fucking magician.” Back then, the USB drive was central to competing lawsuits against Gearbox by the studio’s former lawyer and by Gearbox against him. A settlement in late 2019 “exonerated” Pitchford, per the Hollywood Reporter. The USB story has resurfaced at times, now in a trailer from a company that not long ago was corporate brethren with Gearbox. Saber vs. Gearbox The head of Saber told Game File that the reference is payback. “The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4,” Saber CEO Matt Karch told me when I asked him about the license plate. “Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.” Having interviewed Karch during a cross-country flight in late 2024, I can confirm that Karch was unimpressed with Pitchford during their time both working in the Embracer group. I’d approached him not out of surprise that there was animosity but that it was manifesting publicly now. Gearbox was founded in 1999, worked on a port of Halo early on, and developed hit series such as the loot-based sci-fi shooter Borderlands before it was purchased by The Embracer Group in early 2021 for $363 million (with a possible earn-out of over $1 billion, if certain targets were hit by 2027). Saber was founded in 2001, worked on a remaster of Halo early on, had a big hit with zombie shooter World War Z and was purchased by Embracer in early 2020 for $150 million, with a potential earn-out of up to $375 million. For a few years, the Embracer group was a voracious acquirer of game studios. Then, as investment dried up, it choked. In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber to an investment company controlled by Saber CEO Matt Karch, and it sold Gearbox in an all-stock deal to long-time Borderlands publisher Take Two Interactive. Other studios were shut down. Hundreds of developers were laid off. Gearbox didn’t say much about their Embracer experience, nothing too direct, at least. In the summer 2024, Pitchford told reporter and occasional Game File contributor Nicole Carpenter that Borderlands 4’s story was in some way thematically connected to Gearbox’s experience at Embracer: “There’s this cultural and emotional shift in me, personally, and at the studio. What does it mean to trade some autonomy for organization?” When Borderlands 4 came out, there was something stranger: the matter of “Embracer’s Bluff,” a location in the game featuring an AI-powered toilet and a large trash dump, according to a detailed Kotaku account of the place. Gearbox never commented on it; Take Two never got back to me about it when I asked them last year. By contrast, since Saber exited Embracer, Karch has been one of Embracer’s biggest defenders, casting their management as well-meaning and supportive despite the layoffs and studio closures that resulted from their excessive expansion. Like others, Saber’s Karch saw Embracer’s as a shot. With Rideshare Stimulator’s trailer, he’s returned fire. “It’s amazing to me how fast people forget those who went above and beyond for them,” Karch told Game File. A rep for Gearbox did not comment by press time. Game File is a reader-supported publication. Your backing makes my reporting—including any coverage of trailer-based beefs—possible. Good news! I’m currently running Game File’s first big sale of 2026. You can get a one-year subscription for 23% off. Click here to take advantage of the limited-time offer. And thank you for your support! Item 2: In brief… 🚫 Wal-Mart has laid off the staff of Restart, a games media outlet launched in 2024, Aftermath reports. 🟥 A GTA VI preview is on the way, at last, via an “extended look” that will premiere, unusually, on Netflix at 3pm ET on August 27, then officially go live elsewhere six hours later. Last week, Game File noted that Take Two label Rockstar Games is overdue for showing off GTA VI, based on the timing of the initial hands-off previews of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2. During a call with investors, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said pre-orders for GTA VI were “unprecedented and astonishing,” but added the company can’t predict how many of those pre-orders represent bonus sales vs. sales that otherwise would have been made at launch. During the same call, Zelnick was noticeably bullish on the future of playing games over streaming cloud connections (predicting wider adoption in three or so years). He sounded unbothered by Sony’s plans to stop making discs for new games (he said the business is 90% digital already and predicted that there could still be limited edition physical editions of games “in the same way there’s still vinyl in the recorded music business.”) 👀 Take Two wrote off $43 million in their spring quarter after deciding “not to proceed with further development of an unannounced title in its pipeline from a third-party developer.” 🤔 Some rare age-demographics from a big publisher: Capcom recently told investors that “users in their 20s account for approximately half of the users of both Pragamata and Resident Evil Requiem.” Item 3: The week ahead Tuesday, August 11 Game releases: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (Switch 2; already out for PC, PS5, Xbox) continues the Bethesda strategy of putting Elder Scrolls games on everything; Royalty Free-For-All is a Smash Bros.-style fighting game featuring public domain characters such as Mother Goose brawling with Oliver Twist in a stage based on the original Little Shop of Horrors movie. Wednesday, August 12 Game release: Pro Jank Footy (PC, console) is an arcade-style Australian Rules Football game with increasingly ridiculous rules, the more you play (I enjoyed the Steam demo) Thursday, August 13 Game release: Super Mario Sunshine (Switch 2, originally released in 2002 on the GameCube) is released for Switch 2’s Nintendo Switch Online service. This game is the black sheep of 3D Mario games. It’s the successor to the breakthrough Super Mario 64 and the rare Mario game built around a single (vacation resort) theme. Mario’s got a water-spraying backpack, a Yoshi pal and a lot of blue coins to collect.
What Is J-B Weld Used For And What Should It Not Be Used On?
J-B Weld is an epoxy for bonding wood, metal, and concrete, but it's not ideal for softer materials like some plastics, leather, vinyl, and flexible rubber.
Take-Two Boss Defends No Disc Version of GTA 6, Equates Physical Releases to Vinyl Records
Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar parent company Take-Two, has defended the company’s decision not to release GTA 6 on a physical disc, insisting when it comes to big games, discs “don’t really make sense for the consumer.”
Scientists turn one of the world's most hated plastics into premium lubricant
Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, is among the most common plastics on the planet but also one of the hardest to recycle responsibly. In a new study in Nature, scientists describe a method to strip chlorine from PVC and convert the remaining material into synthetic lubricant-based oils that perform competitively with commercial products.
Fans Upset Over Some New Vinyl Records Missing Content And Final Mixes
Artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Raye are catching flak from collectors and fans for selling incomplete records
'The Way It Was Meant to Be Heard': Tone-Deaf Sony Pushes Vinyl Turntable After Killing Physical Games
Now's not the time
Sony promoting vinyl player enrages critics opposing end of physical PS5 game discs
Sony plans to reduce PS5 disc production in 2028, but still manufactures vinyl record players. A social media post about a turntable irked gamers already upset over the decision. They claim that, like with music, demand for the physical game format will continue for the foreseeable future.
Perfect Vinyl Forever and the Art and Science of Record Cleaning
Miguel Barrio interviews Steve Evans of Perfect Vinyl Forever about the art and science of record cleaning over on our YouTube channel, and you can watch it here.
Yoga, Vinyl & Family Fun: Free Summer Entertainment Returns to Hudson Yards
NEW YORK CITY (PIX11) — Hudson Yards Turns Into NYC’s Outdoor Playground This Summer.
How a Christmas playset sparked a 20-year business — and brought one family home to Idaho
RIGBY — Tyler Ray built a playground for his son as a Christmas present in 2005. More than two decades later, it still sits in his backyard — and the company born from that project is about to celebrate a big anniversary Ray launched Ruffhouse Vinyl Play Systems in Gilbert, Arizona, in 2006. In July, […]
CDs Vs. Vinyl: Which Has Better Audio Quality?
As more and more people get away from streaming services, CDs and vinyl have made a surprising comeback, but which one has the best audio quality?
Everett-based Funko is hit with a new lawsuit
A new lawsuit claims Everett-based Funko, known for its Pop! vinyl figures, misleads users about how their data will be used.
Rostrum Pacific’s FatBeats acquires physical distro company Traffic Entertainment, plus D2C store and label
The deal brings together three companies with a combined 50 years of experience in vinyl distribution, physical distribution, and premium catalog re-issues.
Vinyl and Breeze advance to Unrivaled semifinals in Brooklyn
Rhyne Howard scored 30 points to lead Vinyl past Laces and into the Unrivaled semifinals on Saturday, while Paige Bueckers’ 29 points led Breeze past Rose.
Mistakes I made getting floors replaced: Spent $12,000; have regrets
We thought replacing our carpets with vinyl-plank flooring would be easy and cost $6,000. We spent more than double that and uncovered so many issues.
DVDs are the new vinyl records: Why Gen Z is embracing physical media
As streaming continues to dominate the film and TV industry, many Gen Z movie watchers are opting out and choosing physical formats instead.
Music distributor Alliance Entertainment says it sold over 16m vinyl records and 13m CDs in 2025
US-based distributor also reported an uptick in its vinyl and CD sales for calendar Q4 2025…
12 Of The Best Record Players For Audiophiles
Some say nothing sounds like a vinyl. There's enough interest in that theory to support a wide market of modern record players suitable for every audiophile.
Pitt researcher studies lingering health impacts from East Palestine train derailment
University of Pittsburgh researcher Juliane Beier is a leading authority on how colorless, sweet-smelling vinyl chloride can cause cancer and worsen liver disease. Her expertise meant she feared the worst when vinyl chloride vapors — the result of a controversial vent-and-burn operation by first responders — began billowing from derailed
Alliance Entertainment Launches Alliance Authentic™, Introducing The Ultimate Vinyl Collectible™ and a New Marketplace for Authenticated, Numbered Vinyl Collectibles
PLANTATION, Fla., Jan. 06, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alliance Entertainment Holding Corporation (NASDAQ: AENT), the world’s largest distributor of vinyl records and a leading curator of physical entertainment products and collectibles, today announced the official launch of Alliance Authentic™, a new premium platform built to create authentic, certified, investment-grade vinyl collectibles and a trusted marketplace where collectors can buy, sell, and trade them globally. Alliance Authentic allows
Major San Marcos businesses that closed for good in 2025
From wings to vinyl, these spots said farewell.