Roots Archives Forum

Well I read the article and I can't contain myself. I have no idea what the writer is talking about. Our 7" business is growing by leaps and bounds. I agree that some selectors are using MP3s now but the other 20,000 or so selectors are still using 7s. We have over 70,000 customers worldwide and a huge portion of them buy 7s. We are the world's largest one-stop for reggae and OVER HALF OF OUR BUSINESS IS VINYL. Trust me, vinyl sales are going up, not down. Major labels in the US are re-pressing classic (non-reggae) on vinyl more and more. We get loads of boxes every day from JA...I just sent a $100,000 vinyl order to Studio One and a $30,000 vinyl order to Techniques and a $100,000 vinyl order to Prince Buster. We sold 96,000 7s in December. I've spent millions and millions of dollars in JA in the past few years on vinyl...(going extinct???)

The write would have done well to at least ask the world's biggest seller of reggae 7s "what's the outlook of 7" sales?"...would have been useful research information I think.

Overall, JA is shipping out less 7s than years before but the business is still VERY solid. We keep building more and more 7" shelves here...over 1 million 7s in stock.

CD's...well that's another story. CD sales are circling the drain. The labels better figure out how to get them on shelves for about $5. I estimate reggae industry-wide CD sales to be down about 70% since the crisis started several years ago. Our sales are steady but should be gainly wildly because each year we have more customers.

I really can't understand why such an article about 7s in JA would be written...

Vinyl's been around for almost 100 years and it ain't going anywhere, trust me.

I hope that puts the story to rest, geez...

yes give thax for the isight. i am working for a recordshop sameway and the sales didnt change too much only cds & mix cds are a hard hustle right now. nobody want to pay for them.
beside that all relicks like studio one or remix or corleon or whatever is sold out in a few weeks, only tune which dont get sell is bad tune, in past you could still sell the worst productions but nowadays people get those second class tunes all over web for free (myspace etc).. if star trail would relick their catalogue it would be not enough there would be still back orders for sold out tunes like months after the release. quality sell off straight, a so it guh.

as a reggae fan and vinyl fan thats exactly what i like to hear. you keep supplying the records and we'll keep buying them. apart from a few records here and there on ebay i get most of my sounds from ernies in the U.S. a top service. fast and efficient. big up ernie b's.

ites

ital kemar

Ernie asks why the writer of the original article, in the English newspaper the Guardian, didn't contact him first for comment before going to press.

I'll tell you why Ernie. I am a journalist. Many, too many, writers are lazy and prefer to write poorly researched articles often with no real contact with the subject they are writing about. Maybe this is the case here as it certainly seems not enough effort went into producing this article.

I suggest you write directly to the writer's editor and ask to be able to state your case.

Vinyl dead? No way. But CDs are flapping like a corpse in the wind. And MP3s that you have to pay for? That's a foreign concept to the VAST majority of young music listeners today. So I can't see the commercial future in SALES of MP3s.

All 3 of you nailed it on the head, great to hear some common sense. Especially about Star Trail...and that's true for thousands of tunes in JA...if they repress them, we can sell them.

This year we are undertaking a large project or getting loads of good oldies (pre 1988) repressed in JA. I have been contacting the producers and telling them that we intend to ramp up the volume on 7s. These tunes keep selling over and over, no slow down. The Great Oldies Resurrection begins soon!!! I own most of these killer tunes already but the real joy is seeing them available on my website so others can enjoy.

Fact is that you can grab an mp3 and burn a CD for next to nothing. Vinyl is special - and you can't make it at home without buying hideously expensive equipment!

Even Heavy Metal bands have started doing vinyl issues of their albums - long live the revival!

Ernie - how old are the oldies coming out?
I could use some more ska and rocksteady 7"s for my DJ set - too much coming of compilations now - all good stuff but it would feel better to spin singles!

MightyZ

re: how old are the oldies coming out...

We're interested in anything we can get them to repress from the early 60's through around 1989 or so. There are some 90s tunes, Michael Rose, Garnett Silk, etc...

Great to read that! I just joined EB as a customer two days ago when I ordered a very special tune (well, at least for me). Still waiting for it but I already feel like I am going to order more soon.
Thnaks for posting here anyway.

Good afternoon everyone. Firstly I would like to say that I have loved and supported reggae for many, many years. Few writers have as much "contact" with the subject as me and I resent being referred to as a lazy writer by the poster above. I've been in the game a while and know what I'm doing.

Accordingly, for this piece I spent a great deal of time interviewing subjects and researching the subject. As can be seen in the piece, I spoke to David Rodigan, Dan Kuster and Jeremy Harding and their quotes were not massaged in any way to back up the general thesis of the piece (which as a reggae fan and collector I also happen to have quite considerable first-hand experience of, too). You might not agree with the piece, but to suggest that I am bad at my job or in any way negligent in my research on a public forum such as this is unfair, unnecessary and quite insulting.

If you look, the headline of the piece (which I am not responsible for, people involved in the production of the newspaper write that) is in quotations. The quotation was taken from Rodigan, not me. I simply said that vinyl production has suffered a downturn. It is not dead — yet. What the future holds, though, is anyone's guess.

Now, Ernie, I am extremely happy that that your business is going well. You deserve every success. However,the fact remains that that the distribution networks for new-roots reggae and new dancehall ARE in a pretty catastrophic state right now.

If you look at the quotes I used, Rodigan refers to vinyl as having been "eliminated" from the clash, which it has. He also says that the "overseas market" has propped up vinyl production for many years, which it has. And while I'm here, I'm sure that I don't have to remond anyone that Ernie B's is an *overseas business* catering to an *overseas market*. It is not in Jamaica and its customers are not Jamaican.

Also, this piece is not about repessings of old records. It is about new music. As you will be able to see, Dan Kuster referred to the problem being at its greatest in dancehall. Where roots fans often want to buy material on hard-copy formats, in general younger audiences are divorced from this process and download their music in MP3 form for free. This has resulted in an alarming drop in availability of *new* music that the industry needs to address. Burying our heads in the sand because Ernie B is making a decent living won't help anyone. Instead, we need to find ways to entice this section of the audince back to actually paying for music, or explore alternative revenue streams.

The facts remain that specialist shops ARE closing down all over the UK and in the States; Greensleeves has just more or less collapsed in its current form, after losing money for quite a while; the bottom HAS dropped out of the riddim album market, vinyl production IS down and bad-minded pirate websites like Audiomaxx ARE largely responsible for this.

The reason "the writer" (i.e. me) did not contact Ernie B is because I had limited space for the piece and copuldn't talk to everyone I wanted to. I had also done a lot of research already and, frankly, as a writer discussing important issues that affect this music we all love so much, I am also not obliged to speak to every single person involved in the reggae industry ever.

During the course of my daily life, I am lucky enough to get to speak to a very large number of people involved in the distribution of Jamaican vinyl - be they record label execs or regular street-corner store owners - and many collectors and fans. We are all experiencing similar problems and the story has been backed up to me time and time again over the past 18 months, not least by the highly respected members of the global reggae community to whom I did speak.

Once again Ernie, I'm glad things are good for you but they are not for many, many other people and with that I wish you all a good day.

Oops. That told me!

Please accept my apologies for my error.

But, as I can't stand the stuff coming out of the studios nowadays, for me it's no loss if they can't sell it or stop making it. It's a very selfish opinion, I'll admit.

I actually wonder if it isn't the format's that are in their death throes but in fact music *itself*.