Jamaica: vinyl is done

18 January 2008

Great article in the guardian. The key selectors have all switched to CD. The classic 7" vinyl market was primarily for US/European/Japanese collectors. The locals don't buy vinyl. Many tracks never got pressed to vinyl anyway.

"The reduction in vinyl production in the West Indies has dramatically affected the way I access music," explains the legendary DJ - or selector - David Rodigan, host of the weekly Rodigan's Reggae show on London's Kiss 100 FM. "In a nutshell, vinyl has been eliminated by the people who play the music to the public. The key players - and by that I mean the sound system selectors that people go to see every weekend, who can make or break a song - are no longer dealing with it in any shape or form and have all switched to CD. Now if someone wants to send me a song, they just email it to me as an MP3. This process has been gradual, but it's now absolute."

In other news, the Riddim album is dead. Thank god fi' dat. I always found those really boring. But it seems the music producers earn their main money through those. They often had to pay artists (vocalists) to voice their riddims. The artists still make as much money as they ever did due to cutting dubs for sound systems (again, many of them in US/EU/JP). Oh, and charging outrageous amounts for live shows.

"It's got to the point that when producers say that a song has been released in Jamaica, they don't actually mean that it's been pressed. They just mean that it's being played. In fact, a vast amount of music never sees a conventional release at all now.

I too have been getting all of my JA fix through the p2p networks. You just type in 'riddim' as a search and get everything pretty up to date. 77Klash was telling us some things about how the musician/producers have been getting screwed for years. He is an artist as well as a producer (big success in 2007 with Swarm riddim). The article ends on a positive note, pointing out that few scenes in the world are as creative and as dynamic as JA. I agree. http://music.guardian.co.uk/urban/story/0,,2242297,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

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