Photos about myself

So I'm picking these photos to represent me because music and the studio is my job and basically my life. Something I love to do and something I get paid to do. The first one is Randy Burlingame editing vocal tracks as I listen and the other is the mixing board where all the magic happens.

Vinyl Is The New Baseball Card

From 8-tracks to cassettes to CD’s to MP3’s, few musical formats are still relevant or even financially smart if you are a local band or label. However, vinyl is a format that is both artistically sound and also making one of the biggest comebacks in history. According to a New York Times article, vinyl sales have been up every year since 2005 and up 18% percent since 2012 alone.

            Though, that is only still 1.4% percent of the market share (which is mostly digital these days), it still begs the question, “how long can this last”? It seems that most hardcore fans want this very collectible item of vinyl, which are limited to certain pressing and colors. There are literally hundreds of different colors you can put on the actual vinyl records themselves. They range from coke bottle clear, to red splatter, to any combination of designs or colors.

            This adds to the hipness of the “vinyl record”. When music is widely available everywhere from your computer or smartphone or tablet at such places as illegal streams or download sites, Youtube, Spotify, Bandcamp, etc… then the exclusivity that makes bands “cool” is pretty much gone. Now when you can say “I have a limited edition split 7” record of XbandX, which by the way, has only 50 copies ever made on green vinyl”, then you get some of that exclusivity back.

            Now a lot of people who aren’t even fans are going online and pre-ordering these limited edition copies and reselling them on Ebay and taking advantage of the hardcore fans these vinyl records draw in. So be careful if you happen to overpay for your favorite bands record on Ebay for 150 bucks when someone already bought it for $12.

            Is vinyl the new baseball card? Do bands have to put out digital, CD, and Vinyl to cater to all of their fan bases or even have a chance to reach everyone’s taste buds? With "vinyl only" labels sprouting up out of the woodwork it seems as if this craze is only becoming bigger as time goes on. Will this counterculture save the “physical copy” as major labels thought of discontinuing the CD as early as 2012 ?

Only time will tell.

Watch how vinyl is made right HERE.

A Short and Thorough Overview

My name is Joseph Urban and what I am most passionate about is music. The subtle nuances of every word and how they ebb and flow over seducing chords and brazen melody is what gets me through the day. Whether it happens to be the simplistic pop song on the radio or the strumming stomping hardcore beat from the local VFW hall…I try to incorporate that into my life.

I’ve been in multiple facets of the music industry. From artist, to manager, to random tour merchandise runner, and even label owner. These jobs inspire me to learn more about what pushes music to become popular or even financially stable.

Knowing that you must partake in many jobs in the music industry to truly be a self-sustaining band or label is something I try to learn about everyday. What makes each label better than the next? How do you grow a band from square one? What is more important these days, substance or style? All of these questions are completely subjective and hopefully I can keep true to my roots while answering these questions on my own, while keeping moral integrity in check.

While we see digital taking over the physical platform of CD’s, we have also seen jumps of over 300% increases in vinyl the last few years. This niche medium fell off the edge when the CD was invented in 1983 and even more so when the mp3 came out (the digital counterpart of the CD). Though, now we have the younger generations holding this piece of plastic in their hand and valuing it as a piece of art and not just some hip alternative to the digital age.

I do feel that music genres and styles run in phase and cycles. When something becomes too popular a counter-culture will strike up and inherently strike down the “more popular” genre. You’ve seen this with the start of punk rock in 1977, the start of grunge in the late 80’s/early 90’s, and slightly with the resurgence of punk in the form of post-punk/post-hardcore in the early 2000’s to combat the reign of the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync.

I would have to bit my tongue if I ever said “Those days are long over when a “man-made” group of young boys can take over the Billboard charts”, because I would be completely wrong as for every counter-culture act there has to be a Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber or One Direction. To me and many others who have these unwritten rules of music, it’s almost like this manufactured sound will always have its' place in music.