Records won’t disappear from shelves, but they may become a little more expensive.
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THE EUROPEAN UNION PROHIBITED US FROM LISTENING TO THEIR MUSIC
Music lovers are panicking: alarming messages have appeared on Telegram channels that now we will no longer have imported vinyl records with concerts of popular world bands in Russia, they will no longer bring old Beatles recordings from 1964, where “Lennon is so young” and young Makar (in the sense of McCartney) is ahead.
It turns out that in our country there are many fans of good old vinyl, I myself sometimes play something from my home collection, from Lolita Torres and Robertino Loretti (my mother bought it when I was a student) to my own Imagine or Jet.
So it turns out that the European Union, in a new package of sanctions against Russia and Belarus, has banned the supply of vinyl records and tapes to us. People involved in the supply of records to Russia sent me this document, where, when decoding products under the code 8523, it says: “Disks, cassettes, solid-state non-volatile storage devices, “smart cards” and other means for recording sounds or other phenomena, regardless of whether they are recorded or not…”
There is no limit to surprise. Records are to blame for something, especially in Western music, what is the logic?
“European legislators sometimes have no logic; they throw everything away,” Andrey Belonogov, head of vinyl record production at Ultra Production (the only company in Russia that produces vinyl records), told kp.ru. – The vinyl market in Russia is not so big that it needs to be limited. But they need to come up with something new to show the authorities and the part of society hostile to Russia that we are thus squeezing the Russians, who will no longer have our vinyl records.
THE VINYL WILL EXPLODE!
And now that?
“Vinyl records will not disappear anywhere, they will continue to be sold,” the owner of one of the online stores, who preferred to remain anonymous, told kp.ru. – The document refers only to the European Union. This means that supplies from the UK, Japan and the USA are not prohibited. I myself have been buying products in the USA for quite some time, because it is cheaper than in Europe.
In addition, according to the source, supplies can also be supplied through parallel imports.
“Some European transport companies, even before the sanctions, imported discs to Russia via the former CIS countries, sometimes this is more convenient from a logistical point of view,” he explained. – Therefore, in some cases, the transport distance may not increase at all.
According to workers in the sector, transport companies are already cancelling packages.
“What has already been cleared by the European Union according to customs documents is passed through, but no new shipments are generated,” our interlocutor clarified.
By the way, the European sanctions indicate that for contracts concluded before June 25, the ban will be postponed until September 26.
HOW MUCH WILL THE PRICE GO UP?
“The cost of a new record in Europe is now 20-30 euros,” says our interlocutor. – In Russia it will cost 3,500-4,500 rubles, and adding another transport elbow will cost 5-10 euros. That is, the price increase will be about 500-1,000 rubles. It is irrelevant.
However, the price increase may be higher at first.
“I think that until logistics are fixed, the price may rise for a short time and up to 50%, but then the growth will fall to 10-15% of the current price,” said Andrei Belonogov.
WHAT WE ARE LISTENING TO
“In Russia, modern records are very popular,” says the owner of the shop. “Electronica, hip-hop, modern metal… Taylor Swift is the most popular singer in particular. Rihanna, Biyoncé, all these pop singers are doing well, as well as modern rock like Royal Blood, Queens of the Stone Age. Virgin too. And the old people still produce something and buy it out of old memory. McCartney releases an album every year and we are always in a hurry when he releases a new record. Ringo Starr, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep are also active. Concerts from past decades are also reissued. From vintage: Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Stones, Slades… In general, the group of Soviet music lovers has not changed in almost 50 years.
