Many of which rely on vinyl sales to turn a profit, yet lack the cash and resources to stockpile. The majority of vinyl is manufactured on the continent – indeed, the world’s largest producer of vinyl records, GZ Media, is a formerly state-run communist-era plant in the Czech Republic.
“Brexit is the biggest challenge for this record shop, and I daresay many others,” said Jon Tolley, co-owner of Banquet Records in Kingston upon Thames, quoted elsewhere in the same Music Week article. “Without a customs union in place, I worry for vinyl getting into the UK on time.”
Bearing in mind that he doesn’t really seem to care all that much about people fighting in the supermarket over the last can of Spam in the event of no- deal, or literally dying because they can’t get essential medication, it probably shouldn’t come as a shock to learn that neither does Boris Johnson care about sales of forthcoming new albums by the likes of Warmduscher, Squid and Floating Points. And it doesn’t end there.
Touring Europe may become more complicated and costly if not off-limits altogether for many UK artists
“We had a band meeting and we’ve decided that after Brexit we’ll be doing weddings and parties around the UK instead of expensive European tours,” wrote Barry Burns from Scottish post-rock band Mogwai on Twitter recently.
He was joking – I think he was anyway – but he might as well not have been. Thanks to issues ranging from the new need for working visas and carnets (instrument permits) to potential problems surrounding something as simple as the validity of UK driver’s licences, all-important touring on the continent may become much more complicated and costly if not off-limits altogether for many UK artists in an immediate post-Brexit world (likewise for European artists coming in to the UK).
Are Brexiters secretly hoping for a retreat to the 1960s days when even the likes of The Beatles at the height of their powers used to trot around on tour to the unglamorous likes of Stockton-on-Tees Globe and Walthamstow Granada?
When the molecules-rearranging loud sound of Mogwai’s Glasgow Mega-Snake starts rattling dentures at tea dances in Great Yarmouth and Thurrock, only then will Brexiters begin to realise the error of their ways?
All joking aside, it’s sad to see new and unnecessary existential threats faced by a music industry which has already had to adapt so much to survive in the turbulent digital era.
The so-called vinyl revival – which has seen global revenues increase for 13 consecutive years – has been a small lifeline in an age when precious few people see fit to pay for music any more. To see it disrupted in the short and especially long term would be a shame.
Which is one reason among no doubt many why you’ll generally only find well-off august ex-pat rock stars like Ringo Starr and The Who’s Roger Daltrey speaking out in Brexit’s favour – or desperately attention-seeking old battleships like Morrissey.
But, of course, that’s easy for them to say, flogging some records is something they don’t really have to worry about anymore.
