aims to bring music lovers back to reality and away from downloads.
RECORD STORE DAY offers rare delights for vinyl addicts, hope for independent shops
Celebrated in independent shops around the world, Record Store Day is the holiest of holidays for legions of people who still like to stick their needle in the groove. Wax addicts will head to select local record stores Saturday in hopes of getting their hands on extremely limited copies of Pink Floyd’s vintage See Emily Play single, the first North American vinyl release of Sigur Rós’s 1999 album Agaetis Byrjun, or hundreds of other exclusive titles.
The idea behind the event was hatched in 2007 by San Francisco record store clerk Chris Brown and producer Michael Kurtz. With thousands of record stores being forced to close their doors since the dawn of the millennium, thanks to decreased sales and the rise of downloading, the two forged a plan to help reintroduce music fans to independently owned shops, with the lofty goal of encouraging people to actually (gulp) pay for music.
Record Store Day was officially launched in 2008 and featured 10 exclusive, limitededition titles, with more than 250 stores participating in the U.S. and a handful of shops in Britain. Brown and Kurtz’s humble little idea has grown exponentially each year. On Saturday, more than 1,700 independent shops worldwide will participate in the sixth Record Store Day, and between them will stock around 500 exclusive releases that will only be available while the limited supplies last. (While the focus is on vinyl, some releases are on CD.)
“Participating in Record Store Day is definitely a good thing for the store financially, because it’s our biggest day of the year,” says Nathan Gage, owner of Montreal’s Phonopolis. “That definitely helps, but I think the main reason that Record Store Day is so important is that it encourages people to support your local record store. I can’t help but think that’s a good thing.”
In this digital age, independent record stores can use all the help they can get. According to a recent report by Billboard magazine and Nielsen SoundScan, more than 37 per cent of album sales in 2012 were downloads, with CD sales continuing to plummet. Illegal downloading continues to thrive, while streaming sites like Spotify, Deezer and Rdio are rapidly increasing their subscriber rosters.
Big-box chains like Target and Walmart have routinely undercut small record shops on CDs, selling them at a loss in an effort to lure customers into their stores, while online shopping depots like Amazon and iTunes offer convenience at the click of a mouse. As a result, bricksand-mortar record shops have been forced out of the marketplace at an alarming rate. According to figures released by Almighty Music Marketing, more than 4,000 record stores in the U.S. closed their doors for good between 2000 and 2010, with only 1,600 surviving.
Record Store Day continues to have a positive impact on mom-and-pop businesses by helping to generate genuine excitement for records, as well as providing a much-needed financial bump. Individual events, like in-store concerts by local acts, have also helped usher in new customers, many of whom are venturing into a record shop for the first time.
In order to simply survive, small stores now have to offer up more than just product to enhance the record-shopping experience. At Montreal’s Sound Central, for example, customers are encouraged to grab a stool and a cup of java in the café section beside the cash register.
“We want to be more than just a store,” Shawn Ellingham, owner of Sound Cen- tral, says. “We encourage people to talk to each other over coffee, and try to offer an experience that they can’t get online. It’s little things like seeing people share a passion for music together, or a father
“It’s little things like seeing people share a passion for music together.”
SHAWN ELLINGHAM, SOUND CENTRAL
buying his son his first turntable. You just can’t get that online, and you never will.”
The most positive development for record stores could be the surge in popularity for the allegedly dead format of vinyl. As reported by SoundScan, vinyl sales skyrocketed to 4.6 million in 2012 — a 16.3 per cent increase from the previous year. Record Store Day could be a contributing factor in vinyl’s resurgence, as sales were a mere one million in the year previous to the one-day event’s introduction. Although it still represents just a drop in the bucket of total music sales, vinyl getting its groove back has been significant for small stores.
While reissues like 2012’s release of the Beatles’ Abbey Road appear on the vinyl charts, and suggest a demographic that may be greying around the temple, the Fab Four share shelf space with contemporary bands. Last year’s Top 10 Billboard vinyl sales chart also included Beach House, Bon Iver and the Black Keys, pointing to a far younger set only now plugging into the analog warmth offered by vinyl.
“A lot of our customers are young people who grew up by downloading MP3s online, and just found that wasn’t very exciting and graduated to vinyl,” Ellingham says. “People are always going to love music, and if you love it enough, you’re going to want quality. Bands and artists spend countless thousands of dollars on recording, and to listen to that with cheap computer speakers or earbuds is ridiculous. People can actually hold a record in their hands, physically interact with the object and see the artwork the way it was meant to be displayed. Vinyl has become the director’s cut of a film, and an MP3 is just what leads you to it.”