Record Store Day is an annual event, celebrating “the unique culture surrounding independently owned record stores.” A few weeks back, independent celebrated their fourth annual Record Store Day, with a wide variety of special releases and events. FMQB spoke with a mix of individuals from the label, retail and radio sides of the music industry to find out what Record Store Day means to them.
By Joey Odorisio
A few weeks ago, independent music retailers around the country celebrated their fourth annual Record Store Day, with a wide variety of special releases and events designed to bring out music fans for the day to shop and enjoy their local stores.
FMQB spoke with a mix of individuals from the label, retail and radio sides of the
music industry to find out what Record Store Day means to them.
The fourth annual Record Store Day took place on April 16, bringing music fans out of the woodwork to shop at their local, independent music retailers. Record Store Day began in 2008; conceived and founded by a group of retailers as “a celebration of the unique culture surrounding independently owned record stores.” Over the past four years, the day has grown into a highly-anticipated event among die-hard music fans, with an increasing number of limited edition releases specially commissioned for the day, as well as more and more artists getting involved with appearances at independent stores around the country.
Eric Levin runs Criminal Records in Atlanta and is one of the co-founders of Record Store Day, as well as the head of AIMS, the Alliance of Independent Media Stores. He tells FMQB that Record Store Day began when “Music Monitor Networkhosted a conference in Baltimore, and one of the topics of discussion was what to do about the negative perception of record stores. We somehow went from cool to passé in the eyes of the journalists or the blogs. We knew that we were in the age of the digital, at that moment it was what was sexy and new. We were also struggling with the public failure of the music industry, which is very different than the record store business. Also Tower Records and Circuit City went out of business, but those weren’t really record stores any longer… and record stores were still awesome! I was still rockin’ and rollin’ and hiring people and insuring them, selling records.
Inside Criminal Records (Photo Credit: Perry Julien)
“We asked, ‘What’s going on? Why does some dude in New York or an editor with an iPod think that record stores suck, and that’s not true?’ So we decided, ‘let’s work on this, let’s fix it.’”
Levin helped spearhead the initiative due to his experience with Free Comic Book Day [Criminal also sells comics], which is the first Saturday of every May and features free giveaways and other events to encourage customers to visit their local comics shop.
Levin says that Record Store Day has notably changed the public opinion on record stores, as “Just three years ago, the first interviews were asking, ‘Are you kidding? What’s a record store?’ Now every single story asks, ‘What’s coming out? Who’s playing where? What’s the party?’ We completely changed the tone. And we did it internationally too, and that was not even part of the expectations. It didn’t even occur to us to think about them.”
“Now, we’re like an advocacy group, inspiring local first initiatives. We’re talking to other independent retailers like hardware stores and soccer stores and bike stores about how to do this and teaching them. This is all so far beyond anything we’d expected to accomplish with Record Store Day.”
According to Nielsen Soundscan, Record Store Day 2011 had a major impact on sales, with independent stores reporting a 39 percent increase in sales for the week, bringing an eight percent increase to overall album sales nationwide. With vinyl a key component of Record Store Day, independent stores reported an amazing 697 percent increase in vinyl singles sold during the week. Soundscan reports that Record Store Day 2010 only caused a 12 percent increase at independent stores and a three percent increase in overall album sales.
(Photo Credit: Jeff St. Pierre)
Music collectors on the radio side of things geek out as part of Record Store Day too.Clear Channel WPOC/Baltimore’s Jeff St. Pierre says he waited over four hours in the cold weather that morning to get in to the Sound Garden in Baltimore. “I miss the days when people were this excited to go to the record store all of the time. Now it’s time to start saving up for next year,” St. Pierre says, adding that “I just wish it were in May so it would be a little warmer.”
When I asked Levin why the founders chose to hold Record Store Day in April, he said, “That was one of the main difficult decisions when we were sitting around that roundtable, we wouldn’t leave the table until we’d named the date and we went through the calendar…Easter…Passover…Coachella…prom… We could have never found the right Saturday ever. So we just decided on the third Saturday of every April. It’s kind of a drag because Coachella takes so many bands out of the marketplace as well.”
WKZQ/Myrtle Beach APD/MD Mase Brazelle is also a vinyl collector and features a vinyl release every week on his specialty show “The Flight Test.” He drove over an hour-and-a-half each way to Monster Music in Charleston, SC for his first proper Record Store Day experience. Mase called the day “quite amazing” adding that for vinyl fans such as himself, Record Store Day is all about “keepin’ it alive, baby!”
Capitol Music Group VP of Promotion Howard Petruziello is another major music collector and vinyl fan in the industry. This year, his label put out a variety of special edition releases for Record Store Day, including the first proper single from Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi’s Rome project, a vinyl edition of the Gorillaz‘ new album The Fall (which was limited to roughly 3,000 copies worldwide), a Decemberists live CD recorded at an independent record store earlier this year and more.
For the labels, Petruziello says Record Store Day has become almost “another Black Friday” when it comes to retail. However, “unlike Black Friday where people go to every store to buy everything, it’s just music. So for us we know that there are a lot of hungry, active core music fans [out shopping that day] to actually buy physical records, which is exciting. It’s good for bands to do the cool exclusive stuff. And in cases like the Danger Mouse record, it’s the first music that’s available to buy physically, so it’s cool that we can introduce a project out there to retail on that day, which is really important.”
He adds that at independent stores around the country, “there were lines everywhere. I mean if there were 400 people in line for a record store, that’s just really exciting. It’s really passionate music fans. It’s interesting that people go for the exclusive stuff, but then people just go in and shop too.” Petruziello continued, “not to sound old and nostalgic, but the energy in the stores was just like record stores always felt: a lot of people at them teaming with excitement, buzzing and people just checking stuff out.”
Jamie Blood of Main Street Music in Philadelphia says that for retailers, Record Store Day is “basically to let people know that we’re still here. People who come in are in awe that we still have vinyl…’they still make vinyl?’ Even for the kids coming through that only really know downloads, to let them know that you can come in and really share in a community of people who love music and learn and really know music.”
Blood adds that this year, Main Street Music “had a great day, even with the bad weather people were coming out and it shows that people are still interested and want to come to record stores. There was so much excitement about Record Store Day this year, it seems like it’s getting bigger each year. Each year we see more people, we have a little more foot traffic and our sales are just up from the previous year, so it’s been really helpful.”
Petruziello says that “Just from a marketing standpoint it’s great that people are just paying attention. It’s a pretty good lesson for any business that may be in decline, which physical retail clearly has been. As has our physical business. A few people thought of this idea and it’s pretty simple: Who is your core consumer? What excites them? Let’s build something around that…and it’s great! Imagine if they’d done this a few years ago? After ten years it would be gigantic. They really let the music do the talking. It’s not huge advertising, there’s some marketing around it, but just through social media, through the stores communicating with their core customers on their e-mail list and Twitter and Facebook; its people who were really paying attention. I looked at the line at the store that day and it was just music fans, it’s the people I see at concerts. People that seem really engaged, and this is cool they’re engaged in the retail end of it.”
Petruziello also loves how grassroots and DIY the origins of Record Store Day are. In fact, he notes that one of the co-founders, Carrie Colliton, met him “crossing the street our first week of college back in 1987. We’ve been lifelong friends, so I’m really proud of the fact that she was able to get this rolling, because she and I hung out hundreds of hours in record stores in our misspent youth.”
Levin says that label involvement varies for Record Store Day. Sometimes labels reach out to the organizers and let them know what they’re planning to release, but in the case of this year’s limited edition White Stripes vinyl releases for example, “we learned about the release of them the same exact time that the rest of the world heard about them.”
Levin and his associates also do their best to help coordinate in-store appearances from artists with stores around the country. Levin is friends with hip-hop legend Chuck D, and knew he would be in the Nashville area on Record Store Day, so he made a connection between the rapper and Grimey’s New & Preloved Music, a popular independent record store in Nashville. Levin made the connection between the two simply by emailing the owner and saying, “HeyDoyle I know you’re going to want to meet Chuck D. Chuck D, this is my friend, Doyle. And I just got a video online of Chuck D introducing a band at Grimey’s. He gives a little speech about indie retail.” (watch it here)
(Photo Credit: Perry Julien)
Petruziello agrees that artist in-store appearances add to the excitement of Record Store Day. Dom, an up-and-coming band on Astralwerks Records, had a wild, buzz-worthy appearance at Newbury Comics in Boston, where the band members ended up crowd-surfing inside the store. “When you look at the artists that have done in stores, the artists are psyched too. Clearly digital is where things are going and that’s where the bulk of the business is. But maybe if you’re an older band that grew up in record stores, that’s where they bought the stuff that turned them on and made them the people that they are, and I think they’re psyched to participate in it.“
The new tradition of Record Store Day shows no signs of slowing down, as Levin says he is already making plans for the 2012 edition. As physical retailers continue to face their struggles, Record Store Day is a sign that small businesses can still remain strong in the face of the current economic climate.
[eQB Content by Joey Odorisio]
