With the music industry continues to change, Record Store Day offers an opportunity and experience which can be embraced by industry enthusiasts across the board, here we check in with a variety of music business players on their experience with Record Store Day, 2018 edition.
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Guest post by Meredith Nadeau of The Orchard‘s The Daily Rind
In an industry that is constantly evolving, Record Store Day provides an experience that music fans of old, new and in-between can all enjoy. Whether you miss the days of vinyl, indie record stores and the authentic sound of a turntable or you crave live shows and exclusive fan experiences, Record Store Day is a holiday that unifies music lovers.
With over 40 titles this year, it was one of the most groundbreaking Record Store Days The Orchard has seen. Many stores reported their biggest sales day ever (some in four decades). With lines starting in the late hours of April 20th or with the sunrise on the 21st, stores were packed all day long. Take a look at some of our partners who documented the beautiful ruckus at Landlocked, Vintage Vinyl St Louis, Twist & Shout, Seasick Records and Looney Tunes.
We had more than 14 artists perform at in-store events throughout the country including RSD Ambassador, Killer Mike of Run The Jewels who visited Criminal and DBS Sounds. Other stores hosted Albert Hammond Jr, Soccer Mommy, Charley Crockett, Disco Biscuits, They Might Be Giants, Bambara, This Patch of Sky, Patton Oswalt, Graveshadow and many more!
Our own Terry McGibbon documented his day as he bounced around to five local record stores in the Seattle area:
RSD is my favorite day of the year. This year I started as usual, at 6:30AM in line at Easy Street Records. Owner, Matt Vaughan gave bacon from their café to over 300 people who patiently waited in line. Once the doors opened at 7AM it took over an hour to get inside the store. All their customers were in a positive mood, without a single complaint around the wait. Matt played some of the great RSD titles by Neil Young, Noah Gundersen, Led Zeppelin, Beau Brummels, Sound Garden and Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio. I ran into an old friend from Tower Records who purchased The Orchard’s Nas RSD release.
My next stop was Silver PlattersSeattle which was also very busy and had a long line of happy customers. I also popped over to Sonic Boomwhere the store was still packed at 1PM. Next, I made my way to the Seattle Capitol Hill neighborhood to Everyday Day Music and Zions Gate Records where I scored the Johnny Cash “At Folsom Prison “ boxset. For my last stop I doubled back to Easy Street Records for the Noah Gundersen in-store. Noah played to a packed house and afterwards signed copies of his “ Live At KEXP “ RSD release. Mark Cunningham and Ryan McKenzie from Redlight Management also attended and Kevin Cole from KEXP. It was a great day and I can’t wait for Black Friday and RSD 2019.
We weren’t the only ones who had a great time. Our retailers let us know how they did, as well:
“At a glance we’ll easily be above 90% fill. It was a great day and by far best day yet. Not official yet, but close to 30% up over last year.” — Rough Trade NYC
“Record Store Day 2018 was the busiest day in the 39 year history of Vintage Vinyl Records, up 11% from last year’s RSD. There was a healthy variety of genres represented this year, and although there were still allocations, they were not as egregious as previous years. Customer awareness of the day was high. People started lining up for the opening at 9PM Friday night, with tents set up this year. By 8AM the line was over 300 strong. I had done a few radio interviews, including Sirius XM on 4/20 promoting the day, plus all the social media we posted for months leading up to 4/21 created high visibility for our big day. Sell through was over 90%, with almost all the remaining product sold through our website on Sunday morning.” — Vintage Vinyl Records
“2018 was the biggest single sales day in our 50 years of business, and we could not have done that without your help. Thank you for your support for this day the other 364 also!” — Electric Fetus
“Our business was up 17% over last year and last year was the biggest day we had ever had, previously. We heard nothing but great compliments from our customers all day for having good stock on most of the releases…..but yes, by afternoon we were running out of titles right and left. Each year we have a hard time fathoming how we will be able to top what just happened and it just keeps getting better. 410 official titles seemed like a lot along with a bunch of unofficial releases that made the scene too but it made for a well balanced selection of cool releases for music fans and they very much appreciated it. Big thanks to all of you and your companies for all you did to make this the most successful RSD to date. It’s a lot of work all year long to make this all possible but we really appreciate everything you do to make this happen.” — Music Millennium
Remember to keep the love for independent retail flowing all year round!