Countless retail shops have shut down, mirroring the decline of physical media and the crisis in the larger record
business. CD sales are a quarter of what they were a decade ago. And last week, Billboard reported that Walmart, a
crucial sales outlet for the industry, may be reducing its music inventory by as much as 40 percent. But all that news,
grim as it is, obscures one of the more surprising success stories in music: the perseverance, and even growth, of
independent stores around the country, helped partly by Record Store Day, a campaign that comes to 2,000 stores
around the world. Now in its seventh year, Record Store Day will feature some 450 items, mostly vinyl records, that
are made to be sold only on Record Store Day (although they are sure to be available on eBay long after). Among
them are rarities from Nirvana, Regina Spektor, Haim, Bruce Springsteen and one from Jack White that gets an A+
for effort: a disc recorded, manufactured and sold, all on a single day.
Though a promotional event, Record Day underscores the mini-renaissance of vinyl. As recently as 2008, only 2.9
million LPs were sold in the United States, representing about 0.7 percent of annual album sales, according to the
Recording Industry Association of America. Last year those sales climbed to 9.4 million, representing 3 percent of
all albums, and the independent, off-the-grid nature of many of those sales may mean that vinyl’s numbers are
underreported. An uptick in LP sales, however, has not been enough to save plenty of stores. In New York, J&R
Music and Computer World, a downtown mainstay for decades, closed abruptly last week. The East Village in
Manhattan, long one of the country’s great vinyl hunting grounds, has just a handful of record stores left.
Record Day has drawn criticism for catering to collectors instead of casual fans, and the glut of small-run releases
taxes the already limited capacity of vinyl pressing plants around the world. One British distributor recently complained
that Record Store Day traffic had caused it to be “effectively locked out of the vinyl business” this spring. Michael Kurtz,
who coordinates the releases as the president of the semi-jokingly named group Dept. of Record Stores,
acknowledged that these are basically good problems for a struggling business to have. “I’m almost frightened by
the growth of it,” Mr. Kurtz said.
One of the hottest items this year is a briefcase-style turntable decorated with an image of Charlie Brown pulling
a disc from a shelf and saying, “I’m real proud of my record collection.” The $100 player, made by Crosley and
limited to 2,400 units, was licensed by Peanuts Worldwide for what a spokeswoman for that company called a
nominal fee. Scott Bingaman, the president of Deer Park Distributors, which distributes Crosley turntables, said
that six years ago, his company had accounts with just 25 independent record stores, but now works with more
than 500. He estimates that turntable sales at those stores will reach $2 million this year.
As a growing part of a shrinking pie, vinyl has come to represent a way for the music industry to hyper-serve a
thriving subculture. And record stores continue to sprout around the country. In Brooklyn, the 15,000-square-foot
Rough Trade NYC shop opened in November, and stores like Zia, in Arizona and Las Vegas, have expanded to
new locations. In Los Angeles, which is home to a branch of one of the biggest record stores in America, Amoeba
Music, at least a dozen new stores have opened in the last few years, most catering to vinyl collectors and
various niches.
Source: NY Times