Record Store Day 2023 Recap!
Wow what a crazy day RSD was! This past Saturday April 22nd the shop celebrated in its first Record Store Day ever! For those that do not know, RSD is a once-a-year celebration for indie record stores and shoppers alike. Over 1000 titles are printed exclusively for the event- with world renowned artists putting out special studio pressings, or live concert recording pressings, picture vinyl, remastered editions, and more. 1,000 titles! There's just so much to parse through it was intense.
I have a lot of thoughts about the event from a store-owner perspective and I want to hear your thoughts too! If you have anything to say about Record Store Day please comment below, message us on Instagram, or shoot us a good old fashioned email. For me personally, it was a very fun day filled with lots of great conversations and meeting a ton of fellow music lovers and collectors. It seemed like mostly everyone was in a good mood even if they weren't able to scoop the most highly sought after records (looking at you, 1975). The celebratory day also brought a lot of foot traffic to the area and even if we did not have what they were looking for in stock, buyers were more than happy to chat over a cup of coffee about their record collecting experience, music, or just life in general.
My criticism of the day is that a lot of buyers on Saturday and also in the days that followed actually had no idea what RSD was. They had no idea it was Saturday, which surprised me and made me a bit sad. In part that lands on me and my lack of promotion at the shop- I made a poor judgement and assumed people would know but many did not in fact realize what it was. All the more to fix for next year!
The other thing to consider is that as a small indie record store, how am I able to compete with the larger corporate record stores that are able to bring in massive amounts of vinyl for the day. Remember, with over 1000 titles to choose from- our shop simply cannot afford to bring in even 1/20th of those titles, and definitely not the amount of copies that other stores are able to. It puts a lot of pressure on indie record stores as opposed to uplifts them. Something hopefully that RSD will consider in the future!