Record Store Day returns this year on Saturday, April 16, growing steadily and reaching more and more music fans each year. Record Store Day was conceived in 2007 at a gathering of independent record store owners and employees as a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding the nearly 1,000 independently owned record stores in the US and the thousands of similar stores internationally. There are Record Store Day participating stores on every continent except Antarctica.
“An Independent Record Store means ‘Passion’ to us, says Sarah Dash of Labelle fame. “The passionate individual owner’s heart and love of music provides customers with an outlet for the emotion, love, and desire of music. The Indie Record Store is the heartbeat of the music business.”
Record Store Day is a day for the people who make up the world of the record store—the staff, the customers, and the artists—to come together and celebrate the unique culture of a record store and the special role these independently owned stores play in their communities.
Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances and performances.
Festivities are programmed independently by each store including performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, djs spinning records and more.
“Music is an important part of our culture,” says Chuck Berry, “and record stores play a vital part in keeping the power of music alive.”
A Record Store Day participating store is a stand alone brick and mortar retailer whose main primary business focuses on a physical store location, whose product line consists of at least 50% music retail, whose company is not publicly traded and whose ownership is at least 70% located in the state of operation. In other words, we’re talking ’bout real, live, physical, indie record stores, not online retailers or corporate behemoths or chains.
There are a lot of stores that participate in Record Store Day and those stores are all INDEPENDENT, which means not only are they not owned by a corporation, they aren’t run or influenced or told what to do by the folks at Record Store Day either. They have complete control over their stock, store policies and which promotions they participate in. Any piece (commercial or promotional) on the Record Store Day website is available at some stores, but other stores have probably chosen not to carry them. Which is totally their prerogative.
Be sure to call ahead and check with your local store.
Here are the official Record Store Day participating stores in the Nashville area: Alison’s Record Shop; Ernest Tubb Record Shop; Fond Object Records; Grimey’s; Mckay Books; New Life Record Shop; The Great Escape; The Groove; The Museum Store; Third Man Records and Novelties; CD Warehouse Bellevue, CD Warehouse Madison, and CD Warehouse Hermitage.
