National Record Store Day

#genesimmonsdidnothingwrong

Dropped into my local this afternoon- they still had loooaads of stuff left. Picked up the Durutti Column and Crispy Ambulance reissues

Popped into my local this afternoon and heard a depressing convo. A kid came in asking about the Death Grips record, the clerk checked the computer and said there should be three copies in stock but couldnt find them in the bin of RSD leftovers. He steps back to call the owner and I hear him ask "Did we sell those under the table? Oh ok, I'll tell him" and announce to the kid that theyd been sold online. I guess it must be pretty common for stores to flip their own RSD stock online day-of, but still shitty to hear.

The “ironing is delicious” on that anecdote.

Had a nice time, as I do every year. Unfortunately couldn't stay for the instore gigs & complementary beers but the vibe's always good.

Made a (very) short list of things I'd like beforehand of which they only had Spacemen 3's Live in Europe (Space Age Records, so Sonic probably disapproves, sorry!). When I asked about The Art Ensemble of Chicago reissue they came up with the reissue of a 7" on which they were the backing band of Alfred Panou. Unkown to me, it's great - like everything they recorded whilst in Paris.
When I asked about the Groundhogs reissue they told me they didn't get it but had an original up for sale through discogs which I got with a 25% discount - score!
Lastly, bought a 7" the record store put out on their own label.

https://recordstoreday.com/NewsItem/9003

Record Store Day will look very different this year, but supporting indie record stores may be more important than ever. We don't know what sort of rules will be in place, or what sort of gatherings people will be in the mood for this year, so we're focusing on the music and getting the really great titles on the RSD Official List this year into the stores and into your hands, in the most financially and socially responsible way.

The titles on the RSD 2020 Official List, launched on March 5th, will be released at participating record stores on one of these three RSD Drops: August 29th, September 26th, and October 24th. The new version of The List, with newly assigned RSD Drops dates will launch on June 1 so check back here for a look at when you'll be able to pick up the titles on your RSD 2020 wishlist at your local record store.

how incredibly frustrating. at the risk of sounding sanctimonious i'll say that i've already found ways to support my local shops during the pandemic, one of which has been ordering online / via phone and picking stuff up curbside or having it shipped. quite without the help of official national record store day, thanks. the owners of the record stores i find it important to support have been as resourceful as they can, but withholding merchandise which has already been manufactured only delays the money i might have given them if we could just have the records now. so let the labels just ship the records. making us wait until the end of october to acquire releases that would ideally already be in our hands—all for the sake of staging a farcical bank run that increasingly only ever seems designed to assuage the guilty yuppy conscience or to enrich the greasy flipper—does nothing except exasperate eager fans and delay funds to record stores for which right now small margins of cash are the difference between weathering the storm and shutting the doors for good.

the grill-out and the in-stores have been cancelled, likewise the beery convos, the comparing of notes, and the other pleasant rituals of record store congregating. if we're lucky we'll pick that up when it's deemed safe to do so. until then let me order some shit ffs.

good post and 100% otm

no. you will participate in the marketing culture whether you want to or not.

thanks for hyping it up, btw!

(for real tho: it's the typical rsd bullshit. it never was about making sure the stores can achieve longevity. is anyone really surprised?)

I've read this is actually preferable to store owners because they don't have to shell out for that merchandise in one go and can instead split it up with three buys, using the first to gauge how much might be needed for the second and third.

Fuck RSD btw, but at least this situation makes it easier on the stores.

fair point there

What Johnny Fever said.

Also, while no solution is perfect, having the labels just ship the records to customers directly (as budo suggests) sort of defeats the purpose of these releases being 100% designed to benefit record stores. Record. Store. Day. I get that you want them in your hands, but, having them bypass retail completely would be brutal for indie record stores who were already fucked by Direct Shot Distribution issues and covid-related closures.

at least my friend who owns a store says that RSD is by far their biggest day of the year and he counts on it, don't know why not having it would benefit

Seems like three days in three consecutive months would mean more people in the store with more chances to sell stuff? The thing that pisses me off about RSD exclusives is that can't, as far as I understand, be returned to the distro like regular stock if it doesn't sell. That's why every store that participates has a bargain bin of RSD shit no one wants.

This at least seems like a good way to lessen the financial burden on store owners who haven't been open or have been operating in a downgraded capacity. Lots of them are dead broke.

All true, Free Download. And, ideally, we'd love to have it. But, nobody is in a rush to be in a crowd at the moment and nobody has any clue when that will change, so, at least this is a way to get the stuff out there somehow, in a way that the smaller stores among us can actually stomach.

This will certainly be a year of getting used to imperfect solutions.

Also, Johnny Fever - 95% of vinyl is not returnable even when it's not a RSD piece. The reason there are so many RSD leftovers is it's really hard to get the orders right on 400 titles that come out at the same time... and you don't want to undershoot too much and miss out... and sometimes you order more because you know your order will be allocated, so you have no clue what you'll actually get until closer to the day. Fun!

Sounds like a nightmare.

JF - you're misunderstanding though, it's not like record stores exist to make efficient transactions of records, nearly everything you could get online likely cheaper

they still exists because of the things budo jeru said, and RSD is a ritual

yeah you can't return anything anymore, for the most part. found that out when I got a bad pressing of one of those Can reissues from a local store and they told me they just had to eat it :(

If you get a bum record from a shop, don’t return it there. Buy a copy from Mega Online Retailer to replace it with. Send the shit copy back to them and get a refund.

Why don't they announce the list of RSD exclusives to participating stores, take their orders, and then press up and ship the requested quantities? I don't see the benefit in having something pressed in a quantity of 300 if 2,000 people want to buy it. How does that help record stores? Yeah they'd need a lead time of like 18-24 months but it's not like they don't know there will be a Record Store Day every year. Well I guess not this year but.

I bought a Massaman Sani LP new and it was too warped to play... have read about people contacting labels directly for a replacement but I kind of feel bad about doing that for some reason, like the profit margins have got to be low as it is idk. I don’t have my receipt anyway.

xxp yeah because "Mega Online Retailers" stock so much of what I buy, (eyeroll)

I don't see the benefit in having something pressed in a quantity of 300 if 2,000 people want to buy it. How does that help record stores?

golly, it's almost like it never was supposed to help the stores.

it's been about labels manufacturing "collectables" since day one. some places were able to spin it into a good day, but even the ones that don't have the means to do in-stores or other promotions have still come to rely on it financially.

it's one of the worst things that's happened to physical media in the past twenty years.

How does that help record stores?

The record stores can mark it up A Lot.

it helps record stores by increasing traffic and sales, people who come in to buy something rare that's not there will probably buy something else on RSD, or used records in addition

there's a lot of a galaxy brain thinking going into the premise that having a store packed with people spending lots of money is actually bad for a store

I'm glad stores are surviving thanks to RSD, but I hate so much that it turned into solely being about THE LIST and the scramble for gimmicky records with forced exclusivity.

I liked it much better when the idea was just a day to celebrate the "idea" of record stores - food, in-store performances or DJs, sales, etc. Maybe a few special things, but more like free comic book day where it's just massively pressed quantities of a 7" or two so that everyone who steps foot in the door gets one. Not this bullshit, "hey we know 40 of you have expressed interest in this exclusive red splatter ELO 7" so we asked for 45 copies, but we only got two so, uh, good luck" thing that's happening. I don't blame the stores for this at all, but the whole thing is so antithetical to what I love about record stores.

I mean, it should have been a big red flag years ago when every single record store's social media feed was filled with variations of "hey, just so you know we got nowhere near as many copies of the RSD exclusives as we requested, so prepare to be disappointed". Instead we just keep repeating the same thing year after year after year.

Limited quantities of select items incentivize people actually go instead of put it off until they decide not to care. "FOMO" is a big motivator to drive sales, a percentage of which might not even happen at all without that factor.

Whatever problems I have with RSD, I've always been fine with the prices/scarcity/clusterfuck aspect of it. It's Record Store Day, not Record Store Customer Appreciation Day - the whole point is to get as much money as possible out of peoples wallets and into the cash registers of record stores, not to equitably distribute desirable records to music fans.

Where I work, we put a lot of money into RSD usually but it is a total risk as others have said. Before the lockdown, I was still putting previous releases from the last few years in our clearance section. There's always some titles we don't get enough of and some we somehow manage to get just right. The latter is very rare. The mark ups on these records (and for all new records in general) are really terrible. We mainly stick to the suggested prices and often we're lucky to make roughly $5 profit on these exclusives. Maybe more like $10-15 on some bigger items. It is true that we have no idea what we're going to get for sure until the week before. There's always some that we really went overboard on (anyone still need one of those Nas Stillmatic reissues from Black Friday or the Sugar Ray reissue?)

We've done very well on the day just because people want to come out and support our store. There will be people waiting in line for half an hour picking up new copies of Radiohead albums they can buy any time. We sell a lot of used records too. Lots of people telling us they've been waiting for a special occasion to pick up something a bit more rare/expensive. I was very skeptical about RSD (and still am in some ways), but it really changed things working there and seeing all the people (all our regulars and more) coming in to just pick up anything they could. The build up is stressful, but it really is a nice experience.

Maybe it's changed, but the first two or three years I checked out RSD at a shop near me (that sadly no longer exists) you couldn't even buy or browse the non-RSD stock. You waited in line at the door, then they let folks in two by two, to ask for the exclusives they wanted. You were then rung up and guided right back out the door, you weren't even allowed to browse the "regular" stock.

The long game is to build loyalty, so stores should focus on using the day to encourage people to come back for regular shopping visits. It's pretty short sighted to not make the most out of it beyond the exclusives and single day traffic however possible.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to begrudge the stores one bit for whatever helps them survive. If RSD, in its current formulation, does it - great. I won't begrudge anyone that enjoys it either.

But I do find it... interesting (for lack of a better word) that a special holiday created specifically to celebrate one of my favorite hobbies ever has evolved into something where it is the one specific day I actively avoid record shopping. And I know I'm not the only one that feels that way. I feel like it should be called Record Store Exclusive Vinyl Day or something else instead.

tbh I also avoid the stores that day, or if I go its usually shortly before closing to browse the leftovers & survey the damage. But I always figure its not really aimed at people like me who typically go once a week and spend regularly, we dont really need an incentive to go spend money at our local record store, but moreso for Earnest New Vinyl Enthusiasts and people who might otherwise only go at christmas or soemthing.

I've never been on RSD - I have a young daughter and would rather spend the weekend with my family, and wouldn't relish the chaos anyway. But every year there are a couple of releases among the novelty tchotkes that I lust after. I read there was supposed to be a reissue of GBV's Vampire On Titus or Propellor this year, which definitely caught my interest.

June 12 & July 17 this year - anything exciting coming up?

Want the Blackbeard I Wah Dub reissue, and also the Timmy Taylor/Brainiac rarities/demos things, but I won't be going to any record shops today, so...

I got the Linton Kwesi Johnson, Half Japanese, Poly Styrene and the two Burt Jansch records.

I ventured out on RSD for the first time ever to get that L7 'Beauty Process' vinyl pressing. In the end, I probably didn't need to. There are 3000 of them and most stores/resellers aren't really gouging yet, but at least I got some fresh air.

got the negative space reissue... really want the hawkwind greasy trucker party live thing coming out in July

I picked up Donny Hathaway Live and the Brainiac Attic Tapes unreleased comp

The store I went to had almost no crowd and their RSD stuff was not as insanely marked up as I’ve come to expect, don’t know what was going on but I like it. I had a stack of 3 or 4 things, but I kept finding stuff I was more excited about in the used bins and putting RSD stuff back. Ended up getting the Flaming Lips Soft Bulletin thing.

I just found out that the one record store near me isn’t participating this year; I’m getting a little uptight trying to figure out how I’m going to get a hold of The Sisters of Mercy’s BBC Sessions.

I've never seen stores marking stuff up over MSRP they are definitely not supposed to

The stores I used to go to the RSD prices were eye-popping, I always just assumed they marked up as high as they thought could get away with

got a few more things

toots - funky Kingston
Tom petty - angel dream
groundhogs - who will save
Donnie Hathaway - live

would’ve liked to grab the Tommy Bolin but it was like 40 bucks. Haven’t even heard it actually.

also kinda intrigued by the tangerine dream live thing

I went to a WFMU sidewalk sale instead of RSD...

I got:

- EEC Punk Rock Mountain: A Sarah Bootleg
- Joan Shelley - Over And Even
- M. Geddes Gengras - Test Leads
- Hüsker Dü - Candy Apple Grey
- Uncle Wiggly - Non-Stuff
- Grenadine - Goya
- Jack Rose - S/T

xposts: the Sisters of Mercy BBC Sessions is out on the second RSD date, July 17th (e.g. https://mainstvinyl.com/UPC/190295154455 )

Yeah they’re not participating in that one either unfortunately. Wonder what my chances would be at Newbury Comics in the big mall by me.

Worth a shot, I know Newbury participates.