Record Store Day — the annual April celebration of local record shops and the music in physical formats available there — isn’t what you think it is anymore.
Longtime music buyers may view Record Store Day as a nod to nostalgia, and certainly as a way to draw attention to local businesses who stack shelves with vinyl. In fact, that was pretty much how the annual event first started.
“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 nearly 1,400 independently-owned record stores in the U.S. and thousands of similar stores internationally,” recordstoreday.com notes. “The first Record Store Day took place on April 19, 2008. Today, Record Store Day is celebrated at independently-owned brick-and-mortar record stores around the world.”
