Thursday, April 19, 2012

Record Store Day

In recent years there's been a reactionary growth in physical and independent music because of the way most music is bought now: impersonally and ad nauseum. The advent of the iPod and iTunes really brought the largest change in music. There was no more purpose for someone to have to get in the car (or ride a bike) to go to a record store, buy the media, go back home, put the music in the stereo, and listen to it there; you could have the music wherever and whenever you wanted, and take your entire library with you. As a result, local record stores started going out of business because fewer and fewer people were buying CD's and vinyl records.

In 2007, Record Store Day was founded as the third Saturday in April. It was designed as a way for bands to release rare or new songs as a way to promote local record stores. Most of the releases are vinyl, while a few are available on the easier to handle CD. This year is seeing releases from over 100 artists in the US, including special edition 7" vinyls from Arctic Monkeys and St. Vincent.

Ann Arbor's Wazoo Records, Underground Sounds, and Encore Recordings are all participating in Record Store Day this Saturday. So if you're interested in helping out some local business, music, or special edition releases and new songs, check out a record store on Saturday. For more information, visit the Record Store Day website.

1 comment:

  1. Record Store doesn't profit much anymore like they used to. Downloading songs from the internet is faster and cheaper for everyone. The Record Store Day is a good idea to try and attract people again, but I'm not quite sure if it'll be effective since these new songs released will be available to download eventually.

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