Record Store Day

Record Store Day is an annual event, founded in 2007, held on the third Saturday of April each year to celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store. The day brings together fans, artists, and thousands of independent record stores across the world. A number of records are pressed specifically for Record Store Day, and are only distributed to shops participating in the event.

Background

Sparked by a comment by Bull Moose employee Chris Brown that something could be done along the lines of Free Comic Book Day, and with inspiration from a brainstorming session during a record store owners' meeting in Baltimore, Record Store Day was officially founded in 2007 by Eric Levin, Michael Kurtz, Carrie Colliton, Amy Dorfman, Don Van Cleave and Brian Poehner, and is now celebrated at stores across the world, with hundreds of recording and other artists participating in the day by making special appearances, performances, meet and greets with their fans, the holding of art exhibits, and the issuing of special vinyl and CD releases along with other promotional products to mark the occasion.

Record shop

A record shop or record store is a retail outlet that sells recorded music. In 2015, record stores sell CDs, vinyl records and, in some cases DVDs of movies, TV shows and music concerts. Some record stores also sell music-related items such as posters of bands or singers. Even in the heyday of the CD during the 1990s, people in English-speaking countries still used the term "record shop" to describe a shop selling sound recordings such as CDs. During much of the 20th century, record stores only sold records, until the availability of tape-based recordings and then, in the late 1980s, CDs.

Prior to the 2000s, more record shops were privately run, independent businesses, meaning that prices could differ from town to town and store to store. In the 2000s, record shops are largely chain-owned and thus prices are fairly similar in different towns. In the United Kingdom the national chain style of selling records and tapes developed with Our Price, itself originally a small independent business founded in the early 1970s that expanded nationwide.