In a week when overall U.S. album sales were down 2.2% over the same week in 2013, the independent record store sector collectively rode the Record Store Day sales bonanza to an 11.2% gain, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Indie stores represented 19.4% of the total U.S. volume of all physical album sales this week, the sector’s highest share since SoundScan started tracking sales by store strata.
Moreover, within album sales, the indie store sector saw its vinyl album sales grow a whopping 57.5%. Finally, numerous record stores report that it was their best day ever.
The vinyl resurgence of the last seven years has been driven by Record Store Day, and if this year’s RSD showing continues to be an indicator, look for vinyl to continue its already much-heralded comeback from the commercial abyss.
As it is, vinyl sales have grown from 0.2% of album sales in 2000 to now account for about 3.2%, or 2.5 million units, of 76.2 million units in overall album sales so far this year.
“Another Record Store Day has come and gone, and just when we didn’t think it was possible, you have once again managed to top all previous years and make it our best day ever,” Permanent Records owner Marjorie Eisenberg wrote in an e-mail to the RSD organizers who forwarded the e-mail to Billboard. When Billboard was at the Greenpoint, Brooklyn store on Record Store Day, April 19, there was still a line of customers waiting to get into the store at 4:30pm.
Eisenberg is not alone in expressing that sentiment. In e-mails sent to Billboard and in emails from other record store owners forwarded to Billboard by Record Store Day organizers, a consensus appears to be emerging that this might have been the most successful Record Store Day ever, which is saying something for a day that has become the No. 1 sales volume day of the year for most indie merchants, even bigger than the best day of the Christmas holiday selling season. For instance, in an e-mail sent to Billboard by John Kunz owner of Austin, Texas indie store Waterloo–one of the best and highest volume music stores in the country–he reported that “RSD’14 was the best sales day ever in Waterloo’s 32+ year history, eclipsing the previous high water mark [RSD”13] by 12%!”
Other merchants said they too were astounded by the day’s strong performance. “So just when you think you might have maxed out your sales trends for Record Store Day…along comes RSD 2014, “Dilyn Radakovitz, co-owner of the Sacramento, Calif.-based, seven-store Dimples chain wrote in an e-mail that was sent to the industry, including Billboard. “We’ve run the numbers numerous times this morning and now it’s afternoon here and we still come up with 60% up over 2013!…From 2010 -2014 our sales are up 176%! Every year we have seen a build but this one is pretty crazy.”
The day began crazy as well, merchants report, with long lines waiting for the record stores to open. In Denver, Twist & Shout was greeted with a line of over 400 people; in Dallas Good Records found 250 people waiting for the store to open at 7am; over 150 people waited for Boo Boo Records in San Lius Obispo, Ca., to open; while in Oklahoma City, Guest Room Records had almost 200 people waiting in line by the time it opened. Besides what they found when they opened, some stores even reported that customer began lining up the night before.
Meanwhile, even in stores where the day wasn’t the best ever, store owners and merchants said they were blown away by the day’s sales strength. “One of our biggest days in 40 years, top 10 for sure…I’m still shaking my head in disbelief,” Boo Boo Records Mike Smith wrote in an e-mail forwarded to Billboard. “RSD accounted for 45% of our sales Saturday, but the other 55% taken alone represents a whopping 4X what a normally healthy Saturday would have been.” Indeed, BuzzAngle Music, one of Record Store Day’s sponsors, reports that sales were up 646% from the previous Saturday (April 12), in the stores it tracks.
In Tempe, Ariz, Stinkweeds profiteer Kim Lanning wrote in an e-mail forwarded to Billboard, “We went into RSD14 thinking there was no way- NO POSSIBLE WAY- that we could beat last year’s numbers…Instead we had lines around the block all day and we beat last year by 36.8%, which is completely insane.”
Further west in Hawaii, Hungary Ear Records in Kailua reported a 20% increase over last year’s RSD when the store had record breaking numbers, a 60% increase of RSD 2012, one of the owners reports.
Even elected officials got involved in the day. Up in Boston, Newbury Comics executive VP Valerie Forgione reports that the chain’s comp-store sales were up 8% over last year, and one of their locations was visited by the city’s Mayor Martin Walsh, who bought some records at the chain’s Newbury Street store. In Paris, Record Store Day co-founder and coordinator Michael Kurtz, who heads up the Department of Records Stores–one of three coalition along with Coalition of Independent Music Stores and the Alliance of Independent Media Stores–that launched and manage RSD, reports that the new Paris Mayor Anne Hildago met with Doors drummer John Densmore who was launching the French version of his book “The Doors Unhinged,” to help celebrate the event and the day, which is called Disquaire Day there.
After a bonanza sales day, Twist & Shout owner Paul Epstein wrote in an e-mail sent to the industry including Billboard, that he went home exhausted but convinced that Record Store Day has helped breath “a whole new vitality into the music business.”
