The organisers of Record Store Day 2010 have revealed their delight at the event’s huge success.
Beginning as an American event, Record Store Day has spread across the world. Whereas we Brits like to call them ‘shops’ the sentiment remains the same – those hubs of vinyl need to be protected.
This year Record Store Day grew bigger than ever, with major labels providing a slew of new material. Blur released their first new single since 2003, stunning fans who believed their re-union to be at an end.
Also releasing material were the likes of The Fall, The Flaming Lips, The Beatles and a Metallica / Black Sabbath split vinyl.
With bands such as Editors, Hot Chip and more proclaiming their love of independent record shops it seems as if a revival could be on the cards for those murky domains of music nerds. We mean that in the best possible way – after all, we’re professional music nerds!
Fans queued for up to an hour outside Glasgow’s Monorail in order to buy new releases, and were kept entertained by an array of bands and guest DJs. Meanwhile, London’s Rough Trade East reported soaring trade. Manager Spencer Hickman told the NME that the day had been an enormous success.
“It was a total success,” he claimed to NME. “Some of the stores are already telling me that they doubled last year’s total. Some stores say it has been there best ever day of trading too.”
“There was a fantastic atmosphere” he said “and it was just generally pretty crazy – it went so well.”
Early figures suggest that single sales were up some 400% week-on-week, and had almost doubled since last year’s Record Store Day.