Rockefeller Center RSD
Record Store Day is being staged as a destination this year: Time Out New York says Rockefeller Center will host what it calls the world’s largest Record Store Day celebration with limited-run releases from artists including Taylor Swift, Paramore, Charli XCX and Weezer. (That positioning signals RSD moving from a neighborhood retail rush to a city-scale event aimed at collectors and tourists.) (timeout.com)
On Saturday, April 18, Rockefeller Center is turning Record Store Day into an all-day Midtown event called iNDIEPLAZA, with organizers saying tens of thousands of people are expected between noon and 9 p.m. and with sales at Rough Trade starting even earlier at 9 a.m. at the rink-level shop and 10 a.m. upstairs. (timeout.com) That is a different scale from how Record Store Day started in 2008, when independent record store owners created it to send people into neighborhood shops, not into one giant plaza. The official Record Store Day site still says the point is to celebrate brick-and-mortar record stores, and it says the event now involves nearly 1,400 independently owned stores in the United States and thousands more internationally. (recordstoreday.com 1) (recordstoreday.com 2) Rockefeller Center is able to pull this off because Rough Trade now has two connected stores at 30 Rockefeller Plaza: Rough Trade Above and Rough Trade Below. Rockefeller Center says the newer rink-level shop adds used records, compact discs, merchandise and audio gear, which gives the site more room to handle a rush that used to belong to smaller storefronts. (rockefellercenter.com) The bait is the same thing that has always driven Record Store Day lines: records you cannot simply click and reserve. The official rules say there are no pre-orders, stores choose their own stock, and many titles are sold first or only through participating independent shops on Saturday, April 18, with any leftover online sales not beginning until Sunday, April 19. (recordstoreday.com) Some of this year’s biggest draws are tiny objects with very specific limits. Record Store Day lists Charli xcx’s “party 4 u” as an 8,000-copy seven-inch single, Paramore’s deluxe edition of “All We Know Is Falling” as a 7,000-copy two-record set, and Weezer’s “1192” as a 3,000-copy release. (recordstoreday.com 1) (recordstoreday.com 2) (recordstoreday.com 3) Taylor Swift is on the list too, and her release shows why these events now behave like sneaker drops. Record Store Day says “Elizabeth Taylor” will come out as a seven-inch single on April 18 as an exclusive release on violet glitter vinyl with collectible cover art. (recordstoreday.com) The plaza is not just a checkout line with speakers. Time Out New York says Superchunk is leading the live lineup, Avalon Emerson is opening with a disc jockey set, and bands including Incendiary, Hotline TNT, Momma, Winter, Friko, Nuovo Testamento and Weird Nightmare are also booked. (timeout.com) Rockefeller Center is also adding the kind of extras that turn a shopping trip into a day plan. Time Out New York says there will be food vendors, nearby restaurants and discounted Top of the Rock admission, and a separate morning program called TiNY iNDIE will run from 9:30 a.m. to noon with do-it-yourself vinyl-making and tie-dyeing for kids. (timeout.com) So the line outside a record store is becoming something closer to a festival gate. Record Store Day still runs on scarcity and local retail rules, but at Rockefeller Center this year, the format looks less like a neighborhood crawl and more like a city attraction built around a few thousand copies of plastic. (recordstoreday.com) (timeout.com)
