Record Store Day roundup

Record Store Day lands on Saturday, April 18, with more than 350 limited releases headed to independent record stores and a daylong New York event expected to draw tens of thousands. (recordstoreday.com) (timeout.com) Record Store Day’s organizers say the special titles are sold through participating brick-and-mortar shops, not through the event’s own website, and stores choose their own orders from the official list. Unsold copies may move online starting Sunday, April 19. (recordstoreday.com) Time Out New York reported that Rockefeller Center’s iNDIEPLAZA returns for its fifth year on April 18, running from noon to 9 p.m. at 30 Rock. Rough Trade is curating the free event, with sales starting at 9 a.m. at the rink-level shop and 10 a.m. upstairs. (timeout.com) The New York event is built around the same scarcity that drives the wider holiday: Record Store Day says titles are split into “Exclusive,” “First,” and “Small Run/Regional” categories, and most shops will not stock every release. That means the line outside one store can look very different from the bins inside another. (recordstoreday.com) Time Out New York said this year’s Rockefeller Center releases include records from Taylor Swift, Paramore, Charli XCX and Weezer, while the live bill includes Superchunk, Avalon Emerson, Incendiary, Hotline TNT, Momma, Winter, Friko, Nuovo Testamento and Weird Nightmare. A kid-focused TiNY iNDIE program runs from 9:30 a.m. to noon with ticketed activities including DIY vinyl-making and tie-dyeing. (timeout.com) The official Record Store Day site says the event began in 2007 as a gathering of independent record store owners and employees, and the first Record Store Day was held on April 19, 2008. It now describes a network of about 1,400 independently owned stores in the United States and thousands more internationally. (recordstoreday.com) Behind the storefront rush, Goldmine reported that Microforum Service Group is handling part of this year’s manufacturing from a 60,000-square-foot plant that presses vinyl and CDs and also does printing and packaging. Noble Musa of Microforum told the magazine the company became a Record Store Day Canada sponsor in 2017 and built its operation around hitting deadlines. (goldminemag.com) Musa told Goldmine that Microforum usually makes five or six Record Store Day titles in an average year, with runs ranging from about 500 copies to a few thousand. He said the plant hits more than 99 percent of its deadlines, a metric he tied to the need to get limited releases into stores before the April rush. (goldminemag.com) At the store level, The Record Exchange in Boise said it expects 350 exclusive Record Store Day releases on April 18 and will open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with customers allowed to line up earlier. Its posted list includes Taylor Swift, Olivia Dean, Charli XCX, Ethel Cain, Tate McRae, Laufey, Paramore and others, showing how individual shops turn the national release slate into local events. (therecordexchange.com) By next Saturday, the holiday will play out in two places at once: in long lines outside neighborhood shops and in a Midtown plaza built for crowds. The records are limited, but the format is now familiar — line up early, hope your store ordered your title, and keep an eye on April 19 if it didn’t. (recordstoreday.com) (timeout.com)