Record Safari at Coachella

Record Safari kept selling vinyl during Coachella’s second weekend, turning Record Store Day on April 18 into part of the festival itself. (ocregister.com) The shop sits inside the Coachella grounds in Indio, California, and the April 19 feature described festivalgoers flipping through new and used records just steps from the entrance. Owner Alex Rodriguez told the Southern California News Group operation that the store has grown over the past decade from a smaller setup into a built-out retail space. (ocregister.com) This year’s overlap was calendar-driven: Record Store Day fell on Saturday, April 18, 2026, during Coachella Weekend 2. Record Store Day says the event began in 2007 to celebrate independent record stores, and its first official day was April 19, 2008. (recordstoreday.com) Coachella’s own site lists the festival’s 2027 dates as April 9-11 and April 16-18, confirming the event’s two-weekend format that lets side attractions like Record Safari build repeat traffic. The April 19 article said Weekend 2 crowds were still browsing on Sunday as the festival closed out. (coachella.com) (ocregister.com) The store’s appeal is different from a merch tent. The article said fans came in for exclusive Record Store Day titles, used LPs and international pressings, giving vinyl collectors a reason to stop between sets instead of only buying artist-branded apparel. (ocregister.com) That fits a broader vinyl market that has outlasted its niche revival. The Recording Industry Association of America said vinyl revenue in the United States reached $1.4 billion in 2025, the 18th straight year of growth, while compact disc revenue was $541 million. (riaa.com) Record Store Day also now operates at international scale, with participating stores in the United States and thousands of shops worldwide, which helps explain why a festival audience already primed for music discovery would recognize the brand. The official 2026 page lists dozens of limited releases across rock, jazz, country and soundtrack catalogs. (recordstoreday.com) The result is a small retail space doing something Coachella usually leaves to streaming playlists and merch booths: slowing people down long enough to dig through crates. By Sunday, the record shop was functioning as both a festival stop and a temporary record store holiday outpost. (ocregister.com)