The popularity of Record Store Day – and its Black Friday edition – is turbo-charging the collector mentality at the expense of the average buyer
In the UK, it didn’t take long for Black Friday – a sales event pegged to
Thanksgiving in the US – to go from novel to normal. Its impact on the
music industry has been less conspicuous than the gaudy discounts toted by mainstream retailers, but no less significant. Founded in 2008, Record Store Day (RSD) proper takes place every April; in 2010, its
American organisers introduced RSD Black Friday, intended as a celebration of independent shops and special-edition records as the antithesis to the corporate frenzy. “Cheapness is not a main goal,” they explain. “Celebrating art is.”
Their choice of words is telling. RSD Black Friday has also made it to the
UK in recent years: at my local record shop last week, people queued for the 8am opening to snag the nearly 100 special releases. Early sellouts included a 12-inch picture disc of Jimi Hendrix’s Merry
Christmas and Happy New Year (£28). A 12-inch of Lizzo’s Coconut
Oil was pressed on coconut-coloured vinyl with a coconut-scented insert (£25). If you missed those, you could grab Lou Reed’s 2003 album, The Raven, for £50.