Record shops have a future, but does the industry agree? – Kevin Buckle

We’ll find out if labels and artists still love stores in a year’s time, writes Kevin Buckle
A special edition of Belle and Sebastian's debut album Tigermilk is up for grabs todayA special edition of Belle and Sebastian's debut album Tigermilk is up for grabs today
A special edition of Belle and Sebastian's debut album Tigermilk is up for grabs today

Today is LoveRecordStores day which goes ahead in the place of Record Store Day, which itself was the postponed from April. There are several dozen previously released albums in new limited formats, mostly coloured vinyl, available, in a twist, only online from 9am.

Some big names are involved including an Oasis picture disc and Arctic Monkeys silver vinyl as well as Belle and Sebastian’s first album Tigermilk on baby blue vinyl. Lots of online events are planned for the day and more can be found at the website www.loverecordstores.com.

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Record shops in England and Northern Ireland are of course, at least in many cases, already open again, albeit fairly tentatively, but certainly the crowds that Record Store Day attracted could never have been managed so this for now is a good compromise. Record Store Day is now planned for later in the year and spread into three different events over three months but by the very nature of the queueing and the crowds normally associated with the day it is not something that will bear much resemblance to years gone by.

Looking forward to years to come quite how much new generations will love record stores is open to debate. Certainly youngsters still love bands but very few will have discovered them via a record shop. Many successful bands now to a large extent cut out record shops from the buying equation by selling to fans directly and for those bands who ironically in most cases built up their fanbase via shops it has become a lucrative business. However for new bands it is a completely different situation and while some of the business lost in new releases by big artists in shops has been made up by back catalogue sales new artists struggle to sell their music via any outlet.

Record shops may have first had to compete with the tax-dodging Amazon and then directly with the artists but now new artists are competing for the attention of their peers with The Beatles and David Bowie, Joy Division and Radiohead – and that will never end well.

Record labels have without doubt helped shops survive while closed by offering them lower prices on vinyl but I fully expect that once shops are back open and we are back to normal as much as things can be labels and their artists will return to maybe offering indies their own limited version but then offering the same release themselves with an additional incentive.

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Believe me if you offer a signed print with your new album only from your label and not available in shops you do not love record stores.

The benefit of any shop, never mind a record shop, is it offers the chance to come across something you didn’t know you wanted or even existed. One of the nice things about being in Waverley Mall is that I see far more kids from the international camps than ever before and they are so excited to find interesting things, whether it be music or a T-shirt.

Often later in the day they return with a larger group of friends proudly showing off their finds which only goes to show that shops can still have a place even with the youngest shoppers.

The future of record shops really is in the hands of labels and their artists and we will see how much they really love record stores more clearly in a year’s time.

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