By Freya Hoare
Record Store Day (RSD) has a great economic impact for record stores worldwide and helps to put otherwise only locally known independent shops on the map nationally. Alongside the increase in footfall in all the record shops that participate, other issues have become apparent. It’s not just stores which benefit from the general boost in vinyl sales. “Scalpers” have come out of the shadows, appearing on second hand online sites before the shop doors have even closed.
Originating in 2008, Record Store Day has seen an increase in the titles stocked every year. For RSD this year, over 500 titles were announced and released on the 18th April to support the stores. Over the past few years where I have actively participated in RSD, I’ve noticed the increasing level of live albums that were being released. While being a great idea for die hard fans of an artist like legends Fleetwood Mac or David Bowie, it made me wonder is there any audience for such material outside of such mega-fans? Are record labels releasing rare live demos just to have something to flog on the day?
A spokesperson for Raves From the Graves, an Independent record store in Frome, Somerset commented: “Sometimes, yes, but in reality it’s the big artists like Fleetwood Mac & David Bowie that keep people coming back. They have huge & loyal fanbases who like to buy as many of the releases as they can, and having these on RSD does really bring people to our shop.”
With Record Store day catering towards these iconic acts, many smaller artists seem to go under the radar. While a lot of record shops love to bring light to these smaller artists, as Raves From the Graves do, one of the main points of Record Store Day is to support local record shops which most definitely means buying records from those shops, and not some anonymous online seller: “We generally find that there is a demand for live albums & demos on RSD.”
Many of the Record Store Day titles available this year are live albums.
Scalpers
So-called “scalping”, where people buy up in-demand records to resell online at a huge profit, has been a controversial topic in the days after Record Store Day.
As an abiding rule of RSD, online and in person, purchases are often limited to one copy per person to diminish the chance of scalpers and keep it fair for everyone involved.
Scalpers is a term you see flying around the internet for many reasons now whether that be concert or sports tickets; it isn’t always music-related. A scalper is a person (or a computer, lets be real here) that buys large quantities of in demand items and then re-sells them at inflated prices later on. And ‘later on’ often means as soon as it has been confirmed that they have the item. It might even be before they have the item!
When there is a line heading out the door and up the street it is very hard to check whether someone is a real fan, most of the time. At Spinning Around Records in Telford, owner Emma Perks noted that “As a retailer, beyond following this rule, there isn’t a lot you can do really. You may get a feeling someone is a flipper by them only wanting the in demand lines,” and like a lot of in demand items “there will always be someone ready to buy it and flip it for a profit unfortunately.” However, it was also observed that “luckily they are few and far between anyway.”
Ian Picken is the owner of Record Vault in Broadwindsor, Dorset and a participant in Record Store Day. He describes his shop as “possibly being the most rural record shop in the UK.” It is fair to assume that with that title the possibility of scalpers entering the store and participating is rather low. Despite this, after hosting the first RSD at Record Vault, “I recognised the vast majority of my customers, and of those that I didn’t, nobody seemed to buy as I expect a flipper would.”
Would a retailer be able to spot the attributes of a scalper? Ian said, “I would certainly limit numbers if I knew someone was a scalper, but knowing and suspecting are very different as I would hate to inadvertently upset a genuine customer!”
Maybe its a bigger problem at record store in central London where staff see people camping out the night before to be as early as possible, then sought-after titles appear for sale online right away. Perhaps that’s why the “one title per person” rule is applied more rigidly in cities than in a rural place like Frome or Broadwindsor.
On the opposite end of the scale a shop who is well versed in how Record Store day has changed over the years and what it has merged into now is Phil Penman from Eel Pie Records in Twickenham, London. From retailer to retailer each experience is unique. The attitude to scalpers is completely different. “If they are prepared to stay up all night, queuing outside in all weathers, just to make what essentially will be a small sum of money due to the restrictions in place, then they must be quite desperate for the money,” he says.
Record stores – use them or lose them!
A big problem that Phil Penman has observed is “the people who in their fanaticism will queue all night to buy their target purchase and then not return to that same shop for an entire year when they return for the next RSD, if ever.
“RSD was established to give independent record shops a chance to fight back against huge retail organisations and online retailers like amazon. The clue is in the name: RECORD STORE Day. And for many years it has delivered on its objectives, but now we have something else entirely. The day has become so focussed on the products rather than the shops, that the fans (and the scalpers) don’t care about the shops one iota.”
In conclusion, it is clear that over the years Record Store Day has become less about the record shops it was supposed to support. Sadly, it seems its core values have been left behind.
A discussion with music journalists Izzy Hurcum and Leah Simons about the quantity and quality of live albums pressed for Record Store Day.
