Article Marketing / Communications 2 min read
Beyond Record Store Day: Indie Record Sellers Launch “Vinyl Tuesday”
In an attempt to keep up momentum around the annual Record Store Day, the American Association of Independent Music is launching a new once-a-week event to celebrate the latest in vinyl music. Vinyl Tuesday could also take the sting out of the record industry's upcoming shift to a Friday release date for new albums.
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The CD may not be having the easiest time (opens in a new tab) these days, but its predecessor is doing just fine.
That’s evidenced by the launch of Vinyl Tuesday, a weekly event backed by the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), which aims to take the industry’s recent success with Record Store Day and expand it to other parts of the calendar.
“Every Tuesday, participating retailers will celebrate by highlighting special-edition, catalog, promotional, and new releases on vinyl,” explains A2IM (opens in a new tab), which is backing the new retail event. “The goal is to maintain and grow physical retail while giving music fans more compelling reasons to support this important part of the music-business community.”
Record Store Day (opens in a new tab) has been an unqualified success in driving interest in an old-school format. In an age when streaming is so hot that Jay-Z wants in on the action, vinyl records are moving steadily, with a little more than 9 million sold in 2014 (opens in a new tab). (The biggest seller of last year was Lazaretto, a solo album by noted vinyl enthusiast Jack White.)
But beyond pushing vinyl, the new weekly celebration has another side benefit for indie record stores: It offers them a new point of interest on Tuesdays at a time when the industry is moving toward a Friday album-release date internationally. The strongest critic of the date change was the Department of Record Stores, the A2IM subsidiary that’s behind Record Store Day.
A2IM wasn’t able to prevent the global date change, which takes effect July 10, but it is working to keep its members abreast of the issues being raised by it.
Vinyl Tuesdays won’t follow the Friday drop date but will be counted as part of the normal sales week.
“Vinyl Tuesdays is an opportunity for independent retail to drive traffic to stores on an additional day of the week, as well as highlight key vinyl releases with a dedicated street date,” A2IM said in a news release (opens in a new tab).
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