The Daily Swarm

Record Store Day website

Record Store Day news on Pitchfork

Edmonton Journal: Record stores get their special day:

Mark a new holiday on your calendar: Saturday, April 19, is Record Store Day.

“If secretaries can have their own day, why can’t record stores?” asks Kris Burwash, owner of Listen Records on 124th Street in Edmonton.

Good question.

Canadian Press: Record Store Day gives music stores a new reason to celebrate:

Independent record stores across Canada are gearing up to celebrate the first Record Store Day on Saturday, with dozens of in-house performances and a national contest to find the best indie music vendor in Canada.

Record Store Day is the brainchild of a collective of media store owners in the U.S. that wanted to draw attention to the plight of independent record stores hit by a drop in CD sales and an industry supposedly wrecked by the Internet.

CBC Radio 3 host Grant Lawrence, who hosts a popular podcast devoted to independent Canadian music, came up with the idea for a concurrent contest in this country – Searchlight.

“I wanted to celebrate the entrepreneurs and these small businesses, the moms and the pops, that against all odds are surviving. Some are hanging on by a thread, and some are thriving,” he says.

NYT: Record Stores Fight to Be Long-Playing:

“Record stores as we know them are dying,” said Josh Madell of Other Music. “On the other hand, there is still a space in the culture for what a record store does, being a hub of the music community and a place to find out about new music.”

Some retailers are hoping that the effort is not too late. Jammyland and the Downtown Music Gallery, two East Village institutions — Jammyland, on Third Street, specializes in rare reggae, and Downtown, on the Bowery, in avant-garde jazz and new music — are facing untenable rent increases and are looking for new homes.

Jammyland is “the model of what a great record store can be,” said Vivien Goldman, the author of “The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Album of the Century” and other books. “D.J.’s congregate there from all over and exchange ideas. It’s a crucible of music knowledge.”

For a local music shopper with a memory of even just a few years, the East Village and the Lower East Side are quickly becoming a record-store graveyard. Across from Jammyland is the former home of Dance Tracks, a premier dance and electronic outlet, which closed late last year, as did Finyl Vinyl, on Sixth Street. Stooz on Seventh Street, Sonic Groove on Avenue B, Accidental on Avenue A, Wowsville on Second Avenue and Bate, an essential Latin store on Delancey Street — all gone, to say nothing of stores in other neighborhoods, like Midnight Records in Chelsea and NYCD on the Upper West Side.

“Rent is up, and sales are down,” Malcolm Allen of Jammyland said as he sold a few Jamaican-made 45s to a customer last weekend. “Not a good combination.”