retail track
Warner Music Group’s revived Record Store Crawl returned to New York City last weekend after a five-year absence, complete with a bus full of music and vinyl fans — including Billboard’s Retail Track — that kicked things off at Tower Records’ Tower Labs space in Brooklyn with a rocking performance from 300 Entertainment recording artists Quarters of Change.
The crawl’s bus, transporting about 40 music fans, went on to visit Academy Records in Brooklyn, Audio-Technica showroom in lower Manhattan, Generation Records in the West Village; and finally, Rough Trade Records up in Rockefeller Center, all on Saturday (May 18).
Upcoming crawls are scheduled in Seattle on June 14; Austin on July 20; Nashville on Aug. 10; Chicago on Sept. 28; and Los Angeles on Oct. 19. Tickets for each crawl costs $77.45. Just like the New York Crawl, those cities will likely feature an artist performance and so far, Joe P has been lined up for the ones in Seattle and Austin; Knox for the one in Nashville; Deux Visages for Chicago; and Alicia Creti for Los Angeles.
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What’s more, vinyl and music lovers can visit the Record Store Crawl website to vote for which U.S. city will be the winner of a crawl slated for Sept. 7. All the crawls are sponsored in partnership with Audio-Technica and HeadCount. When fans vote on the WMG Record Store Crawl website for which city should receive the September crawl, the site asks if the voter is registered to vote in U.S. elections. If they aren’t, or are simply unsure, a link takes them to the headcount.org website where they can either check their status or register to vote.
The last time WMG had a Record Store Crawl was a year prior to the COVID-19 shutdown. Before the pandemic, the then-named WEA (now named WMX) held 40 Crawls in cities across the United States from 2016 through 2019, according to WMX senior director of retail & platform marketing (RPM) Gina Williams. In NYC, they were mainly held on Record Store Day. However, nowadays record stores have plenty going on that day, Williams said, so WMG’s team chose other days to bring a traffic boost to stores.
While the Record Store Day Crawl was happening in New York, WMX’s RPM team was hosting some 165 early listening events for Twenty One Pilots‘ new album, Clancy, out now on Fueled By Ramen. According to a statement issued by the company, “thousands of fans nationwide packed into their local record stores to hear the album early, connect with fellow fans and experience what independent record stores are all about: community and love of music. Moreover, in the prior year, 2023, the RPM Team hosted 972 listening party indie store activations in 2023 for 12 releases. The RPM Team and Atlantic Records were nominated for a 2024 Music Biz Bizzy for our Barbie, The Album listening events.”
In New York, Record Store Crawl fans lined up at noon outside Tower’s performance space in Williamsburg to get a bag of swag from the Warner family of labels. Retail Track’s bag contained the Keith Sweat Make It Last Forever limited-edition black ice vinyl album and a “Brother” 45 from Needtobreathe, plus stickers and other tchotchkes; as well as a raffle ticket, which would come in very handy on the bus ride between stops on the crawl.
Inside Tower, the crawlers were treated to a high-energy seven-song set from Quarters of Change, who performed tracks from its debut album, Into the Rift, and its just released follow-up, Portraits.
Quarters of Change perform at Tower Records’ Tower Labs space in Brooklyn on May 18.
Rita Vega
After the band’s set, the tour loaded onto the bus and headed to the next stop: Academy Records Annex in Greenpoint, where Retail Track scored a few singles: O.V. Wright’s “Precious Precious” on Hi Records; Arthur Prysock’s “I Wantcha Baby,” on Hy Weiss’ Old Town Records; and Shirley Brown’s “Woman To Woman” on Truth Records.
After that, the bus headed to Manhattan via the Williamsburg Bridge and the mother of all traffic jams, moving literally an inch at a time. That led to plenty of opportunities for WMX’s RPM senior manager Ross Srodo to show off his emcee prowess, while WMX RPM creative manager Eden Mili supplied pithy embellishments in her role as ace ticket number reader as the duo raffled off plenty of Record Store Day exclusives and other limited edition and/or deluxe vinyl records — all from the Warner Music family of labels, naturally. During that ride, Han Mu, one of the crawlers, said he heard about the Record Store Crawl through an Instagram post. He also hailed the crawl’s pricing, saying, “it is totally worth it.”
In Manhattan, the first stop was at Audio-Technica House, the audio equipment brand’s collaboration space in SoHo, where crawlers were treated to Banshee Winery wines and a music trivia game with the winner taking home a turntable. The rest of the crawlers got an Audio-Technica record cleaning kit.
Up next, a quick ride to Generation Records, where crawlers had the pleasure of flipping through the stacks while dining on Williamsburg Pizza. Retail Track hit the downstairs used records bargain bin and scored 10 vinyl albums, including ones by The Association, Dakota Staton, Gene Pitney, Jimmy Ruffin, Joan Armatrading and Renaissance — the latter on Warner Bros. Records.
The Record Store Crawl itself wasn’t the only attraction, as Hannah Tebo bought a ticket especially to see the performance by Quarters of Change, as did Ellen Cainsford, who flew in from Austin because she said she wanted to “see the band in a special venue for an intimate performance.” Besides her, two others traveled in from North Carolina for the Record Store Crawl, while two more music fans came from Philadelphia, WMX RPM manager Mel Hoch reported to Retail Track.
Finally, the day culminated at Rough Trade where Retail Track scored Quarters of Change’s Portrait LP. “It was great to have a busload of eager record fans of all ages pop in and take over our store briefly,” store manager George Flanagan tells Billboard. “It was a very good day already and then the music fans from the bus provided a nice spike. We sold a lot of music.”
Much like last month’s Record Store Day, Retail Track once again heard the siren call of (this time) a cold Budweiser, which was easily scored around the corner from Rough Trade at the Pig & Whistle pub. After all, Retail Track needed something to wash down the wine taste from back at Audio-Technica House.
Retail Trackback: Taylor Helps, But Olivia & Others Also Bring Big Sales to RSD 2024
If it’s possible, Record Store Day was even bigger this year than last year, when Taylor Swift caused a traffic jam at record stores across the nation, according to some of the merchants Billboard’s Retail Track columnist visited this past Saturday (April 20).
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This year, the Olivia Rodrigo “Stick Season”/Noah Kahan “Lacy” seven-inch was cited as the hottest seller by store managers and owners, but overall, a wider breadth of releases drove more traffic into stores, according to Rough Trade store manager George Flanagan.
Other big sellers — or records that the retailers wished they had more copies of — included Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” seven-inch; the Sparks/Noël double LP No. 1 Song in Heaven/Is There More to Life Than Dancing?; Talking Heads‘ Live at WCOZ double LP; Sabrina Carpenter’s “Feather” seven-inch; and a 12-inch featuring David Byrne‘s cover of “Hard Time” and Paramore‘s cover of “Burning Down The House.”
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This year, Swift issued The Tortured Poets Department on Friday, the day before Record Store Day (RSD), and it has so far sold an astounding 1.5 million records in its first three days of availability. But independent record store merchants say that while the album was a solid seller for the weekend, this album didn’t have the impact that Swift’s exclusive for last year’s RSD, Folklore: the Long Pond Studio Sessions. That’s because this year’s album was widely available at mass merchants, Amazon, and on her website, and at sale prices just a little bit above their wholesale cost. Nevertheless, retailers say they will always warmly welcome any new release by Swift.
Retail Track began the day at Darkside Records in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where at 9:15 — 15 minutes after the store opened — there were some 250 people waiting in line for their turn to enter the store. Letting customers in 15 to 20 at a time, the line — which lasted until nearly 6:30 p.m. on Saturday — stretched around the 9,000-square-foot store and deep into the filled-to-capacity parking lot. The first person in line showed up at 8 p.m. Thursday (April 18), according to Darkside co-owner Justin Johnson, who added that when he showed up to open the store on Friday morning (April 19), a full day before Record Store Day kicked off, there were already four people queued up.
“It was absolutely an incredible turnout. Everyone was really cool and we had a great time,” Johnson told Billboard. “It was our best day ever and it blew away last year’s Record Store Day, which up to then had been our best day ever.”
What’s more, one woman drove 11 hours from Michigan to shop at Darkside because of how the store had handled the autographed Taylor Swift CD last year, she told Johnson. “[She] wanted to support us for treating the Swifties so fairly and combating the bots,” Johnson said. And she showed up early enough at the store to be No. 10 in line, he added.
After leaving Darkside, Retail Track drove over the Hudson River to Middletown, N.Y. to visit Rock Fantasy, a record store/pinball machine/video game arcade. Open since 1985, Rock Fantasy leans hard rock/metal, but owner Stephen Keeler said the Rodrigo/Kahan single was the day’s top seller. He added that about 30 customers were in line when he showed up to open the store. Moreover, he says the store celebrated Record Store Day/420 by staging two shows on successive nights at Quinnz Pinz, the local bowling alley where he promotes shows. The weekend kicked off with a Grateful Dead tribute band, Gratefully Yours, on Friday night; while on Saturday night, Kiss tribute band Psycho Circus performed. On the afternoon of Record Store Day, Rock Fantasy held a pinball tournament in the store.
Some of the 250 music fans waiting on line for their turn to shop Darkside Records—a store logo displayed about the tent structures.
Ed Christman
Rock Fantasy’s layout is long and narrow, almost like a railroad apartment with five or six rooms. Besides the records, tchotchkes and other music memorabilia it sells in the front two rooms, the store also houses 53 pinball machines and a few vintage video games. Customers can choose to play on machines featuring Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Kiss, Ted Nugent, AC/DC, the Beatles, Elton John, the Rolling Stones and Guns & Roses, as well as machines licensed from movies like Jaws, Pulp Fiction, Godzilla, OO7 and Jurassic Park.
Heading back to the other side of Hudson, Retail Track tried a little potluck with a store called The Vinyl Room in Beacon, N.Y. While it turned out to be more of a bar and restaurant than a record store, it was nevertheless a fun place to visit. The space had only two racks of vinyl, mainly used records, but the store’s interior design, which used records and other music memorabilia and ornamentation, more than made the trip worth it.
Across the street, at the local VFW Hall, was the Beacon Record & CD Fest, a swap meet with about a dozen vendors where Retail Track lucked out by scoring a copy of the Tommy James & The Shondells single “Gingerbread Man” on Roulette Records.
Staying on the same side of the Hudson, Retail Track next headed to Cold Springs, N.Y. and visited Half Moon Records at The Shoppes, an emporium-style setup with a number of different rooms and stores. Half Moon, which comprised the front two rooms of The Shoppes, was filled with records. One of the co-owners, Peter Hamboussi, said the store had just doubled the space devoted to records about a month ago; while co-owner Nicole Le Blanc said the store hopes to build its country music inventory. Like other merchants, Hamboussi said he wished he had received more copies of the Byrne and Paramore record, as well as the Cranberries. He said he usually does good business on Record Store Day later in the afternoon, as devout music buyers continue on their crawls.
Finally, Retail Track headed back to New York City to visit Rough Trade Records, which had a line of about 100 people when the store opened, including customer George West, who was first in line at about 5 p.m. on the Friday night prior. West is usually first in line every year at the store for the event, reported Rough Trade’s Flanagan, who added that by 8 p.m. on Friday, five people had queued up. The line lasted all day Saturday until about 5:30 p.m., when the store stopped regulating the in-flow. Nevertheless, when Retail Track showed up at around 6 p.m., the store was jam-packed and still doing brisk business.
Rough Trade and Rockefeller Center presented Indie Plaza in conjunction with Record Store Day, where eight bands and DJs entertained music fans, Rough Trade customers, and tourists from 1PM to 9PM. Pictured above is the Rough Trade booth, stocked with records and next to it is the artist merch booth selling wares from the bands. In the background, on the stage, Armand Hammer are working their way through their set.
Ed Christman
Another factor boosting traffic and sales at Rough Trade on Saturday was that it hosted Indie Plaza in Rockefeller Center, in the vast open space above the skating rink. During the day, DJs and bands alternated playing on a stage erected at the end of the plaza abutting 50th Street, keeping the crowd entertained until 9 p.m. Rough Trade set up a booth filled with music, while next to it was another booth with merch from the bands performing that day to sell to the fans enjoying the shows. Dave The Spazz, Sunrisa Disco, and Nancy Whang took turns helming the DJ booth in between sets by Cloud Nothings, Dehd, Armand Hammer, Glitterer, Sunny War, Corridor, Snõõper and Wishy.
“Last year, Record Store Day was our best day ever and it’s worth noting that Taylor Swift was a huge part of our business that day,” Flanagan said. “I was convinced we wouldn’t be able to top that, but we did; we were up by 5% to 10% more. I think one of the reasons why [2024 RSD] became the store’s best day ever is because there was something like 20% more titles out this year.”
For the last store visit of the day, the plan was to head back to home base of Astoria, Queens, to visit the semi-new Pancake Records on Steinway Street. But Retail Track ran out of gas (figuratively) and out of time (literally) — and the local bar with cold Pabst Blue Ribbon cans was beckoning.
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