retail track
Record Store Day delivered another triumphant sales day to brick and mortar indie retailers with the hot sellers being Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams and Charli XCX titles, while the Oasis and Wicked releases were among the most in demand — if only more copies had been manufactured for the event.
While this year’s Record Store Day (RSD) represented the usual sales bonanzas for retailers, merchants in some of the stores visited by Billboard reporters said that even with one of the stronger release day schedules in recent years, it was difficult for them to top last year’s RSD, which at the time many retailers proclaimed as their best day ever.
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However, there were other mitigating factors beyond the strength of last year’s performance that were felt by stores. For instance, in the Northeast, RSD was a miserable, rain-drenched day, which put a damper on sales. But that’s not all. As Ilana Costa, who co-owns the 12-year old Vinyl Fantasy Records and Comic Books in Brooklyn with her husband Joe, puts it, “A mixture of the weather, the economy and the news about tariffs” impacted the sales at their store, which were down about one-third from the prior year. Moreover, she said the recent economic turmoil — a chaotic tariff strategy by the Trump administration and the stock and bond market meltdowns and upward swings — had been impacting the store’s performance in the weeks prior to RSD.
Vinyl Fantasy
Ed Christman
Likewise at Pancake Records in Astoria, Queens, co-owner AJ Pacheco said sales at the two-year-old store were down about eight percent from the prior RSD due to the economy, tariffs and the weather, though he thinks the early date for RSD was also a factor in the sales decline. RSD is typically held on the third Saturday of April, but this year it was on the second Saturday.
The weather in New York didn’t stop customers from standing in line at Rough Trade at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan or at Pancake Records. At the latter, about 100 customers were waiting in line when the store opened at 8 am on Saturday morning. In fact, the “line started forming last night, right about when I was closing [at about 9:30],” Pacheco reported on RSD to Retail Track. “I was worried about the customer [who lined up at 9:30] because he was young, it was pouring rain and our store is not in the center of the town,” he said. “But things worked out.”
In Manhattan, Rough Trade Records had a huge line of customers waiting to get into the store all day, which lasted until about 3 pm, after which the store let customers come in and browse as usual.
Amoeba Music in Los Angeles also had a long line waiting to get in the store when Retail Track visited at about 11:15, shortly after the store’s 11 am opening. In fact, customers began lining up two days before RSD, floor manager Rik Sanchez told Retail Track.
With that kind of anticipation, the store “did a little better than last year,” Sanchez reported, though he added that last year was also very strong. While sales were up, “it wasn’t substantially more than last year,” he elaborated.
Sanchez dismissed another factor — Coachella — that one might think would have a sales impact, at least at California stores. “No, it happens around this time every year,” Sanchez said. “[RSD] always lands on one of the Coachella or Stagecoach weekends. I remember thinking, many years ago when we first started this, ‘Oh man, Coachella is going to really have an impact on us,’ but it didn’t.”
Besides, he added, “we also get business from the people who are leaving Coachella, passing through here on Monday.”
Back in New York, Rough Trade reported that sales were up 30%, and that within that, RSD titles were up 20 percent over last year. But Rough Trade had the bonus of a newly-opened second store in the Rockefeller Center complex, this one in the below-ground retail center. That store, referred to as Rough Trade Below and measuring 8,000 square feet, tripled the company’s retail space in the complex as the Sixth Avenue store, now referred to as Rough Trade Above, has 4,000 square feet of space.
Rough Trade
Brenda Manzanedo
Rough Trade co-owner Stephen Godfroy reports that the company used the RSD titles to introduce customers to the new location, which only opened on April 8, four days before the event. Consequently, the line that stretched down the block was funneled to the downstairs store where all the RSD titles were stored.
A few years back, Swift helped change the dynamic of Record Store Day, which used to be dominated by releases of legacy titles in colored vinyl that appealed to older, mainly male, customers. When Swift was named Record Store Day Ambassador back in 2022 and released a 7-inch single of a Folklore bonus track, “The Lakes,” young fans flocked to stores. Once record labels saw that young fans would go, it led to a steady stream of RSD releases in subsequent years with titles from younger stars like Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Noah Kahan, and this year, Abrams, among others.
Nowadays, Record Store Day’s main traffic driver is young female music fans, RSD co-founder Michael Kurtz says. In fact, store merchants report that the long lines waiting for record stores to open on RSD are largely made up of younger consumers, with the older customers showing up around midday. Along that line, Rough Trade’s Godfroy says two young ladies displaced longtime Rough Trade customer George West, who is usually at the front of the queue, as first in line for RSD this year, getting there the day before.
Retail Track’s View From Eight Indie Record Stores
Shoppers line up outside Rough Trade Below in Rockefeller Center.
Brenda Manzanedo
Rough Trade: Ponchos, Pastries and The Hives in RegaliaMidtown Manhattan
People who lined up early waiting for the Rough Trade store to open received free food and drinks from the different vendors who operate in the Rockefeller Center complex, Godfroy reported. “We look after people as much as we can,” he added. Along those lines, “We gave out 2,000 ponchos to those waiting in line in the rain.”
Like other merchants, Godfroy told Retail Track that the demand for the Oasis boxset and the double LP Wicked: The Soundtrack on green/pink glitter vinyl “was ridiculous.” But like most stores, Rough Trade only got one copy of each, and he wishes more were produced. “While I realize scarcity is what drives people to the stores on RSD,” it’s not fair to the customers waiting in long lines for those titles produced in meager numbers, he added.
Similar to bestseller reports from other retailers, Godfroy said that the store’s bestselling titles were Taylor Swift’s “Fortnight,” followed by Charlie XCX’s two RSD titles — “Number 1 Angel” and “Guess” — and Gracie Abrams’ Live From Radio City Music Hall.
In addition to RSD titles and the new store, Rough Trade had another big traffic driver — iNDIEPLAZA — which each year sees the store host seven live bands playing throughout the day from noon until 9:30 p.m., headlined this year by the Hives. While he was waiting on final figures, Godfroy noted that he didn’t expect attendance to equal last year’s, when 89,000 people walked through the indie festival area, due to the rain. But he said each band drew healthy crowds during their performances, topped by The Hives, which he said drew a crowd of several thousand people.
As an added bonus for store customers, at one point earlier in the day, The Hives’ lead singer dressed up as a king in full regalia and walked around the new store signing things and in general “lording it up,” Godfroy said.
Amoeba Music: Smooth Sailing Amid ScarcityLos Angeles
Even Amoeba Music, one of the largest independent stores in the U.S., had to deal with the difficulty of obtaining the desired number of copies for the big in-demand RSD titles. Two of the titles everyone was asking for were the Wicked release and the Oasis box set, “but we only got one of those,” reported Amoeba Music’s Sanchez, regarding the British band. Another thing that doesn’t make for smooth sailing: “During the course of the week people called us all the time asking, ‘Are you going to have this [title]?’ Or ‘Are you going to have that [title]?’ It’s always the case, but we can never because we’re literally getting stuff right up until the night before.”
But other than that, Amoeba can handle whatever RSD throws its way because by now, the store staff isn’t surprised by what happens. “We’ve been doing this for so long, we have it literally dialed in; it’s like a science for us,” Sanchez told Retail Track, noting it’s generally the store’s biggest sales day of the year.
Of course, it wasn’t a science in the early days of RSD, Sanchez recalled. “When we first started this, we actually experienced … 300 people running in here, climbing all over each other, trying to get at the stuff,” he said. The staff realized they needed to handle the RSD rush a different way because that way was “freaking dangerous,” he said. “The way we do it now is smooth and it’s fair.”
So how does the store handle crowd control on RSD? “All the people that are lined up out there before we open get a menu,” Sanchez explained. “They check off what it is that they’d like to get; and then we literally, as they come in, fill their order right up in front of the floor. We just burn right through it.”
What’s more, a lot of preparation goes into prepare for RSD. “We start prepping in January for this,” Sanchez said. “We build up an inventory just for this day because, again, experience has shown us over the years that come Monday, after the weekend [RSD] binge we [would have nothing left]” to restock shelves with, because even the non-RSD titles fly off the shelves over the RSD weekend. Come Monday, if there are any RSD titles left, Amoeba Music will put them up for sale at its online store. “We wait for the weekend to be over,” Sanchez said. “The people who make the trip out get the first pick.”
For The Record: Pre-Noon Sellouts But Plenty of CoffeeGreenpoint, Brooklyn
The Brooklyn contingent of the Retail Track force first stopped by For The Record in North Greenpoint, which has been open for just shy of three and a half years. Owner Lucas Deysine said customers started lining up around 4:30 a.m. — the first person in line brought a beach chair, which he then left on the street outside the store — and the shop, which doubles as a coffee shop and cafe, first pre-opened at 8 am to allow customers to come in from the cold and rain and have some coffee and pastries while receiving a number corresponding with their spot in line.
For The Record then officially opened for RSD at 9 am, with an in-store DJ spinning while customers browsed the RSD stock in the order that they had lined up earlier — a process, Deysine said, which ran much smoother than last year. And it seems to have paid off for the shop. Deysine — who has a background in the hospitality industry but had never really set foot in a record store before opening For The Record — said the store outsold what it did last year before noon, with the hottest titles being Swift’s “Fortnight” and records from Charli XCX and Abrams. (While Retail Track was speaking to Deysine, he took a call from a customer looking for the double-LP Abrams live album, which the store had sold out of already.)
In addition to its coffee, records and used books and tapes, For The Record also holds events and early listening sessions at the store, as well as live vinyl auctions on the site Whatnot, which got its start in the trading cards business but has gotten more into vinyl record auctions of late. While there, Retail Track bought an RSD title, Sly & the Family Stone’s The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967, as well as a used copy of UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne,” single.
Retail Track also walked past the not-yet-open Record Grouch — which, even though it was cited on the Record Store Day website as having signed the RSD Pledge, sported a sign in the window informing customers, “No Record Store Day, Just Music, 2pm.”
Captured Record Shop: No Oasis, No ProblemGreenpoint, Brooklyn
After that, Retail Track moved on to Captured Record Shop — the Greenpoint store that was called Captured Tracks until recently, changing its name after the owner got tired of being confused for the independent record label of the same name — and it was still buzzing at 1:30 p.m. The store opened at noon and had a big line well before 11:30 a.m., which remained out the door until around 1 p.m. as collectors came looking for Charli XCX, Taylor Swift and Oasis (though Captured, despite ordering five copies, didn’t stock the latter).
Store buyer Nyerah Thornton told Retail Track that last year’s line was longer, but that the store was selling more this year, with Wicked, Swift and Charli XCX having the hottest records and headlining a collection that was awash in great inventory. (Retail Track bought a live recording of The Meters from 1975). The first customer of the day zeroed in on the Grateful Dead box set, undeterred by its $120 sticker price.
Earwax: Jazz Gems and Hardcore CollectorsWilliamsburg, Brooklyn
By 2 p.m., Earwax in Williamsburg only had a small crate of RSD exclusives left given the rush that had occurred before Retail Track’s arrival. The store only got one copy of the Wicked soundtrack, but it was the first record to go, snapped up alongside the Oasis record by the first person in line outside the store, who had been there for a couple of hours before opening. Sales were slower and there were fewer customers this year than last, with store owner Fabio Roberti attributing much of that to the miserable weather — though the hardcore collectors, he noted, were largely undeterred.
Those RSD exclusives can be as expensive for stores as they are for fans, which is why the shop only had one or two copies of the most high-profile titles; though the shop’s staff was more excited about records by Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra and Charles Mingus anyway, wryly hoping that no one would buy those during the day so that they could buy them themselves later. Retail Track bought the RSD title from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Peel Sessions 1979-1983, at Earwax.
Pancake Records: Sweet Sales, No TearsAstoria, Queens
Pancake Records
Ed Christman
Pancake Records co-owner Tanya Gorbunoca said she was “surprised” that the Wicked album was such a hot title this year because multiple versions of that album from the musical film have been released in the last year. Meanwhile, Pacheco, Gorbunoca’s partner in the store, said that besides Abrams and Swift, the store also received plenty of requests for Rage Against The Machine‘s Live On Tour 1993 and Post Malone‘s Tribute To Nirvana cover album, most of which couldn’t be fulfilled. “We never get enough” of the sought-after titles, Pacheco said. That particularly is hurtful when dealing with the younger customers, especially the ones who “come up with their list and we have to say, ‘Sorry, we are all sold out,’ on those titles; and then they get sad.” On the other hand, he added that this year, at least “there were no tears.”
More importantly, there were enough RSD titles this year so that everyone could get something. In looking at inventory after the weekend, Pacheco reported, “We didn’t have a lot of RSD records left over, which is different than last year. That tells me we did a good job of owning the right thing, and that we got the right amount.”
Before moving on to the next store, Retail Track bought two vinyl albums: a used copy of the Vibrations‘ Shout! album and Betty Davis’ Crashin’ From Passion.
Black Star Vinyl: Coffee and CurtisBed-Stuy, Brooklyn
At Black Star Vinyl, Retail Track found a small store that served coffee, had novelty knickknacks, what appeared to be self-printed books of various titles and a decent selection of used records, but no RSD titles. Nevertheless, Retail Track scored two Curtis Mayfield vinyl albums there: Honestly and Back To The World.
Vinyl Fantasy Record and Comic Books: No Line, No ProblemBushwick, Brooklyn
Vinyl Fantasy
Ed Christman
At Vinyl Fantasy, which caters to customers who are fans of punk, metal, experimental drone, industrial and electronica, the best sellers were Kelela‘s In The Blue Light and Earth’s Hex. Costa said that due to how the store’s inventory is slanted to the above genres, it got practically all the copies of the RSD titles it requested. When Retail Track stopped by at the store at 11:15 am, there was only one other customer, and, when asked if there was a line when she opened, Costa said no. The only other customer besides Retail Track piped in that according to Google, the store wasn’t scheduled to open for almost another hour; while Costa said she opened early just to throw a curve ball at customers.
The next day, Costa later reported, “We had a ton of new people coming into the store, and there were a surprising amount of people asking for Taylor Swift and Charli XCX, but we usually don’t do a lot of pop [sales].” The customers were disappointed that the store didn’t have music from either artist, leading Retail Track to suggest that maybe Vinyl Fantasy could explore getting more pop titles for next year’s RSD. But Costa was unconvinced. “I don’t think so,” she responded. “That’s not our jam.”
This story was prepared by Retail Track, otherwise known as Ed Christman, who deputized other Billboard staffers to take on the mantle of Retail Track for Record Store Day: Joe Lynch, Kristin Robinson and Dan Rys.
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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