BEDA #17: Record Store Day — Please visit the Indies, not the Chains

Record Store Day is a good thing. It gets lotsa peo­ple into lit­tle record shops when lotsa peo­ple swing in and out of JB Hi-Fi too often these days. So it is with bemuse­ment that I see  www.recordstoreday.com.au fea­tur­ing in-store apper­ances at JB Hi-Fis, Vir­gin Mega­s­tores, San­i­tys and HMV. Surely this is not the point of Record Store Day? So what’s the story?

It turns out that AMRA (who rep­re­sent those big music chains) was told it couldn’t par­tic­i­pate in Record Store Day because the day is sup­posed to be an excer­cise in pro­mot­ing inde­pen­dent shops. But of course AMRA and the big chains pushed on any­way and are pro­mot­ing their ‘unof­fi­cial’ involve­ment in Record Store Day. And guess who owns and runs www.recordstoreday.com.au? Yep, AMRA. Sticky Car­pet in the Age touched on this today but con­tin­ued to pro­mote both the indie shop events and the AMRA shop events (#AMRAfail, #HMV­fail, #JBHi­Fi­fail, #Vir­gin­Mega­S­tore­fail, #San­i­ty­fail, #TheAgefail).

So please visit www.recordstoreday.com/Australia for the com­plete, authen­tic list of inde­pen­dent record stores to sup­port tomor­row. After all, the lit­tle guys only get one day. The chains get Christmas.