Record Store Day a brief boost for ailing retailers

By Cortney Harding

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Perhaps the image that best sums up Record Store Day is this: Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach DJ'ing an afternoon set at Manhattan's Other Music, with two iPods set atop silent turntables.

While the shop was crowded and the register lines were long, Auerbach's small visual statement seemed monumental. Even on Record Store Day, the record had been supplanted.

It's too early to tell whether Record Store Day -- an organized push on April 19 to get customers to support their local music store -- will have any sort of lasting effect or that the event was merely an extra Christmas in April. According to Nielsen SoundScan, indie sales were up 1.6% from the same week last year, while chain sales were down 20.8% from last year. Overall, album sales were down 8.1% for the week.

Some indie retailers in certain cities did see their numbers move substantially on Record Store Day. In the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Calif., area, sales were up 12% compared with the prior week, probably due in part to Metallica playing an in-store and signing albums at Rasputin's in Mountain View, Calif., an event that drew 400 people.

In Philadelphia, sales rose 13% compared with last week; at AKA Music, the presence of performers like Homeblitz, members of the Spinto Band, Pepi Ginsberg and a member of Dr. Dog kept shoppers coming in, with manager Mia Jaffe saying the store doubled its business on Record Store Day.

The presence of Dresden Doll Amanda Collins painting her underwear at Newbury Comics helped to move the needle in Boston, where chain sales were up 4% compared with the week before.

Jason Nickey, owner of Landlocked Records in Bloomington, Ind., says he sold a typical day's worth of merchandise in an hour. At Sound Fix Records in Brooklyn, fans lined up at 7 a.m. to catch a live in-store performance by Regina Spektor; events coordinator Tammy Hart says sales probably doubled. (Hart also reports that the nearby pizza shop told her it was one of the best days it had ever had.)

Nashville store Grimey's reported a 400% increase over what it would take in on a usual Saturday, with owner Doyle Davis saying, "It was far and away the highest gross we've ever had and beat our previous single-day record by almost 25%."