Among the many issues that came up at last week’s Record Store Day’s Summer Camp at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans, escalating vinyl prices and the list of Record Store Day (RSD) releases were some of the most talked-about.
But first came a celebration of RSD itself. Giving credit where credit is due, Carrie Colliton, director of marketing for the Dept. of Record Stores/Record Store Day — who served as the conference’s emcee, introducing panels during the four-day-event — began a Record Store Day town hall by acknowledging that in creating RSD, “we changed the world for the better.”
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But she acknowledged that the RSD list, how many titles are on it and those titles’ allocations remain key issues for store owners. “We used to have a list of about 500 titles, but feedback said that was too many titles, so nowadays we have about 350 titles,” in the U.S., she said. She added that most store owners feel that’s the right number, as it allows the list to include titles that appeal to all kinds of music fans and age demographics.
In putting together the list, the RSD folk said they consult with key retailers — about 10 or 12 stores who remain anonymous — and ask them if submitted titles should be accepted for the day, and if so, how many should be produced. “So it’s not labels, but retailers, picking the list,” Colliton said.
On how many copies of RSD titles are produced, “allocations will never be perfect,” she said. “All kinds of things happen on allocations. We down know if an artist will break in between the setting of the number of units and when RSD happens. Other things can happen, we can say press 2,000 but we may only get 1,724 because the manager wants 75 copies and some records are damaged; or things get lost on a truck. We are doing our best to make it a seamless process as possible, but it will never be perfect.”
Besides, said Andrea Paschal, executive director of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS), while “there may be some titles that are severely underproduced, the exclusivity on titles is important. If everyone gets everything they want on that day, it will reduce the importance of it.”
Colliton added that while some merchants may not like it when a title only has an exclusive window for RSD and then allows more copies to be manufactured at a later date, they should be respectful of artists who have staff, with a huge payroll to finance.
Rising Prices and Tariff Troubles
Speaking of economics, pricing was on the minds of worried store owners, as the last two or three years have seen steadily escalating vinyl prices. On top of that, more price hikes appear to be on the horizon, thanks to the current U.S. administration’s tariff rollouts targeting countries around the world. It was noted that while vinyl records and CDs may not be impacted because they are exempt from tariffs, the ingredients that help make finished commercial vinyl records and CDs will be hit by tariffs, meaning price increases will be an ongoing issue.
Vinyl Alliance general manager Ryan Mitrovich said the reality is that with vinyl record prices rising, “Our research shows consumers are still buying — but they are buying less.” Aleah Tucker, owner of Buffalo, Minn., record store Indie Earth, added “We are seeing customers that used to buy three or four records every week, but now they are only buying one or two records — or they are coming to the store less often.”
Another move customers are making to offset vinyl pricing is switching to buying CDs, as noted by a few retailers in the audience. In fact, Mike Fratt, who surveyed indie store owners after Record Store Day and received 61 responses when he presented the results of his research, noted that with ever-increasing vinyl pricing, CDs are holding their own.
For over 10 years, CDs sales have been declining, according to RIAA data, but in 2023 the configuration appears to have finally hit the bottom, with 2024 showing a slight upswing.
During his data presentation, Luminate director of partnerships Chris Muratore noted that pricing is a factor by age. For the younger demo, $29 is an optimal price point for vinyl records, while older demos’ optimal price point is $34, he reported. When prices are above that, it begins to impact sales, he said.
Moreover, escalating prices are having an impact on album variants — releases that come out in multiple colors, or with multiple covers, or with multiple different tracks, or combinations of those strategies. For one, all the variants are making it difficult for retailers to stock the proper amount of each version of albums — not to mention tying up more of their inventory spend, it was acknowledged. One retailer in the audience noted that as vinyl goes up in price, customers are becoming more selective, while another said it’s a myth that customers will buy more than one copy of an album with a lot of variances. “Unless it’s Taylor Swift,” another merchant added.
Additionally, some customers tend not to buy albums on their street date but wait for the deluxe version later on — a trend owing to the common practice of releasing a deluxe version of an album months after its initial release date. In the meantime, they get their music fix for that release online, it was pointed out.
A History of Indie Retail Resilience
As part of the gathering’s Wednesday morning general session, Concord’s Donna Ross and Adam Abramson, a consultant for music streaming and commercial sales and marketing, recounted the history of the trials and tribulations of indie retail. They kicked off the segment with Chumbawamba’s “Tub Thumping” — a song that boasts the famous lyrics, “I get knocked down but I get up again” — which would be employed throughout, after each retail challenge was described.
Ross began the history lesson by reminding the audience that early on, with the emergence of home taping from radio, the big worry was no one would buy music again. But cassette tapes soon became a new album format, albeit one with the unfortunate quality of being small and thus easy to steal, requiring them to be locked up.
In the 1990s, the labels began to see used CDs as the problem and threatened to withhold co-op advertising — typically a $1–$2 wholesale discount per copy in exchange for prominent in-store placement, like end-caps, instead of burying the title in a bin, as well as helping to pay for the album’s advertising in local media. Some labels even considered suing stores that sold secondhand discs, Abramson recalled.
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Ross added that when Garth Brooks came out and said he would no longer allow his music to be sold to stores that carried used CDs, Music Millennium led indie retail’s pushback with a “Garth-a-cue” of Brooks’ records in front of the Capital Records building in Los Angeles. “Indie stores won that battle,” Ross said.
The next problem became big-box retailers like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Circuit City selling CDs as loss leaders, Abramson recounted. “At first, indie stores combatted that by going to those stores and buying” their stock from them instead of ordering from labels, he said. That got the labels’ attention and “eventually the labels got on board by initiating minimum advertising price policies.”
Indie stores’ problems didn’t end there. “Next came digital piracy and CD burning; and soon the iPod and iTunes with their 99 cents songs threatened indie stores allowing fans to carry a million songs in their pocket,” Abramson said, with Ross adding, and “soon came along streaming with all the music you can eat for the price of a [CD] album.”
But indie stores survived that, along with new challenges like the inauguration of the Friday street date, which eliminated a big mid-week [Tuesday] revenue day for store owners, Abramson said. However, the latest problem, Ross pointed out, is the direct-to-consumer trend among labels and artists, which cannibalizes sales from stores — especially when an album like Taylor’s Swift’s The Tortured Poet’s Department is offered directly to fans at the same wholesale prices offered to stores, as one audience member pointed out.
Not only has indie retail survived its many challenges — which includes real estate rent pricing, as the duo noted — they’ve actually thrived, and even expanded their footprint.
One of the things that helped indie retail was the formation of coalitions, Ross said. In fact, the Coalition of Music Stores (CIMS) is celebrating its 30th anniversary, as promotions strategically placed around the hotel noted (other coalitions were in attendance at the conference too). Finally, Abramson noted that the creation of RSD “changed the culture and gave stores the biggest [sales] day of the year.” It also gives indie stores a voice within the industry, Ross added.
Records as Ritual: Rundgren’s Philosophy on Music
A highlight of the Wednesday summer camp schedule came with a conversation with legendary artist/record producer Todd Rundgren, conducted by music and entertainment author Paul Myers, who wrote biographies on the BareNaked Ladies, Long John Baldry, and John Candy, as well as a book looking back over Rundgren’s career, entitled A Wizard a True Star: Todd Rungren In The Studio. For the last five years or so, Myers has also been the host of the weekly Record Store Day podcast, which the RSD website describes as an “informative, record store-centric interview show featuring conversations with great guests talking about records, record stores and experiences in the physical retail space.” Notably, the RSD podcast features “theme music and selected interstitial music” composed by Myers.
The conversation with Rundgren — who has produced, among other things, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell album, Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re An American Band,” and albums for XTC and the New York Dolls — began with the producer’s observation that he views “records as a word separate from the media they are on. You don’t have music until you put it on the turntable [and play it.] Otherwise, all you have is plastic and cardboard.”
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Later, the conversation moved beyond the studio, with Myers asking whether Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell was meant as a parody of Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run. He quickly followed that with the question: “How did you make a pop star out of Meat Loaf?”
Rundgren responded that to his mind, since some of Meat Loaf’s songs composed by Jim Steinman were seven minutes long, “it was” a parody of Springsteen. To that, he added, “I’m convinced it was the key to the record’s success.”
As to how Meat Loaf became a pop star, Rundgren said that was a long road, noting it took the Meat camp six months to find a label to release the record because “no one wanted to put it out” — at least not until Cleveland International and the late Steve Popovich came along. “Steve wouldn’t give up on the record,” Rundgren said, adding that another big help was that Meat Loaf “toured relentlessly” to promote the record.
