Record Store Day

Above: the Soul & Dance Exchange in Notting Hill (I took this picture last year - it took me ages to get someone framed in the doorway, and as a bonus they looked inside).

According to the Today programme this morning, tomorrow is Record Store Day in the United Kingdom, designed to draw attention to promote this culturally-important niche retail sector. A series of live events (including performances) and activities will be taking place in the participating stores. These independent record shops have been on the retreat recently, undercut by chain store, then supermarkets, and then finally the internet.

It made me think about the possible reasons why these stores should survive:

They enable serendipity - you don't necessarily know what you want until you see/hear it.

The palimpsest argument (or flip side if you prefer) is that internet search engines are only really useful when you know what you want.

Price is unlikely to be a factor going forward, since where disposable income is concerned few people make buying decisions on price alone (and if price comes up as a factor in research then it means that the store is not doing enough to develop unique attributes).

Record stores are able to make music "products" tangible (and research shows that about 30% of the population needs to experience some form of product tangibility before they will make a buying decision).

Some people just like possessing things (LPs, singles, CDs) and downloads are never going to satisfy this desire (there is a tendentious theory that this drive to collect things goes back to prehistoric times when mankind was divided into hunters and gatherers - collecting is the primeval instinct for "gathering").

Record sleeve designs are a highly specialised and influential subsection of the art market, which operates as its own market.

The personal contact of enthusiastic store staff cannot be replicated in supermarkets or on-line.

Specific record stores are integral to the sense of identity of many people, and will attract customer loyalty for that reason (even if the staff are surly, the products badly displayed and the prices relatively high).

Specific record stores are culturally significant for the way in which they generate youth sub-cultures - for that reason alone they should qualify for subsidy by the Arts Council, since "youth culture" is one of the United Kingdom's key export sectors (music, fashion, merchandise etc).

I really like this intro to Lily Allen's LDN, which perfectly captures a typical record store enquiry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmYT79tPvLg

Soul and Dance Exchange has this (odd) promo on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH5XYRPM6U0 (not sure if they are participating in Record Store Day.