VIA PRESS RELEASE | In 2007, record stores were told that they were over, relegated to a footnote in the history of modern music.
Instead of reading their own obituary, a bunch of record store owners decided to throw a party with their friends, some of whom happened to be among the greatest musicians and bands around. In the past fifteen years, that party has grown, exponentially and worldwide, becoming the largest single-day music event in the world, and accidentally relaunching the vinyl format, a physical medium that, in 2021, saw its greatest sales in three decades, and challenges streaming services for supremacy with music fans. How did that happen? Who were the people behind it? Why did they succeed beyond all odds?
Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century tells this story in the voices of the artists who love them, the people who founded Record Store Day, and the people who make up a record store: those who run them, those who shop in them and those who make the music they love in them. Written by Larry Jaffee, a New York-based journalist, editor, and teacher at Mercy College and the New York Institute of Technology, and Conference Director for the Making Vinyl series of conferences.
Hardbound and trade paperback editions are available at indie record stores, bookstores and other booksellers starting April 12, and a limited edition Think Indie x RSD + Vinyl edition, a hardback book packaged with an album of tracks recorded at record stores around the US (featuring Paul McCartney, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Billie Eilish, Brandi Carlile, Imagine Dragons, Jason Isbell + the 400 Unit, Justin Townes Earle, Regina Spektor, Frightened Rabbit, Mudhoney, and Jose Gonzalez) comes to record stores on April 23.