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Business News Retail
Record Store Day a success
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 22 April 2010
Organisers of last weekend’s Record Store Day have said their day of record shop-based promotions was a big success, with many stores reporting queues down the street and twice as many sales this year as last.
The worldwide promotion’s UK coordinator, Rough Trade East’s Spencer Hickman, told reporters: “Record Store Day is absolutely the best way to celebrate record store culture around the world. It has been amazing to see the genuine public warmth and excitement created by the event. In just its third year RSD has become the UK’s biggest music event after the BRITs and Mercury Music Prize”.
According to the Official Charts Company, the promotion resulted in a 466% increase in singles sales last week compared to the previous week, and a 96% increase on single sales achieved during RSD week last year. Albums sales were up 8.9% (obviously, most of the RSD exclusive releases were singles).
But based on his own shop’s experience, Hickman says he thinks the promotion has been even more successful that those stats suggest, continuing: “If anything, these figures understate the huge upturn in sales. We had 800 people queuing when the store opened, and we were so busy in many cases we didn’t even have time to scan the barcodes. Percentage-wise we were up 633% week on week and 340% up year on year”. Managers of other shops around the UK were similarly positive of the result of the day.
Elsewhere, Kim Bayley, Director General of the Entertainment Retailers Association, commented on the previously reported appearance of various RSD exclusive releases on eBay. She commented: “We are not surprised at the number of eBay pirates out there, but we are disappointed. These exclusives were created as a thank you to genuine fans. It is a shame when people hijack collectibles like this”.
