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Business News Labels & Publishers Retail
Record Store Day breaks sales records
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 20 April 2011
This year’s Record Store Day has been deemed a success, as the Official Charts Company has confirmed that independent record shops saw singles sales double and album sales rise by 20% compared to the previous year’s event. 30 more UK shops also took part this year, bringing the total up to 180.
Record Store Day’s UK Coordinator and Manager of Rough Trade East in London, Spencer Hickman, said in a statement: “Record Store Day has been an overwhelming success. It seems to have struck a chord with artists, labels and music fans alike. It is now one of the most significant music events of the year”.
He continued: “Record Store Day is a commercial event and when measured in those terms this year was clearly the biggest we have yet seen, but just as important as that is the positivity and love for record stores and physical product that it creates”.
Speaking about the atmosphere in his own shop, he said: “We had 800 or so people in the queue and some people had to wait in line for three hours just to get through the doors, but my staff still managed to send them away happy. It was a genuinely festive experience. We had Chilly Gonzales play the opening set in the morning and watching him banter with [people in] the queue [for the till] and get the entire shop singing along with him was the perfect start to the day”.
