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Sound Cafe: Record Store Day Preview

Sound Cafe: Record Store Day Preview

Executive Director of The Coalition of Independent Music Stores, Andrea Paschal, will join us for an exclusive preview of 2023's Record Store Day special releases!

Record Store Day was conceived in 2007 at a gathering of independent record store owners and employees as a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding nearly 1400 independently owned record stores in the US and thousands of similar stores internationally. The first Record Store Day took place on April 19, 2008. Today there are Record Store Day participating stores on every continent except Antarctica.

This is a day for the people who make up the world of the record store—the staff, the customers, and the artists—to come together and celebrate the unique culture of a record store and the special role these independently owned stores play in their communities. Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day. Festivities include performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, DJs spinning records, and on and on. In 2008 a small list of titles was released on Record Store Day and that list has grown to include artists and labels both large and small, in every genre and price point. For several years, 60% or more of the Record Store Day Official Release List came from independent labels and distributors. The list continues to include a wide range of artists, covering the diverse taste of record stores and their customers.

The Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS) is a collective of 40 independently owned record stores in 25 states throughout the country. CIMS was the first record store coalition -- founded in 1995. We are co-founding members of Record Store Day and long time members of the Music Business Association (formerly NARM). We are also the owners of the independent distribution company, ThinkIndie that we founded in 2002. We are not a chain, but a coalition of locally owned record stores working together for the betterment and support of each other, our industry, the artists we love and the music fans that make this all possible.

The stores that make up CIMS are all very different, but we share the same desire – to be the heart of our communities, to super-serve our customers and to share our love of music. Our stores are found in major cities, college towns, bustling suburbs and tourist meccas. We range from massive storefronts to hidden neighborhood gems – we can guarantee that no two are alike. You will find deep catalog, rare imports and the broadest music selection available in our stores – we pride ourselves on that.  Many of our stores even carry audio equipment (turntables, speakers, headphones, etc.), music and feature film DVDs, and music paraphernalia such as t-shirts, posters, figurines, and the like. The stores that make up our coalition are consistently honored in “Best Of” record store lists by national publications such as Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, Pitchfork.com, USA Today, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal

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