music retail

Hollywood Reporter
Thanks to 82 exclusive releases and limited availability, customers lined up at record stores all around the country on Saturday morning and helped kick off Record Store Day 2009 with a bang. Reports suggest traffic pick-ups and sales volume this year will exceed figures for last year’s inaugural event. “It was my best day by far,” says Eric Levin, owner of Criminal Records in Atlanta and the head of the Assn. of Independent Media Stores coalition. “We had 600 people in the store; it was well-controlled chaos. My vinyl sales alone yesterday was larger than last year’s total Record Store Day take.” Michael Kurtz, executive director of the Music Monitor Network, tells Billboard that from the stores that he heard from, “the majority of the stores had matched last year’s volume by mid-afternoon.”

Seattle Weekly:
The little guys are able to cling to a life raft not accessible to the corporate giants: used CDs. And because a combination of factors has recently led to a spike in the number of people looking to sell off their CD collections, the used market has been a glimmer of sunshine because of the higher markup on previously owned CDs as opposed to new ones. While new CDs may be getting pushed out of the market, owners of all three local indies say there is definitely still a market for the compact disc-so long as it’s a used one priced at around $6.99. Though Mike Batt, co-owner of Silver Platters, says the store is relatively new to the used-CD business, that business has grown: Used CDs now make up about 18 percent of Silver Platters’ revenue, tremendous growth for something in its infancy. Similarly, Jason Hughes of Sonic Boom says used-CD sales at his stores have gone up and now account for about 10 to 15 percent of their revenue, whereas it used to account for about 8 percent.

Seattle Film and Music Blog Office of Film and Music and Special Events

Seattle Film and Music Blog

Record Store Day traffic, sales up

Used CDs: Indie Retail’s Secret Weapon