It’s Black Friday Record Store Day
and I am boycotting the experience.
I thought I was going to pay a visit
to my local neighborhood record store
but they really don’t need my support
today because they get my support
probably a couple times a month,
sometimes every single week,
and the titles offered this year are
not very enticing. I read a short essay
on the socials yesterday about why
some record stores are also boycotting
the experience and it made a whole
hell of a lot of sense. The event
has devolved from what it used to
be, from a kind of holiday in celebration
of the independent record store
into a kind of pay-to-play record
label promotion that hurts an independent
record store more than it helps
and creates competition instead
of a more wholesome collaboration.
Stores have to invest a ton of money
to participate, often don’t recoup
that investment, and the selections
are often redundant, unnecessary,
or downright bad, for example, the
Soul Coughing album of Ruby Vroom
remixes, which I streamed this
morning out of curiosity, and found
about eight or nine remixes of only
two songs from the album.
Yeah, that’s what I need, eight
or nine tracks of the same two
songs made by some dumb
engineer, tunes I already have
and which were infinitely better
in their original forms. So I will
wait until the crowds die down,
I’ll let a couple of days go by,
and I will go back to my neighborhood
record store, maybe on my birthday,
and find some hidden treasure
unrelated to what has become
the crass and underwhelming
Black Friday Record Store Day debacle.
michael jarmer 
Spot on, Michael, your boycott rant has me raising a metaphorical pint to sanity this Black Friday. Bloody hell, those Ruby Vroom remixes sound like the musical equivalent of reheating last night’s curry, doesn’t it? Eight spins on the same two tracks? Pass, thanks, I’ve got the originals etched into my soul from those late-night uni sessions. Proper gutted how Record Store Day’s gone from indie love-in to label cash-grab, squeezing the life out of the very shops we cherish. Our local in Manchester’s already muttering about sitting it out too, crowds be damned. Cheers for the nudge, mate, I’ll be nipping in on Sunday for a proper rummage instead. Hidden gems over hype, always. Keep the mic drop coming.
Hey, thanks for this. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. Cheers!