Record Store Day comes of age: the impact on the industry 18 years later

The Record Store Day comes of age: Saturday 18 April marks the 18th edition of the world day of proud of the vinyl record, an event created in support of independent record shops at a time when the "magnificent fates and progressions" of the digital revolution applied to music were anything but pronostable.

The format is the tried-and-tested one: record companies release limited physical releases: from No Country For Old Men by doPE, a project combining Doors drummer John Densmore and Chuck D of Public Enemy, to the Saving Grace Ep: All That Glitters... by Rober Plant and Live From Asbury Park 2024 by Bruce Springsteen. Records that on Record Store Day are only sold in traditional shops and later also online.

Even in 2026 there is an ambassador: this time it's Bruno Mars, the artist with 135.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, fresh from the release of The Romantic album, who is releasing The Collaborations, a collection of his most famous feats (from Uptown Funk with Mark Ronson to Die With A Smile with Lady Gaga). And there are more or less special events at independent record shops all over the world: here in Italy, the set by Archive and JoyCut at Semm in Bologna, the electronica concept 'Expect a few special friends spinning records all day long!" at Serendeepity in Milan, Discoteca Laziale in Rome and Disco Club in Genoa, which will receive Slow Music plaques during the day, becoming part of the Slow Music Presidium network, and the Piro Music Store in Cosenza, which is celebrating its 60th birthday.

The spirit is the same as it was in 2008, when Metallica christened the first edition of the initiative at Rasputin Music, a shop in Mountain View, California: record shops - for as long as discography has existed as cultural supply centres - were in danger of succumbing as innocent victims in the midst of the web storm that had brought with it Mp3 and filesharing. So much for the industry's supply chain. Offering traditional record shops the opportunity to sell special limited editions for one day a year was an important signal, to which many artists and virtually all record companies were happy to contribute. History has been known to feed on symbols: Metallica was the same band that sued and won the Napster lawsuit between 2000 and 2001, the first (illegal) virtual music exchange on the web; Mountain View is of course the home of Alphabet Google, the tech industry heavyweight that also has a say in music distribution through YouTube.

But 18 years (and 18 editions) later, can the Record Store Day experiment be said to have succeeded, compared to its initial intentions? Let's try to answer numbers in hand. And let's start with independent record shops: up until the end of the 20th century they represented the backbone of distribution and here in Italia there were something like 1,300 of them. If we keep an eye on the Ateco category of Retail trade in music and video recordings, according to the Infocamere system of Unioncamere, in 2009 there were 297 establishments registered in Italia. A vertical collapse. In 2017, however, there were already 396 establishments in the system and in 2025 they would rise to 414. There have been resounding closures, as we know: memorable shops such as Buscemi and Mariposa in Milan, Disfunzioni Musicali and EffettoSuono in Roma, Flying and Tattoo in Naples have all gone in recent years, but there is clearly also turnover.