Record Store Day is getting a book-length origin story.
On April 12, ahead of the annual celebration’s 15th anniversary, Rare Bird will publish author Larry Jaffee’s Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century, a book recounting how the long-running event helped save independent record stores across the world and played a major role in relaunching the now-booming vinyl format. The tale is told in the voices of those who were pivotal to the movement, including RSD’s founders, artists who were supportive of the event and independent record store owners, among others.
Jaffee is a New York-based journalist who teaches writing at the New York Institute of Technology and Mercy College and serves as co-founder/conference director of the Making Vinyl series of conferences that center on vinyl’s resurgence. Last year, the format saw its biggest sales year since MRC Data (formerly Nielsen Music and SoundScan) began tracking music sales in 1991. In 2021, 41.72 million vinyl LPs were sold in the U.S., comprising one out of every three albums sold in the country.
Hardbound and trade paperback editions of Record Store Day: The Most Improbable Comeback of the 21st Century will be available at independent record stores, bookstores and other booksellers starting on April 12. And on Record Store Day 2022 (April 23), a hardback, limited-edition Think Indie x RSD + Vinyl edition of the book – packaged with an album of songs recorded at record stores across the U.S. by artists including Paul McCartney, Metallica and Billie Eilish – will arrive in record stores.
On Jan. 20, Taylor Swift was named Record Store Day’s first-ever global ambassador. This year’s RSD drop will include an as-yet-unannounced title from the pop superstar, who boasted three of the top 10-selling vinyl albums in the U.S. last year: Red (Taylor’s Version) (260,000 copies), Evermore (249,000) and Folklore (195,000).
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Tagged: business, Business news, entertainment blog, Larry Jaffee, music blog, Record Store Day, Retail, Vinyl