This Saturday started a lot earlier for some Calgarians. Read More
It’s not just about the niche artists anymore, with folks lining up to get vinyl exclusives by the mainstream artists
It’s not just about the niche artists anymore, with folks lining up to get vinyl exclusives by the mainstream artists
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This Saturday started a lot earlier for some Calgarians.
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Across the city, lines began forming outside neighbourhood record stores, with some enthusiasts barely getting a wink of sleep the night before, just to maximize their chances of getting the coveted Taylor Swift exclusive, in vinyl format.
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“Taylor Swift is the one,” Austin Geis, who manages Recordland Limited in Inglewood said.
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In lieu of Record Store Day, which falls on April 12, he and store-owner Eraz Cohen put out a request to customers asking them what vinyls they want brought in.
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Taylor Swift, Post Malone, Charli XCX — it’s not just about the niche artists anymore, according to Cohen.
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“It depends on the crowd,” he said.
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Record Store Day, a semi-annual event established in 2008, was meant to bring back the old-school culture of vinyl stores — buying physical copies of music, browsing in the stores and flipping through records, chatting with other music aficionados who may or may not share the same taste.
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Both Cohen and Geis say they’ve noticed a resurgence in demand for vinyl, but can’t say if it’s because of Record Store Day.
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“There’s a general correlation between the two,” Geis said, adding that out of 80 people standing in the lineup outside his store Saturday, he could recognize about 40 per cent of them. “So it really does bring out other people,” he said.
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But the nature of who buys what has changed, aligning with modern trends in music.
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“We got the boomer generation that’s looking for the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd. And then there’s the Millennial and Gen X, grouped together, they’re looking for stuff all over the board .. and there’s the Zoomers. They’re looking for Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams and stuff like that .. like modern stuff. And that’s a huge portion of it,” Geis said.
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Brooklyn Bechtold, who works at Luke’s Drug Mart in Bridgeland, said people lined up outside of the store to get their hands on exclusives like Taylor Swift, Bon Iver but also soundtracks to popular movies like Harry Potter.
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“We only had a few copies of them, and they went up like so fast,” she said. “Everyone was so excited.”
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The store, she added, had lineups forming outside as early as 5 a.m. “All the way around the block” she said. “And people just rushed in here.”
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Mae Overholt, at the store with her father, said she wanted to take advantage of the day to browse for some vinyls, sold on discount. Using a “Friends of CJSR” discount card given to her by a friend, she plans to purchase some vinyls of Radiohead, Fleetwood Mac, Zach Brian — “my music taste is pretty broad,” she added shyly.
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She plans to try them out on her record player at home, a birthday gift from her grandfather from a few years ago.
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