the record vs. the industry

Last Saturday was Record Store Day in New York City. Stores celebrated the one medium
of physical music that's kept these stores in business: the record. Surly, the instore performances also had a hand in keeping the interest in the day up, as well as the exclusive releases for that day. But why did I find myself waiting in line all day to go into a store where everything was picked over?

According to Google Trends, the term "Record Store Day" is only really searched in April, around the time of the actual date. Which makes sense, I mean you wouldn't be searching for Thanksgiving now in April now would you? (Well you might... but as a vegetarian myself not even in my thought process) But, rising every year in terms of popularity. But this got me wondering: as someone who frequents recordstores myself why is this one day the ONLY day I find these shops busy?

After going a search of Record Store Day on google insights I found that, on a international level, the USA was the top country in searching, not surprising. Number two was the UK, again not surprising, but surprising they aren't number one. I say this because the amount of 7" singles that comes out of the UK dwarfs the amount in North America. Number three was Canada which made sense, but number 4, the Netherlands. I found this surprising they were even over Australia at number five. When I followed up my search on Netherlands Record Store Day popularity I found that the amount of searches in the past year have nearly tripled in terms of popularity.

But the strangest thing I found was according to Google, in September 2007 the interest in knowing the numbers of album sales. I can't for the life of me figure out why that month in general it was so interesting to know. It's been in a pretty mainstream light that the numbers have been steadily declining as the years pass but why that month? It still remains a mystery to me.

But what I have concluded that Records aren't going anywhere. They've proven that they are the alpha medium of music and have been for decades. Even on the international level as well its obvious that they are still of interest as well. The hope of the music industry rests in the record, its only thing anymore that will sell in terms of physical copies in the realm of rock music. I might find people only showing interest in hole in the wall stores in Brooklyn on that fateful second weekend in April every year but hope they will come back is what the point of Record Store Day is, and with the interest going up, hopefully every weekend we can find ourselves waiting in a line.