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Mar 13, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Record Store Day

In what is not an entirely unexpected move, Record Store Day has been postponed due to concerns about the COVID-19 Coronavirus. The annual event was due to take place on Saturday, April 18 and has now been moved to Saturday, June 20.

The organizers of Record Store Day have issued the following press release statement about the postponement:

“Record Store Day is a worldwide event involving thousands of people and small businesses. In our discussions over the past few weeks, information came and changed daily, and then hourly, along with the news cycle. We’ve taken all of that information to heart as we’ve gone over the various options that involved staying the course, moving the date, even changing the structure of the event. At the risk of stating the obvious, no one knows what things will look like in any given place over the next five weeks, but it is imperative that hard decisions for that time period need to be made right now, using current facts. There is no perfect solution. There is no easy answer.

“So, we’ve decided that, this year, our best possible move is to change the date of Record Store Day to Saturday, June 20.

“We think that this takes into consideration the recommendations of the many doctors and scientists lending their expertise to help in the Coronavirus pandemic, as well as the many other individuals at the World Health Organization (WHO), Center for Disease Control (CDC) and other agencies tasked with the difficult job of getting us through this crisis.

“RSD acknowledges the need to be good citizens of both the local and worldwide communities while still giving our participating stores around the world the best chance to have a profitable, successful Record Store Day.

“We’re working with all of our partners and our stores to make this change as smooth as possible for everyone who participates in Record Store Day, including the customers, the record stores, the artists, labels and more.

“Record Store Day happens everywhere, every year, and we want to hold our party when everyone can gather around safely to celebrate life, art, music and the culture of the indie record store.”

As with every year, the basic idea is to get music fans out to their local independent record store to buy a bunch of exclusive limited edition releases before they end up on eBay. They include reissues that haven’t been on vinyl for years (or ever before), as well as brand new releases.

Some of the highlights of this year’s Record Store Day offerings include releases from David Bowie, Beck, Suede (a reissue of their debut), Air (The Virgin Suicides), Mac DeMarco, Tegan and Sara, Iggy Pop, The Cure, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish (Live at Third Man Records), Philip Glass, Galaxie 500, Glass Animals, Miles Davis, New Order (a John Peel session from 1982), Pale Saints, the soundtrack to The X-Files, Surfer Blood, Gorillaz, and much more, including the one you’ve been waiting for…the soundtrack to Batman & Robin.

Check out the extensive full list of releases here.

www.recordstoreday.com

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