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Arts & Culture

Record Store Day Is Black Friday For Vinyl Lovers

Andrea Richard

Today digital music sales are a huge part of the music industry. And record stores are now a rare entity.  

But as we told you last week, there's a renewed passion for vinyl. Call it a vinyl revival, a resurgence of music with a tangible element.

This popularity stirs up once a year on Record Store Day. It's like a field day for record collectors.

Last Saturday, Radio-Active Records had a line of people since 3 a.m., waiting to get their hands on limited-edition merchandise.

Credit Andrea Richard

Carolina Weddle drove up from Miami to get to Radio-Active Records at 5 a.m., four hours before the store would open its doors. She, like many others, camped out in anticipation.

But it started to rain.

"We came out here and it started pouring. Everyone was freezing," she says. "I was shaking. I don't even know how people did it. People stayed in the rain for hours."

Those early comers were on a mission to get their hands on limited-edition vinyl that only comes out on Record Store Day.

Credit Andrea Richard
The reissue of Notorious B.I.G. limited edition for Record Store Day 2014.

Radio Active's managing partner Mikey Ramirez says the exclusive releases contribute to RSD being the store's biggest event of the year.

He says he got a bunch of inquires from people who called in about "the reissue of Notorious B.I.G, a reissue of the Outkast's first album, Peanuts portable turntable," says Ramirez.

"So yeah. It's the same thing as Black Friday," he says. "People camp out."

Carolina Weddle, who arrived at 5 a.m., left with a big bag of records. She really wanted this year's Ghostbusters 30th-anniversary edition,  a 10-inch glow-in-the-dark picture disk. But it sold out before she could get it.

Ramirez suggests to customers who couldn't find what they were looking for to check online. He says to look at Discog.com or forums for record trading. There's also Vinylfy in Miami, a social network for record collectors.

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