The Great Record Store Day Swindle

It started off as a great idea - Record Store Day started in 2007 in order to get people into physical record stores. Each year the day is celebrated with limited releases, only available on that day, and has been a resounding success. However there is a dark side and recent years have seen people who never visited a record store throughout the year standing outside stores all night, snapping up the limited edition, and then fleecing the fans on online auction sites such as eBay.

This year, yesterday in fact, April 4th, record store day saw a limited amount of 45 singles of penny lane and Strawberry Fields issued - these are already turning up on eBay for upwards of £50.

Way back in 2014 Paul Weller said he would never again be involved in record store day because of the touts and Beatles producer Giles Martin hinted on Twitter that he wants to try and get this year's  RSD release of Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields available for everyone.

“It’s such a shame because as you know I am a big supporter of independent record stores but the greedy touts making a fast buck off genuine fans is disgusting and goes against the whole philosophy of RSD. It only takes a few to spoil a wonderful concept for everyone else. Shame on those touts.” Paul Weller

Some stores said their regular customers felt alienated by the prices and the queues and now avoid RSD; some wished that any benefits could be spread across the whole year; others expressed a desire to opt out, but couldn’t afford to lose the sales; another said they had already opted out because they could no longer afford to buy stock in the first place.

This is how Record Store Days works:

Arrive at 4:00 AM on a blustery April morning and still not be the first in line.

• Incur the wrath of your line mates when you dare take a pee break in the nearest Starbucks or alley.
• Endure the stench of men who have not showered or likely left their parents’ basement in months.
• Get pushed around by hired goons and their extended family members who have no interest in talking about music, they have a list of items to buy for their eBay overlords and will kill you to get it.
• Once the doors open, get herded in like cattle and face the gauntlet of which part of the alphabet you hit first.
• Strain, hop, grope, beg and fight over access to plum bins.
• Decide what to spend your money on since there are hundreds of releases — and you already have one mortgage.
• Wait in line for another hour to pay while blocking every inch of aisle space from actual patrons of the store.
• Leave feeling exhausted and defeated yet superior to the hopeless schmoes still in line.
• Check eBay prices throughout the day to see if you are newly rich or a complete sucker.

Fuck record store day so bad man. Cba with cunts waiting in queues for shops they don't enter for another 300+ days. Twitter user

just bought the exclusive strawberry fields forever/penny lane 7" reissue at 4x markup on ebay... fuck record store day Twitter user

There have also been reports on Twitter of record stores holding back on these special items and then selling them on eBay for a fortune...Record Store day has indeed become a disgrace. And fans are threatening to boycott physical record stores over the Record Store Day which is the opposite thing of what RSD was originally intended to do.

How can record store day help record shops when all the profits are made after sale on websites like eBay?