This year’s Record Store Day — which happens April 20 — boasts approximately 387 different titles that will be made available at participating shops nationwide. And the numbers show there’s a voracious public hungry for physical product, further cementing the importance of owning the music you spend your good money on, as opposed to merely streaming it on a DSP.
According to Luminate, the music industry sold 49.61 million units of vinyl in 2023, an increase of 14.2 percent from the previous year. And here’s the kicker, it was the largest 12-month period for such sales since the Los Angeles-based analytic company began tracking retail data for music back in 1991. And not just for wax, but CDs as well, given the modest increase in sales that format has experienced in recent years.
So what to buy this year? Perusing through the RSD list of the upcoming titles that will be available to varying degrees of scarcity, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the staggering amount of choice available for this year’s music-geek shoppers’ holiday. But fear not, as Billboard has reviewed, researched and revisited a slew of the titles slated for Record Store Day 2024 in an effort to bring you a comprehensive compendium of picks well worth your time and legal tender.
We’re not only talking strictly vinyl here, either, as electronics and, yes, those old compact discs are also fair game this year.
Here’s a list of what we think are most worth the trouble of leaving your home to wait in a long line in hopes the person ahead of you doesn’t snag the last copy of what you’re looking for.