Record Store Day, April 18th

Hello

So, I promised you more issue posts and here is the first of (hopefully) many.

After a (lovely) late-night at Alex's yesterday (and possibly a whole two weeks of late-nights catching up with me), I spent too long in bed today to go to Rough Trade to celebrate Record Store Day.

Here's the thing: Record Store Day is a commendable idea; one day in the year where people are encouraged to support the few local record stores we have left in the UK. The sad thing is that we need to create a whole day for this purpose.

Now, people who know me know I am a big fan of record stores and a big fan of CD's over music downloads. It runs in my blood - my father used to own a record shop and has instilled a passion not only for music but for music shopping into me. Nothing for me is more fun than spending a day trekking across London on my usual musical pilgrimage - Rough Trade in Portobello (my local) to Fopp in Tottenham Court Road and then Rough Trade East (on Brick Lane) before home.

But now, independent music stores are few and far between. I, personally, prefer physical CD's. I like the way they feel in your hand, flicking through the sleeve notes the band have designed for you, looking at the cover art and putting it in a rack surrounded by other different CD's. It's like books - for me, I will always rather have a real book than a e-book: I just like the feel. I also want to buy LP's - so much thought has gone into the songs production and order, that to listen to everything in single tracks does no justice to that effort or the music itself. But I understand that everything evolves - and that, at some point, my love for CD's will be a niche market and I will have to seek them out.

But there is the one thing that annoys me about Record Store Day: that people who will partake in it will feel like they've done a good deed shopping in an independent record shop for a day. If you love them so much, if you don't want to see them disappear, you have to use them!

I don't begrudge music stores Record Store Day - it's good PR and, unfortunately, they need to do it. I just wish they didn't!

It kind of brings me onto to illegal downloads: something else which annoys me. Now, it is not to say all of my music comes from CD's I have bought. Me and my dad are huge believers in 'sharing' music; not in a 'Pirate Bay' way, but in a 'I buy a CD I think you'll like so I burn it for you' way. Since popular music began, there has been copying and sharing. But now, the music that is being shared has come from illegal means and the musicians make nothing.

I love music, and I love music stores, and I want to give them as much money as I possibly can so they can keep providing me with something which has and will bring me endless enjoyment. Why are people so awful about giving money to things they enjoy?

It's the same way I feel about people complaining about YouTube re-designs, or Twitter advertising. If you want something, you have to accept that they have to make money to produce it. And, somewhere along the line, you have to compromise.

In one way, it's a shame I missed out on Record Store Day. But in another, everyday is Record Store Day for me. And it won't be a year before I end up in one again.

(Again, this is just a rant. It's not that I have NO illegally downloaded music, but that it is a tiny percentage. And that I don't want to see Record Stores die out when they have such a rich history and so much to give to the industry that the Internet will never be able to provide)