Siding with vinyl: Record Store Day and the branding of independent music

Abstract

In response to the digitization and corporatization of the record industry, Record Store Day brands music consumption as an ethical decision, coordinating the release of exclusive vinyl records to independent, locally owned retailers and framing an engineered collectors’ market as an annual holiday. In this article, I evaluate Record Store Day as an ambivalent brand culture – a perspective highlighting the affective and relational components of brands without privileging exploitation or authenticity. At once, Record Store Day is a commercial platform for the development of media ideologies and political subject positions on independence and a capitalist operation that compartmentalizes its corporate intermediaries and offloads financial risk onto small stores. Record Store Day’s success suggests that ambivalent brand cultures provide a productive framework through which to analyse the political and cultural possibilities of media formats and independent retail.