Free Republic

...when the second annual Record Store Day arrives Saturday, artists and labels will be out in force: More than 1,000 stores worldwide... will offer in-store events or performances by dozens of artists... ...A resurgence in interest in vinyl records (with sales climbing 89 percent last year to 1.8 million) has helped these independent operators stay in business... "The reality is we were over-retailed," says Michael Kurtz, president of Record Store Day and the marketing company Music Monitor Network. "We had about four times as many stores as the market could bear... But there are new ones still coming, and it's...

On a recent Monday, six people — soon enough four, then two — were browsing the bins of compact discs at Norman’s Sound and Vision, a music store on Cooper Square in Manhattan, around 6 p.m., a time that once constituted the daily rush hour.A decade ago, the number of shoppers might have been 20 or 30, said Norman Isaacs, the owner. Six people? He would have had that many working in the store. “I used to make more in a day than I probably make in a week now,” said the shaven-headed Mr. Isaacs, 59, whose largely empty aisles...