Humble record shop fights back

The traditional record shop is fighting back today by encouraging music fans to abandon their PCs and pop down to their local outlet to purchase the real thing: a CD or a vinyl record.

World Record Store Day comes a day after the four creators of one of the world's biggest online file sharing sites were handed jail sentences in Sweden. The Pirate Bay operators described the one-year sentences as 'crazy' and vowed to appeal.

Hollywood movie studios and other media companies had sued the site claiming they had enabled users to download copyright music, films and software.

But today's fight is being initiated by hundreds of independent local record shops across the world, including many in Ireland.

Big names in music are also giving their backing to the initiative.  Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney said there was "nothing as glamorous" as a record store. "When I recently played Amoeba in LA, I realised what fantastic memories such a collection of music brings back when you see it all in one place."

Bruce Springsteen said he was "old school" when it came to buying music. "I think you should pay for your music. But what my kids do is download a lot of things, pay for them, and then if they love something, they'll get the CD. That may be the future."

Record Store Day was conceived by Chris Brown, and was founded in 2007 by Eric Levin, Michael Kurtz, Carrie Colliton, Amy Dorfman, Don Van Cleave and Brian Poehner as a celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently owned record stores in the USA, and hundreds of similar stores internationally.

Metallica officially kicked off Record Store Day at Rasputin Music in San Franscisco on April 19th, 2008 and Record Store Day is now celebrated the third Saturday every April.