Record Store Day keeps analog alive

A line wrapped around the front of Electric Fetus on the morning of Record Store Day at 8:30 a.m. This wasn’t even the “big line.” That line, the one to get access to Record Store Day exclusive records, had already dispersed.

This line was just for people looking for a signed copy of Hayley Williams’ (Paramore) newest album, “Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party.”

After the co-owner of Electric Fetus mentioned on FOX 9 that he had 100 signed copies of the album in his hands after Williams performed in Minneapolis the night before, 200 people showed up.

“It was pure chaos,” Aaron Meyerring, who owns the record store with his wife, Stephanie Covart Meyerring, said. “Because that’s not a Record Store Day product, that’s just a normal record.”

The staff came up with a ticketing system for the Williams fans who were waiting in line before the sun came up, which for some included driving four hours to get their chance at a signed record (they got a ticket). Once 8 a.m. rolled around, Electric Fetus staff handed out exactly 100 numbered tickets.

Plenty of people walked in without a number.

“It’s the mecca,” David Markman said about The Electric Fetus, walking in with his family.
Behind the store, a mass of people huddled around a small garage, waiting for their number to be called. Inside the garage, bins of records released on Record Store Day sit, some moving faster than others. People in the crowd held onto their handwritten lists of what they hoped to find, others waited in the record store. Hundreds of numbers were to be called over the course of the day.

Given the hundreds of people vying for a chance inside the garage plus day-of hiccups, it was an otherwise well-oiled machine.

“We learned from our mistakes,” Aaron Meyerring, co-owner of Electric Fetus said, watching people browse the store’s Record Store Day exclusives. The move to having people browse for records in the garage was a COVID-19 pandemic addition that the store kept.

And for it being 2026, deep inside the era of digital music, the record store was packed. Meyerring wasn’t surprised at all.

Vinyl trends in 2026
The first Record Store Day 19 years ago was the “initiation of the resurgence” of vinyl record sales. Critics thought it was just a fad but Meyerring said sales have “nothing but grown.”

As customer demands have shifted over the last 10 years, Electric Fetus has refitted LP bins to be CD bins, and then back to LP bins.

The younger generations not only want vinyl but also CDs and cassettes, plus the technology to play the physical media. Manufacturers are scrambling to make boomboxes and Discmans again, Meyerring said.
Meyerring sees his teenage daughter, age 14, as a reflection of how young people buy music. She listens to Spotify “all day long” as a discovery channel, like previous generations used the radio. When she discovers something she likes, she purchases that artist’s music.

And the 60-year-old record store is seeing teenagers’ buying habits reflected in the store. Electric Fetus just retrofitted an area of its store for K-pop albums, which come in a mish-mash of sizes including trading cards and posters. That genre alone has created a huge demand for physical media, Meyerring said.
And four of the top five records Electric Fetus guessed it would sell ahead of Record Store Day were all favorites of younger customers – Taylor Swift, Charlie XCX, Olivia Dean, and Bruno Mars. The fifth is Pink Floyd, a vinyl legend.

“In the last 10 years we’ve had the best days in the last 60 years,” Meyerring said about the store’s record sales.

This year was the best Record Store Day the store’s ever had and one of the best sales days in the store’s history. More than half of the top 20 Record Store Day releases sold out, too.

Each independent record store is allocated different amounts of exclusive records to sell, so Electric Fetus was hesitant to hand over data for its top selling records of the day. For example, it may have gotten only five copies of one record and 200 copies of another.

Billboard reports that Pink Floyd’s “Live From the Los Angeles Sports Arena, April 26th, 1975” album was the top seller on Record Store Day nationwide, followed by Bruno Mars’ “Collaborations,” and the soundtrack for “KPop Demon Hunters” (HUNTR/X edition special effect vinyl). Bruno Mars was 2026 Record Store Day’s official ambassador.