Another Record Store Day done. The shop opened at 7am and the line was already to the corner. By 10:30 we had moved more vinyl than most full Saturdays in a quiet month. The day is still one of the strangest commercial events in music retail and I am still not entirely sure what to make of it twenty years in.

The headline observations from the day at Spank.

The big-format reissues moved fastest. The two genuinely scarce reissues on the list — the obvious ones that anyone who follows this stuff already knew about — sold out before 9am. Both went mostly to collectors with multiple bags and no real intention of playing them. The same people every year. The same conversation about whether to limit one per customer that we never actually enforce.

The Australian releases were the surprise of the day. The local-artist exclusive pressings have been getting stronger every year. We had three Australian RSD releases this year that moved more units than I expected. The audience for these is not the collector with the multiple bags — it is the casual customer who is excited about a specific artist and is willing to come down for a special pressing of an album they already own digitally. The pricing on these felt right and the audience reaction was warm.

The reissue of a couple of canonical jazz records moved steadily through the day but did not sell out. The jazz audience is the most engaged in the shop on any normal Saturday but the RSD jazz buyer is more selective. They will pay for the right pressing on the right reissue label. They are not in the bag-collector mode that drives the day’s headline sales.

The 7-inch releases were a mixed bag this year. The genuinely interesting punk and indie pressings sold out. The mid-tier 7-inch releases that I overbought a little of last year — I underbought this year and ended up fine. The catalogue of what works on RSD 7-inches is narrower than the press list suggests.

A note on the people side of the day. The line was younger than it was three or four years ago. The customer who first came to RSD in the early 2010s is now in their thirties and is still here, but the new arrivals to the line are in their early twenties. They are coming in for specific releases more than for the RSD experience. They have done their research. They know which other shops in Melbourne are likely to have which releases. They are making strategic decisions about which shop to queue at on the day. That kind of customer is good news for the day’s future — they are not casual tourists.

The other observation about the line. The proportion of women in the line is higher than it has been. The vinyl audience has been broadening for several years now and the RSD line is finally catching up to what a normal Saturday at the shop looks like. Music retail has been a quietly male-coded environment for decades and the audience shift has been good for the culture of the day.

A few observations on what didn’t work as well.

The major-label-driven RSD releases continue to feel pulled in two directions. The label wants the day to be a marketing event for the big back catalogue. The shop wants the day to be a celebration of independent music and physical media. The two missions are not the same thing and the tension shows. The middle of the RSD list has been getting less interesting every year as the major labels lean harder on it.

The pricing on a few of the headline releases was uncomfortable. The line of customers willing to pay above retail-list for a coloured-vinyl variant is real but the day starts to feel less special when too much of the list is priced for collectors rather than for music lovers.

A few personal recommendations from the haul, for anyone scrolling through this and wondering what’s worth chasing on the secondary market in the next few weeks.

The two early-period Australian post-punk reissues are both worth picking up if you can find them at retail. Both have liner notes and bonus material that the original pressings did not. The mastering is honest — the artist worked with the engineer on the reissue and you can hear the care.

The reissue of the canonical late-1970s soul live record is the kind of pressing that justifies the RSD format. Heavy weight, clean mastering, gatefold sleeve, and an album that genuinely sounds better on vinyl than on streaming.

The 7-inch reissue of the early-1980s Australian indie single is a small piece of music history that deserves to be back in print. If you find one in the second-hand racks in the next month for retail or close to it, get it.

For 2027, the shop will be doing what we always do — running the day with too much coffee and the right amount of grumpiness. The format works because the people who run independent shops and the people who come to them genuinely care about the music. The day where that stops being true is the day RSD stops mattering. We are not at that day yet.