News Record Store Day 2012: The Launch Of The Independent Record Store Chart

Anticipation. It’s a sense we’ve lost a little over the last decade or so; whether it be the exclusive streams or album leaks, we want it all and we want it now, and for the most part, we don’t have to wait anymore for a release date. Who cares how it’s packaged or if it’s a bit of a duff recording, right?

Once upon a time, the only way we got to hear any ‘album samplers’ was by sitting by radios, hoping to catch that first single off the album. Occasionally you’d press your tape recorder up to the speakers at just the right time, and desperately try to stop the recording at the exact moment that the DJ started waffling over the end of the track. I’ve banged on about it before, I know, but there was a point when the charts actually mattered, even when, for the most part, it was full of shit.

Fast forward a few more years, and Saturday mornings were spent sat in our jammies, fingers paused over the record button on our state of the art video recorders, hopeful that this week that little pinball (or, if we’re going really retro, that merry-go-round) would land on those glorious words, The Indie Chart.

Because when it did, it was, frankly glorious. ITV on a Saturday morning, showing Spaceman 3 videos? It happened, I swear, I didn’t dream it.



The news that The Official Chart Company has teamed up with the good folks behind Record Store Day to compile an Independent Record Store Chart - well, that can only be a great thing, right? In my idealist little brain, we’re one step closer to crunching on our cornflakes, whilst our eardrums are regaled by sweet sweet Teenage Fanclub harmonies at No.2! No.2! Brilliant!



Don’t forget, the year that Indie Chart aired (1995), might be remembered as the Britpop Year, but the biggest selling single was Robson and Jerome. ‘Unchained Melody’ clogged up the Top Ten for ten weeks straight, but at least we had something else to focus our attention on instead.

Okay, so they’re not saying they’re bringing back that the Chart Show exactly (we can dream though, right?). But what it does mean is that a chart is being created that means something to me, maybe (hopefully) to you too. It gives us another reason to visit those little shops, not just on Record Store Day, but all year round; not only do they get to impart their expertise and point you in the direction of some obscurity that you’d never have found without them, but with a valid chart countdown that won’t get clogged up your little sister’s obsession with The Biebs, isn’t there a chance that they’re creating a chart that might actually mean something again?

In my perfect world, it just won’t matter if the X Factor gets yet another Christmas number 1, or if Adele stays triumphantly atop the album charts for the next 400 years. Because I’ve got my own chart again now. And whilst mainstream success might always be the goal for those bands that we love, that they can get to No. 1 on the Indie Charts purely on the basis of the location of my purchase, that means something to me, anyway.