Black Friday sounds like it should be a day to fear like Friday the 13th. In fact, the Friday following the official Thanksgiving holiday in the States is generally conceded as an extra day off work and is usually the busiest shopping day of the year.

This year, the day has also been nominated as Record Store Day (RDS). The actual RDS is the third Saturday of every April but this extra date has been added probably not with any real expectations of a boom in customers but more as an additional reminder that record stores still exist and are worth preserving. They serve a valuable social function that cannot be met by blogs, mail order sites and P2P file sharing. Continue reading →