Record Store Day Titles Appear Online At Inflated Prices

The buzz surrounding Record Store Day in 2013 was the biggest and most exciting in its short history – a great thing for record stores and a lot of fun for music fans across the globe.

What's not so fun is when you miss out on the record you had hopes of snagging on the third Saturday of April as demand completely outweighs the supply of many of these limited edition releases. But, as if that isn't hard enough to swallow, seeing those records online in the hours and days that follow for exorbitant prices just hurts,

For example:

The cheapest you can purchase At The Drive-In's Relationship Of Command on eBay is currently just shy of $75 (before postage). You're looking at a minimum of $60 on Discogs as well.

Sellers of the red and white Record Store Day release of The White Stripes' Elephant are seeking around the same price on the auction site and not much less on Discogs.

Tame Impala's debut EP, pressed to vinyl for the first time for Record Store Day, looks cheap in comparison; the six track release going for between $52 and $80 on eBay. You can get it ever so slightly cheaper from one seller on Discogs.

Fans of Linkin Park will need to fork out well over $60 to get their hands on the 2013 Record Store Day edition of their Hybrid Theory LP. Quite a number of copies are available cheaper through Discogs, however.

You'll need plenty of cash if you want to grab Mad Season's Above LP – a minimum of $70 before you even think about postage. One single copy is cheaper on Discogs, but there are plenty that are far more expensive.

You get the picture. A search for any number of the hundreds of records that were offered as a part of Record Store Day celebrations this year will bring up similarly disappointing results.

We contacted a number of the sellers of the records we have listed here, but we are yet to receive any response to our questions.

One of the most important things about Record Store Day is the way it tries to adjust consumers' attitudes to ensure that they don't lose the thrill of going to record stores by just mindlessly buying from faceless retailers in cyberspace. It's more than mere consumerism that it celebrates, there's a sense of community that surrounds many record stores and they have been to thank for turning us all onto great music and meeting great people. Plus it's tough to deny that it is now more important than ever to support local business.

But sadly the attitude some have shifted to is that of mere greed; buying records purely to profit. Record Store Day's intentions is to give something more to veracious appreciators of music, but there's every chance that future years could see a repeat of what happened to the humble music festival a few years back; the desired product becomes out of reach of the consumer for which it was designed as scalpers block them completely out of the market then resell the desired product at an inflated price. The scalper is the only winner in a situation with many, many losers.

There is only one thing that can be done, and that is show patience. Do not be tempted to score a copy of that record you so dearly want at a completely unjustifiably high price, don't give the sharks the money they don't deserve and make them live with the financial loss and a stack of records that they had no intention of ever listening to. It's the only way to hurt them and the only way they'll stop.