Foo Fighters Hangout Benefits from Record Store Day

has been around since 1967 and has inspired generations of music lovers, including Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins. Owner Jim Otto says Record Store Day, now in its fifth year, helps introduce new customers to the experiece of buying music from a store.

Record Store Day's promoters want people to support and make purchases at stand-alone record stores instead of simply downloading music on the Internet. It takes place on April 21 this year.

Otto says this event reminds people of what it's like shopping for music inside a store. They "see what it means to actually go into independent record stores, have the experience [and support] those stores," he said.

For this year’s event, Sound Spectrum will be selling around 200 items, including vinyl records, both singles and full-length, and more exotic offerings like colored, reverse-groove, and laser-etched vinyls.

Many of these are one-time-only pressings, while some are released to independent stores exclusively for Record Store Day, months before being released elsewhere.

Otto has participated in Record Store Day for three years now. Although he says sales have generally been good, they have improved over the last few years.

He says this event has brought in people who didn’t know about his store before. He hopes to get more new customers this year.

Besides Taylor Hawkins, Otto says Sound Spectrum has encouraged many people to get involved in recording music, including many of the store's former employees.