The Canadian company rescued several HMV locations in 2019 and purchased US retailer FYE in early 2020 for $10M USD.

The exception is Canada where the Sunrise Records chain is by all accounts thriving despite a vastly different musical climate. Memories are all music fans have now as most record stores have shut their doors. Rolling Stone said that fans were “unfazed and unconfused” by the events of that week, speaking not only to Jay-Z’s dominance at the time coming off multiple platinum albums but the habit that had been ingrained in music fans minds of hitting record stores on Tuesdays. Despite that day being one of the worst tragedies in the history of the world, the album still debuted at #1 selling north of 400k copies as fans continued to hit record stores in droves. Or for a more recent memory, who can forget the Tuesday release of Jay-Z’s classic The Blueprint, which hit record store shelves on 9/11. Many hip-hop fans born in the 80s can recollect skipping school as teenagers to buy Wu-Tang’s new double CD Wu-Tang Forever when it was released on Tuesday, June 3, 1997. The 90s and early 2000s in music were a time of extreme fandom and cross-pollination of musical genres. What was it like to plan your day around the purchase of a new album? “I work as a critic, and albums hitting at midnight Friday creates some wild deadlines from time to time,” states Vulture/ NYMag Pop Critic Craig Jenkins.Īs streaming’s dominance grew, and as physical music sales continued to die down, the considerations for shipping times and stock availability at stores went the way of music downloads - down the drain.

It also created not-so-friendly deadlines for music critics.

The release day change to Fridays impacted what on the surface was just a day of the week to release music but more profoundly was a musical institution and habit that would ultimately die alongside the record stores that supported it. The timing of music releases changed in 2015 when the world’s “global release day” shifted to Fridays. In the late 80s, Tuesday’s became the standard release day for the music business driven primarily by the need to ensure distributors could get stock to stores over the weekend and at the beginning of the week to provide the runway for a full week of sell-through. For DDG, 'It's Not Me, It's You' Is His Breakthrough

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