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Hundreds line up at The Record Exchange for Record Store Day

The Record Exchange offered hundreds of records only available at independent stores.
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BOISE, Idaho — Record Store Day was Saturday and hundreds of people lined up to celebrate the event outside of The Record Exchange in Downtown Boise. The store had dozens of exclusive releases you could only get in store.

  • The store says the earliest person to line up came at 7:14 pm the night before, almost 13 hours before the event started.
  • If you missed Saturday, the store is having a live performance at 4 p.m. on Sunday.

(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story.)

Before the sun rose above downtown's buildings, hundreds of people stood outside The Record Exchange.

"We drove down the road and saw that the line wrapped around the alley and we were like, 'We should've been here an hour ago,'" said Leslie, a woman waiting in line as the store opened.

Saturday was an important day for The Record Exchange

"It's Record Store Day, it's our Christmas," said Chad Dryden, co-owner of The Record Exchange.

The holiday supports independent record stores around the world. Stores like The Record Exchange get exclusive records you can only find in independent stores.

"You can't get them at Walmart, can't get them on Amazon, can't get them at Target," Dryden said. "So we have a lot of dedicated music fans and collectors that come here to get these limited edition pieces from their favorite artists."

That's what these sisters came for on Saturday. "A couple special releases," Leslie said, who was standing with her two sisters. "Paramore and Noah Kahan. Yeah, we're here to try to get them."

For them, this has become a hobby.

"We go to a lot of concerts together and get vinyls together and trade our records," Leslie said.

These sisters got an early start to their day. "Since 7:30," Leslie said.

But they weren't the earliest.

"The first person in line got here at 7:14 p.m. on Friday night," Dryden said.

And inside the store, the sound of sales is what makes this day for The Record Exchange one of their biggest of the year.

"Every year for the past few years we've set a new store sales record," Dryden said. "Keep in mind, we've been around for almost 47 years, so it's really, really hard to overstate how important it is to independent businesses like ours."