The decline of the record store has been talked to death, but not many people have been willing to do anything about it. That is, except for Jack White. The former Whites Stripes frontman is using his independent record label, Third Man Records, to get people excited about physical media again, his latest innovation being the Third Man Rolling Record Store. This is basically a record store inside of a bus, and White hopes to use it to show downloaders what they're missing by bringing the store to them. Here's the promo:
White also put together the first Triple Decker Record back in September, which is a 12" vinyl record with a 7" record inside of it. Fans can open up the 12" and play the 7" to hear an otherwise unreleased song. This one's probably better to see for yourself as well, so here's the video:
In my opinion, these are exactly the kind of experiments that record labels need to try, if for no other reason than to generate some hype about the label. Every time White does something like this, it's an interesting story, so music websites from Pitchfork to Absolutepunk post about it and give the label free publicity. Digital music is definitely not going anywhere, but Third Man Records is proving that it's still possible to get people excited about tangible music.
-Riley Ubben
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