Inspired by The Mercury Prize and The Polaris Prize, the folks that run Record Store Day every April are now bringing you the Adapter Prize. In another effort to maintain the educational and community aspect of the physical record store, the Adapter Prize is a four category award decided by participating record stores around the country, as it is a better bet that the experts in these brick and mortar locations know what they’re talking about more than your average online music blogger. That IS actually their day job. Getting a recommendation from a person, in person, is still probably the most encouraging reason to purchase a new piece of wax without prior knowledge, and that little bit that slips into the hole of a 45 is the whole namesake of this new prize.
Those four categories also come in phases, with the first phase on now tallying votes for Record of the Year (New Release), Record of the Year (Reissue), Record Store Day Release of the Year, and Breakout of the Year. Record store customers can participate by nominating bands and releases, but the final votes come from the record store staff. To be eligible for nomination, titles must have general national distribution and be available to all stores across the country. With more artists going a completely independent route and releasing material on their own, there will be plenty of legit material that can’t be nominated, but out of what is nominated should still be a better indication of what deserves more attention.
Once the nominations are tallied for this first round of categories, the shortlist of nominees will be announced, and then the winners of the first ever Record Store Day Adapter Prize are to be announced in September 2013. Read more about the full criteria for each category and a growing list of stores accepting nominations at RecordStoreDay.com, and get involved by visiting one of those stores and joining the conversation and community.
