Taylor Swift To Serve As Record Store Day's First-Ever Global Ambassador

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Record Store Day is going global with help from Taylor Swift. The Grammy-winning, chart-topping, singer-songwriter superstar will serve as the first-ever Record Store Day global ambassador for the 2022 event, set for April 23rd.

“The places where we go to browse and explore and discover music new and old have always been sacred to me,” Swift said of her appointment. “Record stores are so important because they help to perpetuate and foster music-loving as a passion. They create settings for live events. They employ people who adore music thoroughly and purely. Those people and shops have had a rough few years and we need to support these small businesses more now than ever to make sure they can stay alive, stay eccentric, and stay individual. It’s been a true joy for me to watch vinyl sales grow in the past few years and we, the artists, have the fans to thank for this pleasant surprise.”

While artists do have fans to thank for the highest LP sales in decades, the industry as a whole also has Swift to thank. In 2021—which notched the highest vinyl sales since 1991—Swift held three of the year’s ten best-selling albums. During the pandemic, she also surprised some of her favorite independent record stores with signed copies of Folklore. As lockdowns and social distancing kept music emporiums closed, Swift quietly paid the salaries and health care costs for the employees at Grimey’s New & Pre-Loved Music in Nashville.

“The role of RSD Ambassador is, of course, something we take seriously in the sense that it helps us do our job of shining a light on these special places,” RSD co-founder Carrie Colliton said. “We’re pretty picky about the people we invite to ‘wear the sash,’ and we always want to make sure those Ambassadors genuinely love record stores and are creative about ways to celebrate them. But mostly it’s a title we want people to have fun with, and we know that our RSD 2022 Ambassador loves having fun, loves music, and loves record stores. For our 15th Record Store Day, we’re teaming up with a woman who does all that and just happens to be one of the biggest artists on the planet.”

Previous Record Store Day ambassadors have included Fred Armisen, Brandi Carlile, Pearl Jam, Run The Jewels, St. Vincent, and more. Stay tuned for the full list of RSD 2022 releases.