Jan Koepke is taking care of RECORD STORE DAY in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland since 2011.

Starting the project highly motivated (and probably a bit ingenious, too) with one assistant only, Jan meanwhile has a team of six music enthusiasts on his side to coordinate the annual Record Store Day, as well as “Black Friday“ in November, in the three countries (with a total population of about 100 million inhabitants).

Jan Koepke started his way in the music business working at and freelancing for numerous (major and indie) labels and music companies back in the 90ies before he founded his own business in 2001: the label- and PR service company POPUP-RECORDS. Being professionally active and well connected in diverse fields of the music industry, Jan and his team understand RECORD STORE DAY as an interdisciplinary task. The main essence of the job “doing Record Store Day” is to be a mediator for the different participants, balancing opinions and interests among the industry and -not to forget- to connect with the right people to communicate the important role of independent record stores for the music market and vinyl culture.

As an entrepreneur in the music business, Jan Koepke always followed his idea of working interdisciplinary. POPUP-RECORDS` portfolio mirrors this pretty well: current label and PR clients are e.g. The Orchard, Cooking Vinyl, Because Music, among many others. POPUP´s in-house live dept. covers touring and concert bookings all over the GSA territory, running a concert series as well as an own festival format in Hamburg with 10k visitors in each summer season. POPUP´s  PR and marketing division provides showcase and networking events e.g. for Reeperbahn Festival , Excite! Music, Danish Vibes – just to name a few.

The day-to-day work for Jan and his team running RECORD STORE DAY is broadly speaking: the coordination with all participating labels and distributors, providing sustainable PR in all classical media fields, sophisticated campaigns and strategies in the relevant social media channels, brand partnerships in different segments, live activities around RSD and last but not least taking care of the participation of annually round about 250 independent record stores in the GSA territory in RECORD STORE DAY. What a hell of a job! J