Record Shops RIP

I think there are a number of things contributing to the end of the record shop as we know it:

Cash being spent on DVDs and Video games instead of CDs - CDs are not perceived to be VFM anymore.
The young hipsters being into indie bands who sell their stuff via their websites/gigs.
P2P sharing and Cd copying.
Cheaper CDs available via online retailers.

A small number of people (like me) who can no longer face giving cash to a record industry that deliberately adulterates it's product, and is buying/deceiving politicians to remove consumer rights.
But the main reason, I think, is that every supermarket and branch of Woolworths stock the top 40 and TV promoted albums, and therefore take away the bread and butter sales that record shops need to remain viable.

The truly great, iconic Mole Jazz is closing. This fills me with despair.

John

Yup, a visit to HMV shows more space given to DVDs than music (well almost).

Can anyone watch a DVD several times like a favourite album? I know I don't.

I am hoping Koln Shuffle fever will take hold and grip the music scene, but am still waiting, although the latest Rachel Stevens single seems to have pinched the rhythm track from some of my Kompakt tracks!

Quoting another thread, I must be getting old...

DS

OTD - Iio - Rapture

Massive shame about Rhythmn Records in Camden One of my favourite record stores.

Andrew Randle
Linn Binn Sinner

An article on Rhythmn Records: http://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/2004%20archive/290104/n290104_4.htm

Interesting to hear that vinyl sales were steady and CD sales were dropping.

It is possible that the convenience-brigade are migrating to PC's, i-Pods and mp3/MPEG AAC.

Hopefully, interest in vinyl replay may increase by those seeking to take a break from the "always-on" lifestyle and return to something more "human".

We will see over the next few years whether interest in vinyl increases, and whether independent pressing plants and dealers continue to exist or find more success.

Andrew

Andrew Randle
Linn Binn Sinner

Rhythm Records used to be one of the 'must-visit' shops in Camden - I remember going there since about 1982! I nearly always found something to get in thier eclectic mix of stock.

I think I saw a sign saying that Music & Video Exchange were moving into the site, so at least there is chance it will still be selling music, but it might be DVDs or games, or retro-tat or clothes like the shops in Notting Hill.

Please report if you see what opens there.

DS

Music & Video Exchange tends to be just CDs and DVDs

Andrew

Andrew Randle
Linn Binn Sinner

One thing that I have noticed is the price in HMV etc. A top 40 album tends to be about 13 or so quid but the same one can be bought in a supermarket for 9 or 10.

At the end of the day you will tend to go where it is cheapest.

On the other hand, what would you say is the cheapest place to buy albums from over the net?

Steve

'Tower' in Picadilly Circus is no more?

Yow!

I am shocked at that, and it's a really significant indication of what's happening. Or has 'Tower' re-located to somewhere smaller in London?

Other contributors here have stated the reasons that the shops are dying. In addition; I find that EU made CD's sound generally inferior to the USA/Canadian version, so try to get my discs from the USA on-line, where there is a USA manufactured option.

Will future generations not have the desire to collect and display their musical collection, as we do?

If so: I guess the future is 'downloading'; even if it has to be paid for.

Fascinating times indeed.

quote:

---

Originally posted by David Slater:
Can anyone watch a DVD several times like a favourite album? I know I don't.

---

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I expect that is what they are banking on.

"Incidentally (and I'd like confirmation of this) Mole's web site says they've moved to occupy part of Harold Moore's records in Great Marlborough St. - not closed."

Its opened on Gt Marlborough st! With typical Mole style they failed to tell anyone. Anyway smaller premises, bit low on stock but still there.I popped in at lunch.

Mole is now in Harold Moores in Covent Garden.

I may pay a vivist next time I am in the area.

TL in PFF says Harold is vastly overpriced, and hopes this won't infect Mole.

DS

Andrew,

MVE does a good selection of vinyl in their branches I go to, in Camden. Berwick and Notting Hill and Manchester?

I don't get to the others much (once only to the Plymouth branch)

DS

Mike (h),

You have a PT.

Jeremy

Hi,
Pretty obvious that the indie stores will take incoming from the supermarkets and also from the net. Market pressures abound...

But if I can get 4 cd's for thirty quid instead of 3 for the same price...

I think the record companies have got a little to do with it tho...

andy c!

I would like to say the record shop will never die as people like browsing through records/cd's. However Ainly's, Leicesters biggest independant has just closed through retirement.

I know that the sale of CD's, records etc is considerably lower than the 70's and 80's where sinles sold in their millions.

Apparantly ringtones are now outselling cd's which leaves the future of record shops very uncertain.

Regards


NB

Another fave London shop: These Records on Brook Drive also closed recently - kicked out by their landlords.

Managed a final visit a few weeks ago to sample some mego/Touch records stuff all at their standard £10 a cd too. They'll be sadly missed, though their mail order business will carry on...

Bugger. These was a great shop to while away a few hours in, how bloody annoying.

-- Ian

a few more Record shops gone:

Replay in Glasgow
Creative in Kingston



DS

OTD - MAS 2008 - Punished by Machines

[QUOTE]Originally posted by NB:

'Apparantly ringtones are now outselling cd's'

Says it all really!!
What happened to rushing down to your local record store on the day of the latest release from your favourite band?, or leafing through the shelves for that treasured album and the pride of ownership that went with it? I used to look forward to the weekends just to buy records and look around and meet friends, they were more akin to social clubs in those days. Shame really!!

My local record shop is in Birmingham, England and they have loads of CD cases stolen; their guess is they're stolen by people who've either copied friends CD's or downloaded them off the net.
Their sales are dire now compared to a couple of years ago and they are sure that copying with CD burners and downloading is the main reason.
The other thing is that many mainstream CD's are sold at Safeway and Tesco etc. sometimes for LESS than the independant shop can buy them for!

The shop lease is up in a couple of years and they won't be renewing it........

Seems to be the way things are going and it's very sad :-(

Computers are supposed to work on 1's and 0's - in other words "Yes" or "No" - why does mine frequently say "Maybe"?......

'SMILE' records in Dublin [Georges Street -- opposite Dunnes and near Waltons] also gone.

I don't think it is the death of record stores that we are seeing so much as the death of badly operated stores. Times change, and if you can't offer hard to find music, discount prices, friendly expertise, ability to listen, etc. you will not survive.

In general, I do not buy books from amazon, and I do not buy cds from Virgin Megastore, Tower, or Walmart.

Support your local record stores! If you enjoy saving a dollar per cd by purchasing from a corporation that is already screwing you and their employees, I guess the independent record store (na matter how good) will die.

"'Apparantly ringtones are now outselling cd's'"

Ringtones are a multi Billion Dollar industry.


Mitch

In yesterday's Sunday Times:

"August 08, 2004

And so I face the vinyl curtain

Will MP3s kill the record shop? Let’s hope so — music shouldn’t be about snobbery, says Tom Cox





It’s hard to say how many hours I’ve wasted in record shops in my late teens and twenties, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that I’ve spent much more time fondling albums than I have listening to them. Rather scarily, I’m far from alone in this. It’s what we vinyl and CD junkies do instinctively. We don’t have woolly mammoths to hunt, so we forage for music instead. The only real difference is that we can’t eat it, and it’s smaller and easier to sneak into the domicile when our girlfriends aren’t looking.

For years, no musty backstreet store was well hidden enough for me and my tribe, no pile of dog-eared psychedelia or country rock high enough. But now, with the iTunes revolution gathering pace, that’s all going to change. More quickly than we might have thought possible, our dimly lit hang-outs are beginning to disappear. Soon, it’s quite possible that their more mainstream cousins will follow, or at least change drastically in nature. I should feel sad about this, probably, but what I feel, really, is refreshed: a bit like Kim and Aggie have hosted a special edition of How Clean Is Your House? in my head.

Don’t get me wrong: I still love the look and feel of a 33rpm record, and can just about see the aesthetic point of a CD. Yet when it comes to the places that sell them, I can quite happily wash my hands and stride boldly into a more sanitary, practical, friendly future. For the best part of my life I’ve given record shops the larger part of my time and disposable income. In exchange for this, record shops have given me a large amount of listening pleasure, but they have also given me disagreements with girlfriends, passive musical snobbery and social discomfort, not to mention achy fingers (could they pack those second-hand racks any tighter?).

By buying music via iTunes — or even from Amazon — I can keep the listening pleasure and rid myself of its unsavoury by-products. The downside? I no longer have a collection of musical artefacts in my house to impress some nebulous figure in my future who doesn’t really exist. I think I can live with that.

For too long, men like me (and let’s face it, we are mostly talking about men here — women are generally far more sensible about record shopping) have hidden behind racks of soul, new wave, disco and classic rock, substituting taste for personality, insouciant grunting noises for conversation. The masterstroke of iTunes is that it forces us out of our completist ghetto and makes music what it should be: something in the air to delight in, not oil your ego with. No longer will we pretend that Lola versus Powerman by the Kinks is a great album in its entirety; instead we’ll buy the only three tracks we ever really listened to. It seems a lot healthier. Take a whole pseudo-classic album into the shower? Not me. Now I can burn and go.

Look at the average record shop. How many people do you see in there looking happy? Two maybe, out of, say, 30, if you’re lucky, and this is only because they are the only ones who haven’t had their musical taste insulted by the surly sales assistant. Shortly, when they put their copy of 5ive’s Greatest Hits on the counter, only to be mock-ignored by a couple of men with pioneering facial hair engaged in a tremendously important conversation that seems to consist solely of the repetition of the word “safe”, they’ll be just as furious as everyone else. iTunes, with its emphasis on songs over albums and sounds over materials, simultaneously keeps us childlike and teaches us to grow up in the best way possible. Record shops perform the exact opposite function, dragging us down into a swamp of retarded, elitist, socially inept maleness.

I have a friend who once worked a trial period in one of London’s best-known second-hand record shops, but never heard from his potential employers again.

Flummoxed, he asked one of his more approachable former colleagues where he’d gone wrong. “You turned the Tom Waits tape over in the machine,” he said, entirely straight-faced. “That’s the rule: nobody flips the Waits tape.”

Buy a sandwich from a delicatessen, and the sales assistant doesn’t evaluate your entire personality based on the precise type of cooked meat you’ve chosen as your filling, but in most record shops acquisitive actions are subject to the most intense scrutiny. When someone claims that the internet is an “intimidating” place to find music, clearly they have never endured the indignity of asking a techno fascist to point them in the direction of the remastered version of Barclay James Harvest’s debut album.

I’ve formed some powerful friendships through my love of record shopping. I’ve also formed some absolutely preposterous ones, which, in the cold light of day, when there isn’t a copy of the third Rare Earth album in a 12yd radius, all too quickly display their flaws. Overall, the record shop — a place where dispatching a cursory “please” or “thank you” can make you feel as pathetically uncool as a teenager who has turned up to his first football match and made the mistake of enthusing girlishly about David Beckham’s dress sense — is a social environment I can do without. Sure, I’ll miss the the thrill of the hunt, but do I really need corporeal objects to give my love of music definition? Does it really matter, in the overall scheme of things? Who, you have to ask yourself, in the end, is watching?"


My take on this is that I often seem to know more about the genre / artist than the RSA, so it is inverse snobbery.

One of the few times I have left intimidated by the RSA is in Blackmarket Records Soho, one of the original Jungle shops, where the headnodding society gansta' punters were three deep to the counter, the volume was ear-splitting. I must of looked so out of place, the in store DJ stopped the tracks and asked what I wanted, all the head nodders turned round to stare, whilst I asked for the Remix of Shadow boxing by Nasty Habits. They didn't have it anyway!

DS

OTD - M303 - Electronic Funk