Record Store Day April 20 2013
Posted by: Blueknowz on 15 February 2013
Posted on: 24 February 2013 by Mike Hughes
PS:. Interesting that a dozen punters is "buzzy". To put that in perspective I worked in Chester until 1992. Used to nip into Grey and Pink and Penny Lane daily and Saturday might involve a trip to Probe in Liverpool. Never less than 40-50 in the latter. The former would generally stop at 30 and 15 respectively as that's all they could accommodate.
2 of the 3 have gone and high numbers now come in around 10-15.
However, anecdotes aside, the point is that people browsing is not a reflection of sales. I will always browse even the worst shops if I can face it. Buying is another thing altogether. Stock is predictable and limited. If I want to fill the gaps in my collection then I'm afraid only the Internet will do. It doesn't have a security guard on the door stood next to large bass bins. It doesn't have a live band driving away 90% of regular custom and so on.
Posted on: 25 February 2013 by Kevin-W
Originally Posted by Mike Hughes:
PS:. Interesting that a dozen punters is "buzzy". To put that in perspective I worked in Chester until 1992. Used to nip into Grey and Pink and Penny Lane daily and Saturday might involve a trip to Probe in Liverpool. Never less than 40-50 in the latter. The former would generally stop at 30 and 15 respectively as that's all they could accommodate. 2 of the 3 have gone and high numbers now come in around 10-15. However, anecdotes aside, the point is that people browsing is not a reflection of sales. I will always browse even the worst shops if I can face it. Buying is another thing altogether. Stock is predictable and limited. If I want to fill the gaps in my collection then I'm afraid only the Internet will do. It doesn't have a security guard on the door stood next to large bass bins. It doesn't have a live band driving away 90% of regular custom and so on.
Well it is quite a small shop and it was a very cold and dismal Friday morn. I rarely go in there Saturdays because it's just too full.
You obviously don't like shopping in record stores which is fair enough. But from the tone of your posts, it seems that as a result you seem to be wishing death upon all of them, which is bizarre. Why so bitter against record stores? There are are some extremely good ones out there.
PS - IMO the worst ever was Our Price, which was absolute crap. They definitely deserved to go to the wall...
Posted on: 25 February 2013 by Kevin-W
Mike - where do these figures (below) come from? Do you have a link?
Originally Posted by Mike Hughes:
The approx. 70% figure actually relates to prior to the start of RSD, not last year and should have read 90%.1989 we had 2,000 plus stores. By 2007 that was around 280. By this year we're down to around 220. There was actually a rise around 2009 but it's been downhill ever since and there's no indication it's abating. Interestingly, the percentage of remaining stores taking part is also now in decline. I believe that's fallen by about 12% since last year so there are at least some shops either questioning the merit or not seeing the point.
Posted on: 25 February 2013 by Mike Hughes
I'm certainly neither bitter nor wishing death to them all. I'd rather shop in a decent record shop than anywhere on the net. My point is that there are few left for good reasons and of the ones that are most are poor and will go to the wall. RSD mostly highlights the poorness and repeats the mistakes which have led is to this point. You seem to think that highlighting the really obvious ironies behind RSD can only mean I'm opposed to all shops blah blah blah.
The figures come from the RSD web site itself and the many associated articles around it. On particular there are some great articles around the film of Last Shop Standing. I won't post links as I seem to have run into issues every time I do and the info is very obvious anyway really.