http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12164531

What are your thoughts?

it seems the days of a musician being able to retire as a squillionaire after spending 3 months work in a recording studio are coming to an end.

(led zeppelin iV comes to mind)

good.

i have no problem at all spending money on tickets to see musicians perform live.

if they want my cash they can bloody earn it.

(yes, i also buy music)

I think physical music in the shape of the LP or cd will become just for enthusiasts and for the vast majority digital files will suffice. A bit like the way film is still used by some because they enjoy the actual process of using it but for most digital photography fulfils all their needs. On the positive side people still want to see live music and nothing can replace that.

I would like to see more live gigs, but at the same time, I still enjoy browsing in shops for CDs, so I’m a bit gutted its dying a death.

Even HMV in Edinburgh was worthwhile for a while, but I notice the encroaching racks of DVDs and T-Shirts now.

Rough Trade in London was a revelation though, so much choice of actual good music on CD, pity the stuff I bought was largely rubbish but thats not their fault! 😀

Thanks for the replies. I always like to hear opinions on this. 🙂

What I am curious about is that touring is how musicians make their money. From what I’ve seen, the cost of tickets is reaching a silly level. Are people still prepared to pay? Are all venues sold out?

There used to be 3-4 indie record shops down this way, there are now none, only HMV that isn’t much better than a supermarket for buying cds. Shame really.. that said the last few albums I’ve got have all been downloaded.

Times change. Can’t say that my experiences of sad tryhards working at most Indy music shops I’ve been to makes me particularly sad about their passing.

The Indys USP was that they sold stuff you couldn’t get elsewhere. Now you can just go online for it and IMO it’s more democratic at least for the stuff that’s actually any good.

RIP Imperial Records, Park Street, Bristol.

I loved that place.

I was thinking about this in my local HMV a week or two ago.

Going back about 25 years, locally we had a good number of small record shops, and then some of the bigger names moved into town and started a price war with each other, which of course badly affected the independents and most of them shut down. The normal story.

Gradually all of the big names, except HMV shut, because apparently they couldn’t compete with the supermarkets. Weird, I’ve always thought, because Tesco don’t exactly stock a full and comprehensive list of various types of music, like a good record shop should. Next, the internet happened…..

But now, with one pretty crummy independent and HMV being the only survivors, we have absolutely no choice of music other than on the net.

HMV’s policy now seems to be to fill the store with DVDs, cheap books and T shirts and stick a few racks of the most popular CDs wherever there is space. Obviously there is no money in music anymore but they aren’t even attempting to sell it.

So, I’d say, if you don’t stock it, of course you won’t sell it. I asked in HMV about CDs by Martyn Joseph, a local-ish singer songwriter. ‘Nah, haven’t stocked anything by him for 8 years’. So, off I trundle to the internet to buy music that nobody wants……

Sorry for the long and incoherent ramble!

My local one.
Not that I’ve ever bought Vinyl and hardly ever been into record shops.

http://www.sounditoutdoc.com/

From what I’ve seen, the cost of tickets is reaching a silly level. Are people still prepared to pay? Are all venues sold out?

Seems to me the big gigs are selling out within seconds – however I’ve been to a couple (Oasis/Foo Fighters @ Cardiff springs to mind) where there have been loads of empty seats, but lots of touts outside with handfuls of tickets. So my guess is the touts are artificially increasing prices.

The record shop of my youth (VIBES in Bury) closed this week. Very sad, but I hadn’t set foot in it for 15 years since Amazon, Tesco and the rest of them came to the fore.

A shame, but times change.

I’ve never been to a “proper” record shop but I don’t feel like I’m missing anything really. I have loads of ways of listening and buying music and I see loads and loads of live acts ( at places like the o2 venues we can see 3 bands for under a tenner mid week). Thing is take today, watching a film, liked a piece of music, shazamed it found it online downloaded it to my pc and onto my iPod. Can’t do that with a shop!

i have no problem at all spending money on tickets to see musicians perform live.

if they want my cash they can bloody earn it.

Do you think that people just wake up one morning and they can play instruments and compose songs? Do you think that recording engineers are just people who wander into a studio and know not only what everything does, but how all of those things relate and combine?

Downloading might be convenient but it gives far too much power to apple. Also i like to have a cd or vinyl record with a sleeve and info and that. Music an art form in lots of ways. It’s a shame to see it reduced to dots and dashes.

record stores were doomed the day the first ftp was developed for the web

virgin have gone and hmv are on the way out, its not the chainstores or supermarkets its torrents
i cant believe amazons cd sales can be that good
and will the kindle kill paper books; probably

the fact that most albums can be downloaded ilegaly often before they are officialy released means that bands have to charge teh big$$ for gigs

and it works, i cycle past hammersmith apollo every night if theres a gig on the queues are huge massively overpriced festivals sell out in minutes

the record industry is changing slowly, eg spotify, vene itunes
charging more than 3 quid for an album is imho a false economy

Cds will never die for me, yeah I download but the quality of sound is never there with mp3 even with high bit rates. The other issue for me is long term storage. Will I still have all my mp3s in 10 years time? I once lost 8000 tracks as my hard drive died 😥

We’ve just had a new indy record store open in our town, which is ace 😀

I know I’m seeing this through rose-tinted specs as a huge amount of my youth was spent lurking in these places. Proper independant shops. Actually I used to travel all over seeking them out.

My local one is very knowledgeable although I haven’t been there for a couple of years. They would order me CD’s from the States, track down things for me.

I don’t want my music on an MP3 player. CD’s are informative, I like to know what musicians are playing on which song, who wrote it etc.

Just feel rather sad the way it’s all going. 🙁

Tesco or HMV stock the full range of Coldplay albums. And not much else. Unfortunately this seems to be where the musical curiosity of 95% of the population ends. So its a drive to the bottom to see who can sell them the next vacuous dirge the cheapest.

I used to love browsing record shops. Some of the best stuff I’ve got has been bought completely randomly on the “hmmmmmmmmmmm that looks interesting” basis

As a graphic designer who’s designed album covres in the past, the sleeve artwork is a sad loss in itself

Growing up with record shops I am disappointed at the failure. Here in Derby we had a really good store called Reveal Records for a number of years which won an award some years ago but that as been closed a while.

Never really downloaded music until I got a voucher recently via Nokia as the quality on mp3 is so poor. I appreciate it is the future though:-(

Currently listening to ‘After The Gold Rush’ by Neil Young on vinyl before moving onto Lucinda Williams – happy days – all sounding wonderful.

speckledbob – Member
Also i like to have a cd or vinyl record with a sleeve and info and that. Music an art form in lots of ways. It’s a shame to see it reduced to dots and dashes.

I’m the same and I was trying to compose a sensible answer to emsz post without sounding like a dinosaur.

Her point:

Thing is take today, watching a film, liked a piece of music, shazamed it found it online downloaded it to my pc and onto my iPod. Can’t do that with a shop!

Similarly there is a huge amount of info missing from that piece of data that you’ve just downloaded that might lead to future buys. (Who wrote the song, who sang the original, who played guitar, who influenced the album and so might be worth a punt in future. All of these can lead you into buying some fascinating music that you’d completely miss by just shazaming. 😉 )

Have you never been to a music shop at least once a week and hung out and maybe get to chat to people/staff and maybe still bump in to them and chat 20/30 years later? No? Well in my opinion and experience I think that you are really missing out.

Yes I do use Forums like this and Facebook, but if you think that this is a substitute for actually interacting with people out in the big wide world, well once again I think you are missing out big time.

Now to a degree I don’t have a lot of problem with the loss of HMV shops (other than more people being dumped out of work). They certainly sounded the death knell of my city’s indie record stores. And they are even worse than was mentioned above. I went in my local HMV yesterday and they’ve now even got an Orange phone department in there.

“Everything is free now….”

Perhaps it’s not the, uhh, content that matters so much as the setting… the simple satisfaction of browsing old stuff. I might start a 2nd hand CD/book store and charge people entry.

There is a more diverse range of music available online than could ever be in a record store and you get to see the bands play more, all definitely a change for the better IMHO. The only drawback is sound quality, I say that but using mp3s on my old separates and the sound quality is still great, infact I can’t tell the difference. you’re probably just too sentimental, did you mourn the passing of candles and gaslight when they invented electricity? 😉

Used to have loads of indie record stores and for one i miss them, im in my 30’s so starting to think about the past, but you can’t beat a saturday afternoon flicking throught the LP’s taking a record up the player, placing it on and the headphones go on and the magic of music. Those days are gone, now you go to itunes click preview, then download its just not the same.

If you look out on the highstreet the gaming indie stores went first, now the music, whats next?? Treks and other bikes in the corner of Tesco??

binners – Member

I used to love browsing record shops. Some of the best stuff I’ve got has been bought completely randomly on the “hmmmmmmmmmmm that looks interesting” basis

I bought a cd by ‘Goats Don’t Shave’ once, based on the band name. It was crapola.

Not that I’d really care to re-read High Fidelity – but it now belongs to another world…

I used to spend a fortune in record shops buying tunes for DJing – looking back, a lot of them are rubbish. It’s a shame I suppose but it’s the way of the world.

Cds will never die for me, yeah I download but the quality of sound is never there with mp3 even with high bit rates.

Hmmmm…..

Um, I just had to look up ‘shazaming’ 😳

I still love a good record shop for a browse and can’t imagine not buying cd’s or records. It’s like a book, holding and owning it as a physical thing is part of the pleasure of the purchase. Mp3 players are for putting my cd’s onto 🙂

in that case you deserve everything you get 😉

You should have bought this

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Sex-Sluts-Heaven/release/65537

or this

http://www.amazon.com/Abstract-Funk-Theory-Fidelity-Allstars/dp/B00006L3YK

both of which i bought randomly, both of which are fantastic

But the weird thing, that has been touched on, is that people are quite happy paying money and getting absolutely nothing apart from a digital file which then gets lost when the computer or MP3 player breaks. At least with a CD, vinyl, cassette, whatever, there was a hard copy to fall back on.

I’m obviously getting far too old…..

Quite like the ‘Goats don’t Shave’ album that I have Idlejohn, takes all sorts though.

Wandering around a Glasgow record shop I once bought an album by Blue Aeroplanes I would not have otherwise heard. Also Betty Serveert on another occasion – might stick them on the player later.

idle john, if you like martin joseph, check out ruarri joseph (no relation)

There is a more diverse range of music available online than could ever be in a record store and you get to see the bands play more, all definitely a change for the better IMHO. The only drawback is sound quality, I say that but using mp3s on my old separates and the sound quality is still great, infact I can’t tell the difference. you’re probably just too sentimental, did you mourn the passing of candles and gaslight when they invented electricity?

You were doing so well until your last sentence. 😉 Yes, more diverse I agree, which is a good thing.

I still use candles, scented of course! Think that’s a woman thing though. 😉

speckledbob – Member
Downloading might be convenient but it gives far too much power to apple.

Seriously? There are other options you know….

idle john, if you like martin joseph, check out ruarri joseph (no relation)

I like Ruarri Joeseph – would I like Martin Joeseph?!

At least with a CD, vinyl, cassette, whatever, there was a hard copy to fall back on.

I don’t have any 10 year old CDs that work. Not ones that I listen to at least.

With a download you just add it it to the same backup that you use for your photos. You don’t use film anymore do you?

rOcKeTdOg – Member
idle john, if you like martin joseph, check out ruarri joseph (no relation)

Thanks Rocketdog, listening to some samples as I type. Sounds good.

See, without recordshops, I’d never have made that connection!

did you mourn the passing of candles

Some things are still massive sellers even when supposedly killed off. 🙂

But I know all the info I want about the track, and I downloaded the album artwork from google images as well! I’ve never lost any music from my computer and it’s all on backup discs anyway ( well it is after my housemate found out I’ve never backed up, LOL)

Still don’t see how I’d be better of with a shop.

5thElefant – Member

At least with a CD, vinyl, cassette, whatever, there was a hard copy to fall back on.

I don’t have any 10 year old CDs that work. Not ones that I listen to at least.

Why? Do CDs die or something? Mine are all still fine, even the earliest I bought. They are just stacked in a back room, not kept anywhere special.

You don’t use film anymore do you?

That’s not a good comparison though is it?