The demise of the record store

Let me start by saying how DISAPPOINTED I am that this thread’s title used the phrase “Record Store“

It’s a record SHOP. Unless you are a yank, which I know you’re not C_G. Thanks. Got that off my chest.

I got into buying music from visiting a record shop (upstairs in Rumbelows) with my school friend cos we fancied Rose who worked behind the counter. Got talking and she got us to try some punk stuff, Iggy etc. and I haven’t stopped buying since!

Still buy vinyl, CDs and few months ago a cassette! Cos I do like to have the physical item and the artwork. But I mainly buy MP3s, just because of the quantity of new music I get through! New stuff daily.

Funnily enough I never really enjoyed browsing through racks of sleeves and CDs in record shops cos I could never find what I wanted, get a bit overwhelmed by all the wonders around me! So much prefer buying from the web. Which I do on a daily basis. In a never ending addiction to discovering new and original sounds.

Don’t agree that gigs are overpriced. I pay under £10 for most gigs. The more expensive ones aren’t people I want to see (or venues I want to go to). Paid £25 for one gig last year and it was probably the let-down of the year!

Ps. if you like discovering new stuff, can I recommend following artists you like on Twitter. Brilliant for free downloads/mixes/updates/new releases etc.

Is this the Vinyl Countdown???

Sorry but nothing above has remotely made me think twice about my lack of concern for the record shops disappearing. OK, I can understand that people have nostalgia for them based on memories of them but I really don’t feel that I’m missing anything not going to them any more.

In fact, some of the more BSy replies have reinforced my views of some of the people in them (but I won’t name names 😉 ) which is a big part of why I don’t really care.

Dez – huge apologies. 😳 You’re absolutely right of course!

I don’t necesssrily think it’s a nostalgia thing but what I can’t get my head around is the way music has become treated. Background muzak as opposed to being something that should be taken seriously, imo naturally.

For me, one of life’s great pleasures is lounging on the sofa with no distractions, really listening to the notes and words, sometimes hearing something that I hadn’t before, being totally immersed and feeling the artiste’s pain and/or passion. On CD of course via a dedicated hifi system!

I have bought CD’s due to hearing them being played in my local record shop – and they do not necessarily promote the latest release either.

Seems to be an age related thing, doesn’t it?

[Hovis]
Because music is so cheap and easily available, it seems to somehow be devalued now.
Because they were relatively pricey I used to really have to think about which albums I’d buy next – could only afford to buy a limited number so even if I didn’t like it initially, I’d persevere.

Most of my favourite albums are ones that took a long time to get into and understand.

Do people still persevere with ‘difficult’ music in this modern age of ubiquity? [Hovis].

OK OK I get the message, I’m just a boring old fart. 🙄

The [Hovis] was meant to convey a happy nostalgia for the past, not boring old fartdom CG!

How often do you buy from a record store shop CG?

I used to spend far too much time in them (Mainly the RockBox in Camberley) but not for many years now for various reasons, but I reckon my collection is many times what I’ve seen at your house! (Unless you have a load more tucked away somewhere, in which case, sorry! 😳 )

😀

On some tracks I still expect the pops and clicks that were on MY copy, even when I hear them played on the radio 🙂

I remember getting to the record shop early on a release day to ensure you got your copy and it didn’t sell out before you got it 🙂

That is excitement for you 🙂

Brighton seems to be bucking the trend – still has some decent independent record shops (including one that opened within the last few years and seems to be doing very well – always busy on a weekend)

One thing I do like about the rise of the download – is all the 2nd hand CDs I’m able to get silly cheap from the Amazon Marketplace. There are loads on there for a penny (plus 1:24 postage) – classic albums for the price of a cup of coffee

Background muzak as opposed to being something that should be taken seriously, imo naturally.

One doesn’t preclude the other though does it? Not that I think music is fundamentally something that has to be taken seriously – why does it? silly poppy records can be a source of great enjoyment as much as some dirge of great depth by a ‘serious artist’ (incidentally both of which I have lots of examples of in my music collection).

I guess that what I’m getting at is that this idea that music is fundamentally something grand/clever/whatever is just an idea promoted by those who it seems to be a way to help define them rather than just be taken on merit. Music shops seem to me to be a way to re-enforce that in their customers (maybe like this forum is for cyclists 🙂 ).

Maybe I’m just too practical-minded but I can’t stand the musicians who think that being one makes them a person whose views are fundamentally to be respected or elevated above others. Music is just words/noise, the same as anyone else talking. The best are eloquent and fantasitic at conveying feelings, etc but that in itself doesn’t give the opinions they express any value.

Music is just words/noise, the same as anyone else talking.

I know I’m taking that single quote out of context but it’s worth saying that music is NOT just noise.

Music provokes an emotional response in people – certainly not everybody – and can reduce listeners to tears or make them happy.

That’s why this discussion is happening – not everyone responds in the same way so a lot of people just don’t ‘get it’.

I hate big venues, the acoustics don’t work for anything

Aha! I’ve been noticing that recently, thought my hearing was going or something. Black Keys followed by the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, both at the 02 Academy in Glasgow, as soon as the guitars kicked off properly it just became a big noisy mess.

Music provokes an emotional response in people – certainly not everybody – and can reduce listeners to tears or make them happy.

Absolutely, I totally agree but so can speaking. Admittely music with no vocals can also do that and on that basis, you’re right that it’s not just noise but fundamentally it isn’t grand or serious in the way that some like to make it out to be just so that they can elevate themselves to another level, claiming that others just ‘don’t get it’.

This coming from someone who used to very happily spend hours listening to lyric free music when I had the time to do so FWIW.

On the point of digital downloads, it seems that albums are falling out of favour as most downloaders just pick individual tracks.

I don’t follow the thinking behind that. If a band releases an album, how would I know which handful of tracks to download. Maybe I’d base my decision on a quick listen to a sample but I might miss the best album tracks, the slow burners as somebody above said, if I just downloaded the singles or the ‘one I heard on the advert’.

And to be a complete dinosaur, how many great albums would not have been produced if this method of listening to music had happened years ago? “Well I downloaded Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd but it’s just crap – just a woman wailing for 10 minutes”. What is a great album track suddenly becomes a poor individual track when listened to without context. Some of the best tracks on Jethro Tull’s Aqualung were actually written as short fillers, and if I were to download the ‘headlining’ tracks (Aqualung, Cross Eyed Mary, etc) I’d miss some excellent music.

To summarise, I don’t get it!!

And to be a complete dinosaur, how many great albums would not have been produced if this method of listening to music had happened years ago?

Or alternatively, are there great songs that were written but never got heard because they weren’t picked up by the record labels/the artist wasn’t dogged enough/etc

Digital downloads/myspace/virals/etc make those far more likely to get out there IMO.

clubber – Member

Music provokes an emotional response in people – certainly not everybody – and can reduce listeners to tears or make them happy.

Absolutely, I totally agree but so can speaking. Admittely music with no vocals can also do that

I must admit that I’ve never had the same emotional response through listening to people speak as through music. Having said that, I don’t get poetry. Or jazz!

I think my wife and I are nearing opposite ends of the ‘getting’ music spectrum. I’ll play her something that brings me close to tears and she just looks mystified. There may be a connection in that she thinks Michael Buble is great though. (Did I ‘elevate’ myself there, clubber? 😆 )

fundamentally it isn’t grand or serious in the way that some like to make it out to be just so that they can elevate themselves to another level, claiming that others just ‘don’t get it’.

i completely agree with that bit.

The downside of the independent record store

and the upside

High Fidelity and Empire Records re-written for the iTunes generation will be rubbish.

Wunundred! 😀

Remember Our Price record shops? The logo incorporated a vinyl disc, which was later dropped when CDs became dominant. That simple act sort of symbolised the death of the Album, artwork, all that.

Soz for the tiny pic, all I could find.

clubber – Member

Or alternatively, are there great songs that were written but never got heard because they weren’t picked up by the record labels/the artist wasn’t dogged enough/etc

Of course there were, but that applies now as then.

Digital downloads/myspace/virals/etc make those far more likely to get out there IMO.

But is that right? A huge amount of music on TV ads, films or TV programmes at the moment is old stuff. Very old stuff normally.

How often does somebody become successful through the internet? (A genuine question as I really don’t know.) Is a band more likely to become successful that way than by touring hard as they would have done 25 years ago?

Going to ramble a bit now (sorry about the order), but hopefully represent both sides of the coin and provide some thinking material/talking points…

My band wouldn’t have been signed and been able to release and album into the world (and HMV stores) if it wasnt for myspace… smaller promoters booked bands on the basis of how many plays they had per day on myspace for a good couple of years… we ended up on a show with a band and they called the label at 1am to tell them to check us out online

Online gave us the chance to be noticed and get gigs around the country building up a fan-base both in the UK and around the world.

But… the proudest moment of having that album out was walking into HMV and seeing out CD actually on the shelves.

People torrenting the album on the basis of online reviews and forums has made it popular across the world and before I left the band I recieved a lot of requests to tour America, Brazil, Europe, Australia etc… all of which had to be turned down as we couldn’t afford to take the time off work to do so and the money promised wouldn’t even cover travelling costs in most instances.

If people had bought the album instead of torrented, it might have made being in a band a realistic option instead of needing the day job and not being able to fully commit due to needing to pay the bills…

Spotify is changing everything yet again… you wouldn’t believe how little the artist/label gets from each play!

All the bands I know on a personal basis that are surviving at the moment are doing so on merchandise sales and CD sales at shows, not sales of CDs in stores or from their/the labels webshops. Fans openly admit they’ve illegally downloaded the album, but its ok cos they’re buying a t-shirt.

I’m guilty too…I’ve discovered a lot of new music from spotify, but because its already there for free I’m in no rush to go out and buy a physical copy.

Some of the best music I love has been introduced to me by my friend Jo who still buys a lot of vinyl and CD’s based on the album artwork or the label it was released by….. (bought through Amazon normally though)

For a band/artist to get anywhere you’ve got to be online nowadays, it’s a wondrous place that allows to get your music out there to the world… but as the manager of my old label says, all labels and artists are having to change the way everything’s done to survive.

(and a +1 on rockbox in camberley)

(and a +1 on promoters/venues deciding on gig prices, not the artists:

By the time taken the day off work and paid for the fuel and the van and you’ve driven to a show with all the equipment and had something to eat and divided any money left over between band members… you’re not able to pay the bills until you hit the BIG BIG time. For example I’m friends with a band that sold just shy of 250,000 albums through Sony records and all of them work in places like tescos and didnt see a penny from the label. And another example is a label investing £115,000 in a friends band and after their track got used in a make-up advert on TV and toured America/Canada they got dropped like 115K was pennies)

I feel rather vindicated, philconsequence! 😀

What was the name of your band?

So in summary (as I read it), online got your music out there and being listened to but wasn’t paying enough to make it a very realistic career prospect? And unless you make it really big, that’s as far as it’ll go.

I wonder if that’s better or worse though – guess it really depends – if you’re in it just for the music and have no real world concerns (eg you’re a hippy 😉 ) then it sounds great – more chance of having your music picked up and heard widely – but in the real world, people would usually like some financial recognition and it’s not great for that. Guess in some ways it’s a bit like the X Factor – you get yourself on TV but once you’re there you’re tied to a crap record deal and pwned for the next x years of your career and only maybe if you stick it out right through that time (and don’t get dropped as in the £115k example) then maybe you’ll make something out of it.

I wouldn’t fancy it but then I’m not an artist. Aren’t musicians supposed to suffer for their art? 🙂

online got your music out there and being listened to but wasn’t paying enough to make it a very realistic career prospect? And unless you make it really big, that’s as far as it’ll go.

in the experience of most of my musical buddies… yup

if you’re in it just for the music and have no real world concerns (eg you’re a hippy ) then it sounds great – more chance of having your music picked up and heard widely – but in the real world, people would usually like some financial recognition and it’s not great for that

its not even about financial recognition… its about being able to buy your next meal. even if you’ve got a label buying your meals for you.. you risk being dropped by that label for the next thing that comes along.

pretty much all the musicians i know aren’t doing it to be rich, they’re doing it cos they love the music and are willing to suffer for their art (living in a van with 5 other guys with nothing but a suitcase and an instrument). the problem is when you’re not touring where do you sleep if you don’t have parents to live with or friends sofas to sleep on?

Sorry, I didn’t mean that it was either millions or you weren’t interested – financial recognition as in like most people on here – enough to live a reasonable standard of life rather than living in a mansion/castle 🙂

Picking up on a (much) earlier post – the book will never die, it is the most perfect piece of technology ever invented.

It is portable, needs no power source or device to access and contains compressed information. It can be preserved and accessed for 1000s of years with little degradation of content.

Can’t say that about your DAT and Mini disc players now, can you ?

Music is different content to books obviously with different requirements, so not valid to say that because the vinyl album and record store are on the way out it means the death of the book and the book store.

Kindle schmindle !

We used to buy the cheap vinyl singles from Our Price when we were kids and lob them off the bridges in Durham as frisbies.

Who knows, that Milli Vanilli record could now be worth something?

😉

the book will never die, it is the most perfect piece of technology ever invented

Amen. And Amen again!*

I’m not adverse to new technology – but, imo, the hyper-availability of infomation simply makes reading a battered old paperback even more of a pleasure.

Membership of a decent library and a good ol’ 2nd hand bookshop (in 2005, my reading consisted largely of 20p selections from the Amnesty bookshop in Bristol….) adds up to more ‘content’ than I’ll ever get round to needing. And it says much for the present bunch of political losers that public libraries seem to be destined for expenditure cuts.

*Old school Deore XT Thumbies are the most perfect piece of technology ever invented, but I’ll let it pass.

hels – Member
Picking up on a (much) earlier post – the book will never die…………………

Electronic books are another thing that puzzle me.

I only read one (maybe two) books at any one time, I read from front to back and don’t dip in, so what’s the point in being able to carry more than I’m actually reading?

And my books often get totally battered. I can’t see a Kindle lasting for very long dropped into the bottom of a rucksack, falling off the bed when I fall asleep, getting damp in the bathroom while I wait for the kids to finish their bath………..

Is it wrong of me to think that the people who buy Kindle type things only do it because of the tech, not because of the content?

On my bookshelves I’ve got plenty of books that my grandparents bought, back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, a lot of my parent’s books and of course my own. Without browsing through my predecessors’ book collections I would have missed out on a lot of good stuff.

But, of course it also means that as my kids grow up, they can just wander to a wall and pick out a classic or a trashy sci-fi book, etc. We have a ready made library. They don’t need to turn on a computer to do this. And then all of the 100s of books I own will be passed on to my kids, if they want them. That’s unlikely to happen with a Kindle.

Of course, where the internet reigns supreme is finding stuff that you did once buy in a record shop – and subsequently lost.

I was haunted by the memory of this Skylab track for years… praise be for YouTube.

Sadly the last record shop died a couple of years ago.

RIP Longplayer, I used to spend ages in their just browsing whilst my SO was shopping. they had a great selection of all different types of CD, usually with great albums playing or showing on a massive screen.

The best bit was chatting to the guys in there saying “I like this album what else is worth a listen” etc.

There still is on record shop called Second Sounds which is pretty good, ther real bummer about Longplayer closing was that a few months later a new indy record shop opened elsewhere in the town!

Touching on the CDs also I love my CDs, art work having something to hold and the quality. So much so that I’ve gone back to a discman. MP3 for long car journey everything else, discman.

I have a collection of CDs that hold a lot of memories, and it’s not the same buying a CD on line.

(Waffle over)

several doctor-type friends have fallen in love with their kindles because it can read pdf’s.

i can’t claim to appreciate what they’re on about, but apparently carrying lots of printed medical journals/texts around is a pain in the neck.

i can see how it’s handy to have a bloody great library that fits in your pocket, with a battery that last ages, and ages, and ages, but i do like how books smell…

E-book readers are good for travelling. Not so good for reading in the bath !

I’m in the musicians should work for their money point of view. I delivered newspapers 18 years ago, and was paid for it 18 years ago. Why should those who made an album 18 years ago be different?

Also, downloading didn’t kill music. Nor did home taping. You’ve been able to get a copy of the whole top 40 in two button clicks since the early 70’s. [rec + play when the chart show’s on the radio]

What’s killed music is the likes of Pop Rivals turning the commercial scene into a circus, and the BBC inventing things like UK Garage.

Mrs Bangin on off to bed with a tear in her eye at the sad demise of Vibes, some serious reminiscing been going on here this evening…

Still a good record shop here in Dumfries as well as HMV. I’m banned from it as I always come out having spent far too much on stuff I wasn’t looking for. I still buy and play vinyl in preference to CDs and have a huge suspicion of downloads.. I recon it’s and age thing right enough.. I do use spotify tho’ and have went out and bought stuff that I heard online.

And from the BBC website…

(link)

Are record clubs the new book clubs?

By David Sillito

A growing number of music-lovers unhappy about the way album tracks are enjoyed in a pick-and-mix fashion have decided to take action.

The rules are strict. No talking. No texting. You must listen to every song on the album.

Classic Album Sundays treat our best-loved records like great symphonies and are being set up in London, Scotland and Wales.

Groups of music fans sit in front of a vinyl turntable, with the best speakers they can afford, dim the lights and listen to a classic album all the way through.

This monthly club in north London is run by Colleen Murphy and for her it is a strike against “‘download culture”, the sense that music has just become an endless compilation of random songs used as background noise.

“Everyone, stop multi-tasking, sit down, open your ears and do some heavy listening.”

The set album this month was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. We sat in silence even as David Bowie’s record was turned over to side two.

The seats were soft, someone had lit some incense. Some people closed their eyes, others nodded in rhythmic appreciation. There was a sense of being collectively submerged in Bowie’s music.

“You’re not even allowed to use the bathroom here, it’s too noisy,” says Ms Murphy.

Kate Bush’s The Hounds of Love was a previous choice, and a popular one amongst the regulars. Most had heard bits of the record but few could remember sitting through it all the way through.

It is a topic that has been making the papers. Pink Floyd went to court to try to protect the integrity of albums such as Dark Side of the Moon. For music critics such as Neil McCormick of the Daily Telegraph they were totally justified.

“These are works of art at their greatest level. You can pick up a Dickens book and read a little bit of it and get some pleasure but you will not get the same pleasure as you would picking it up and reading it from beginning to end.”

He took me through his vinyl collection, the albums you have to listen to all the way through. Top of the list was Blue by Joni Mitchell, then in no particular order came Get Happy by Elvis Costello, Dark side of the Moon, Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and all of Led Zeppelin. The list was a long one.

“They’ve created works that have a beginning, a middle and end, that have nuances, themes, that take you on a journey that’s as great as any novel, any opera, any drama.”

One of the greatest crimes he feels is to split up the suite of songs at the end of the Beatles’ Abbey Road, because each song drifts in to the next.

The little tune Her Majesty is a simple little coda to ease the tension left by the Beatles farewell to their fans, the song The End. At the end of the song there is a gap and a final crashing chord, then to relieve the tension comes 23 seconds of this little acoustic ditty. On its own it begins half way through that final chord.

“It makes no sense,” says McCormick. “To split them is simply shocking, meaningless.”

But to Peter Robinson of the website Pop Justice this is the past speaking.

“Most albums, you’ve got a pretty good idea. The bad songs are pretty bad, you know. We’re busy people. Let’s just get rid of them.”

Every album he owns is split, analysed and re-ordered. This, he says, is progress. The listener is in control and we do not have to sit through bad music. If he were to spend time with a “classic rock” album, he says the solution is simple.

“What I would do is open the track as an audio file, take out any drum solos, look for any guitar solo, take it out, close it and put it back into iTunes.”

Albums, he says, have often become meaningless. Some songs are given away as free downloads, track listings can change with bonus tracks being added or changed. You can, he says, listen all the way through but do not feel obliged to obey the whims of a pop star.

But back at the pub in Islington in London, we were coming to the emotional climax of Rock and Roll Suicide at the end of Ziggy Stardust.

The £12,000 speakers were revealing little nuances of sound that some of us had not heard before.

The remastered vinyl seemed to capture the feel of the 70s and I had stayed awake for almost all of it. Heads nodded, a foot quietly tapped and as the final string chord faded out the lights were turned back on.

For Gina Tapsley, it was a revelation: “Listening to an album like this shows me something new, it’s always an emotional experience.”

DJ Shadow, The Stone Roses, Kanye West, Carole King. The blackboard was already filling with suggested classic albums for the months to come.

The local independent record shop of my youth was Stand Out in Salisbury. They sold an extensive range of punk/hardcore along with much else besides, many happy memories connected to that place.
Naturally, it closed a few years ago. They had a branch in Bournemouth too briefly, but sky high rental put paid to that.

Ear Wax Records in Andover was my nearest real record shop and a great alternative to Our Price (the only other option until local chain Falcon opened near by before turning into an MVC and then closing entirely). Ear Wax was about the size of my bedroom, I recall buying albums by the likes of Buffalo Tom, Senseless Things, Drive Like Jehu, AC ACoustics and Truman’s Water in there.

Now that Essential has gone, Bournemouth has no independent record shops other than dance music specialists. We have two branches of HMV, both of them pretty poorly stocked and with HMV’s downsizing I suppose one will shut.

Brighton really bucks the trend though…Rounder and Resident are both fantastic independents, Ape is pretty decent too and then there’s punk and hardcore specialist Punker Bunker too.

Out of Step (punk/hardcore) in Leeds appears to have closed, not sure whether Crash and Jumbo are still going.

Another mention for the excellent Rough Trade East is surely deserved along with All Ages in Camden (another punk/hardcore specialist).

There’s a fantastic record shop in Amsterdam contained within Independent Outlet – a combined skateboard shop, streetwear boutique and punk hangout, it’s well worth a visit.

Vancouver has one of my favourite record shops – Zulu…I watched Rocket From The Crypt in there one afternoon. There’s another one on the other side of the city called Skratch that was pretty good too.

I’ve never made it to San Francisco/Oakland, but want to in order to visit Amoeba which I am assured is the best record shop in the world.