The demise of the record store

CG has summed up the problem when she said she hadn’t been to her local shop in a couple of years. And this is someone that wants to buy CDs or vinyl. Where are you getting your music from? We now have a generation that downloads and doesn’t know any different and an older generation that doesn’t have time to browse in record shops. We have a few small indie shops in Edinburgh. Unfortunately one of the bigger and better equipped ones seems to be owned/run by a guy that doesn’t like customers. So I haven’t felt the urge to go back in a hurry. I still like to browse but its easier to do it online once the kids have gone to bed. I’ll still buy CDs when they are cheaper than downloading an entire album, or an LP if its something special.

I use to love browsing our local independant record shops in my teens, and they genuinely did have that “High Fidelity ” vibe (more faithful to the book IMHO). As a hangout, a destination for the lost teenager, and somewhere to pick up free gig listing magazines they were unparalled.
I realised last year though that I had hardly bought a single CD from an indy, mainly due to there over inflated prices. I now try to buy stuff on CD from Amazon marketplace (which in itself feels quaint).

Jumbo & Crash are indeed still trading. Both shops are major ticket agents too

*Old man alert*

Similarly miss the proper old shops, and have reluctantly now got an ipod. But the stuff on itunes is pretty limited, which means I have the same old middle of the road stuff on it. Is it possible to download to an ipod NOT using itunes? I really struggle to keep up…..

The local independent record shop of my youth was Stand Out in Salisbury.

I briefly lived near Salisbury after finishing my A-Levels (’94ish) … Stand Out helped keep me sane.

QUOTE: noteeth – Member

The local independent record shop of my youth was Stand Out in Salisbury.

I briefly lived near Salisbury after finishing my A-Levels (’94ish) … Stand Out helped keep me sane.
UNQUOTE.

You must be about 4/5 years older than me then (35/36?)…

In which case you may remember a little skateboard shop called Cunning Stunts?

Yes, Salisbury was and remains more than a little sleepy. Still, it seemed incredible compared to Andover.

I remember Cunning Stunts.

Yes, Salisbury was and remains more than a little sleepy

Good bikeshop, though (Stonehenge Cycles).

I was very happy to get back to my native south-west – but I did (sort of) fall in love with the big ol’ empty chalk landscape on the wilts/dorset border – the seemingly endless drove roads, hillforts and rolling turf. The kind of summer riding that wasn’t especially technical, but you wouldn’t see another soul all day. Ah, the silence…

Bloomin’ bleak in the winter, mind.

(Awaits comment from CFH…).

s it possible to download to an ipod NOT using itunes?

dunno, I refuse to buy anything by Apple on the overpriced/underspecced/proprietary-can’t-use-it-with-anything-not-by-Apple lock-in argument; if you were to buy a generic MP3 player, on the other hand, you could load tunes onto it from any old source…

<edit> I may of course be wrong about Apple, but my cheap Philips MP3 player does fine for me</edit>

Just to clarify – the independent shop I was referring to was The Rock Box in Camberley. Even introduced my kids to it!

Hardly bought any CD’s the last couple of years due money being spent on increasing the stable of mid-life crisis bikes. 😳

Don’t do downloads either, no ipod for me.

But this record club sounds a very interesting idea and presumably a sock would be compulsory? Just think how one’s ears would be opened to a mix of sounds. Any volunteers for hosting? Is Naim compulsory? 😉

I’m not going to start wringing my hands over the “death” of record shops. I feel a bit sad that lots of much-loved shops have closed down (in Bristol Rooted on Gloucester Road is the latest casualty) but sites like Gemm and Discogs, and online record shops like Fat City, Rough Trade, Honest Jons and Sounds of the Universe give people a choice that never existed back in the pre-internet area.

Together with podcasts, internet radio, blogs sharing out-of-print albums, user generated charts and so on, finding exciting new music has changed from a once every few months event to once a week. Personal recommendations can still be had online. There are still a fair few “real” record shops too.

However what is clear is that the age of massive record companies is over, big budgets are largely a thing of the past, and all but a few musicians will go back to treating it as something you do for passion and self-fulfilment rather than stardom and financial gain.

In many respects this is good, but the dwindling returns from recorded music have also signalled a shift to an era where records are made cheaply, inside computers, using software packages to create the illusion of space and complexity. I can’t imagine something like David Axelrod‘s 60s albums (which are basically wigged-out classical music, with a full orchestra backed by super-funky arrangements) being made today. I guess the kickback is that old recordings will be even more widely available and we can have the best of both worlds.

dunno, I refuse to buy anything by Apple on the overpriced/underspecced/proprietary-can’t-use-it-with-anything-not-by-Apple lock-in argument; if you were to buy a generic MP3 player, on the other hand, you could load tunes onto it from any old source…

There you go, another one who believes all that crock about Apple and ‘proprietary’ bollocks. AAC, which Apple use, is MP4, the higher quality codec developed to replace MP3. music ripped into iTunes will run on Nokia, Sony, Sony-Ericsson, and a whole bunch of things. Including Microsoft’s crappy Zune player. Sony, on the other hand, are forever selling stuff with proprietary coding, connectors, even cd’s that install a virus on computers that play it. iTunes doesn’t put DRM onto anything that is ripped into it, another myth that gets swallowed by people with an irrational hatred of good design and quality manufacture.
<edit> and you can put music onto an iPhone or iPod from any old source, as you put it. With the exception of WMA format. Which happens to be a proprietary format owned and licensed by Microsoft. If got music from Amazon, emusic, Wiretapped from streaming audio, downloaded from musicians websites. Just drag’n’drop.
<edit>