Goodnight, Rhino Westwood
Published January 06, 2006
Of course, the internet just blows that all away. There are thousands of experts and connoisseurs of music such as me all over the net any old time. It's a thousand times more and better quality than a handful of magazines like Rolling Stone or Creem. You can research more cool stuff on the net in a few minutes than you'd find out in a year of reading Rolling Stone, or depending on the knowledge of the one guy who runs the record shop.
It's not quite such a complete rout, but the net also largely supplants my use of record stores as a social point. You can hang out in a record store around other people with similar interests and shoot the breeze, trading obscure anecdotes and camaraderie amongst fellow music fans.
To that end, the internet can't quite take the place of living bodies in a room for social contact, but it more than compensates with huge selection. My internet music buddies might not be in the flesh, but there are a lot more playmates to pick from than whatever couple of folks of whatever limited interest might happen to be hanging out at Freddie's today.
Finally, the internet will just flat blow out a mom and pop store on price. There's no way that the locals can keep the lights and heat on for clientele on the east side of Indianapolis like Amazon can servicing the whole country.
Besides the internet, of course, the price structure gets totally skewed even in local retail by the box stores and such who don't even particularly intend to make money on selling CDs. Best Buy is always and rightly cited. Besides the volume they move which would undercut an independent, they basically regard their cheap CDs as loss leaders to get people in amongst the stereo systems, iPods, and such that they make their money on. I probably should be buying White Stripes albums at a local shop from the cool guy, but it was several dollars cheaper at Best Buy. Sorry.
Yup, loved them record stores, but those days are gone. Record stores are going the way of buggy whip manufacturers, or more recently, typewriter repair shops. They can't ever compete with the internet for price or selection. Plus, there's all kinds of sideways competition from Starbucks or Barnes and Noble and such.
Heck, record stores are such a dead item that you can't find anything on them at Amazon. Looking for links for this story, I note that an Amazon search for "record stores" brings up digital storage, DVD-Rs and blanks- but jack squat about music retail.
Grandpa, what was a "record store"?
- Goodnight, Rhino Westwood
- Published: January 06, 2006
- Type: News
- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Business and Economics, Music: Alternative Rock
- Writer: Al Barger
- Al Barger's BC Writer page
- Al Barger's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
All sad but too true, Al, especially this "Geez, I used to hang out in record stores, poring happily for hours through the new releases and crazy used bargains. But no more, though. I'm listening to more - and more different - music than ever before. I'm just not hanging around record stores."
I am always amazed and surprised to find music stores where the clerks actually know about good music, but I see them all slowly falling away, and it is sad, but it does not stop me from primarily downloading tunes , legally whenever possible. I can only hope that as CD's become less used, music publishers large and small will offer up their entire back catalogs online, no more "Lost Bands" that live on only in my very old cassettes and mix tapes. I can only hope.
homebrewing shop I can get to
jasper's in nashua?
Indy CD and Vinyl in the Broad Ripple section of Indianapolis has a good selection - I've bought several CDs there - but I could have found all my purchases on Amazon.com. I just happened to decide to stop at the CD store while I was out.
You mentioned music magazines...Creem was holy writ for me in my late teens through college. Before that, it was Hit Parader, which is where I first heard of the Velvet Underground. Now you can find fan sites for everyone you'd ever heard of on the Internet.
Mark - Stout Billy's in Portsmouth. The owner advised or helped start Redhook, Smuttynose, Ipswich, and a slew of others, and Sam Adams is rumored to be using a recipe or two of his.
Sorry for the threadjacking.
ah yea, stout billy's!
let's unjack then: right around the corner from stout billy's is one of the best record stores in new england: Bull Moose Music.
Mark,
sadly not true anymore... SBs moved to a strip mall down Route 1 to save on rent.
I'll continue this offline.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/41909)
*cue stentorian voice*
NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
Al, you're right of course. Although I can cavil and quibble about the severity and timing of the coming of the Great Record Store Disappearance From Every Shore, I agree with you that people who want physical music media are going to become like model train collectors or home brewers, people with a quirky and obsessive habit that most people just don't understand or care about.
What this means, however, is that although there will be fewer and fewer record shops around, there will always be a FEW. Hell, there's a Lionel shop down the street from my house, the only one for fitty miles around. (Then again, I'm also driving an hour north tomorrow, all the way into New Hampshire, to go to the only really good homebrewing shop I can get to, so maybe the record store situation might be as dire as that.)
I did, however, think that Rhino was going to be one of the survivors.
Goodbye, Rhino!
Goodbye, Electric Fetus!
Goodbye, Music Millennium!
Goodbye, Newbury Comics!
Goodbye, Hear Music!
Goodbye, Bull Moose!
Goodbye, Criminal Records!
Goodbye, Wax Stax!
Goodbye, Outside Music!
See you all on the b-side.