Single Cell Record Organism

I knew this story was coming. We ran this report a couple of days ago about how bad things are for the major record retailers, and at the time I thought to myself, "I'll bet some of the big used record stores and the stores that feaure hard to find items - better still, these two assets together - are doing pretty well, and will continue to do so."

It would appear I was right, at least for one such store:

I found an aggressively anticorporate, outsized emporium, where roughly 300 music fanatics were joyously assailing the record racks as a Bay Area grunge band thrashed away on a makeshift stage. Perhaps you've heard of the place. It's called Amoeba Music, and it's arguably the largest — and almost without question, the best — independent record store in the country.

Twelve years ago, Amoeba raised the curtain on its original outlet, a pint-sized storefront in Berkeley packed with about 11,000 new and used CDs. It was not a great time to launch a mom-and-pop record store. Major labels were drunkenly churning out megahit makers such as Michael Jackson. In a desperate bid to get bigger faster, many national chains gobbled up smaller chains and independent stores and geared themselves to the casual music consumer. But Amoeba chose a different route: to serve the dedicated fan. And it has grown, amoebalike, since its first year. It expanded its Berkeley store until it ran out of room, launched the San Francisco outlet in 1997, and, just over a year ago, added a third store, on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. This past fall — a period when the music-industry recession hammered the national chains and the independents alike, and mass merchants barely eked out a sales gain — Amoeba was projecting year-over-year growth of 75% ( due in part to the successful launch of the L.A. store ).

Why? Value and selection, both of which appeal to record hounds such as myself, who aren't looking for Christina, Britney or Mariah, and who would NEVER pay retail price even if we were.

Here's the first part of the formula: Just because it's independent doesn't mean it's small. Amoeba's sprawling San Francisco outlet, which occupies an old bowling alley on Haight Street, takes up 25,000 square feet. Between CDs, LPs, 45s, 78s, cassettes, 8-tracks, videotapes, and DVDs, it stocks roughly 250,000 titles. Compare that with Wal-Mart, whose average store carries about 350 titles, most of which are this month's flash in the pan. Amoeba even towers over the national chain that's best known for its selection, Tower Records, which on average stocks about 60,000 titles at its stores.
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Article Author: Eric Olsen

Career media professional Eric Olsen is honored to be the founder and former publisher of Blogcritics.org, and former publisher of Technorati.com, which both rule. He is now editor, co-founder, and CEO of The Morton Report.

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