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January 17, 2007
Are record stores dead?
Categories: Sounds
My Bloglines feed lead me to this Wired article which linked to this article in the Chicago Sun-Times about the survival of the record store in a digital age. Music sales are up. CD sales are down. Tower records has closed. Manifest was sold. The gist of the articles is that record stores can and will survive because of two factors. One, people will still want CD's (at least until the people of my generation all die off). There's a permanance to a CD that digital music does not have. There's complete ownership. And there is ease of transportability. Let me explain that last one. I have a second generation iPod (four buttons and a wheel) and a iBook. The hard drive on the iBook is full, mostly with music. The iPod is not full, but is beginning to fail -- battery issues and screen visibiltiy have rendered it all but useless. What am I supposed to do with the music that is on there? If it were all on CD, I'd have no problem putting it all onto a new computer and iPod. There would be labor involved, of course, but there is labor involved in any transfer, even a digital one.
The second reason record stores will stick around is they serve a communal function. People can come to the store and hang out with other people who like music. In a way, it's a niche. The record store serves people who want to physically come together to buy, learn, and talk about music. It's the Long Tail in action, sorta. Whether that niche is profitable is another matter.
I hope it is, because I'd like to see the record store stick around. Personally, though, I cannot remember the last time I was in a real record store. I've come to the realization that I am just not that into music anymore. I still like music, of course, but I lack the time, energy, wherewithall, or effort to hunt down new stuff, to stay current or do much exploring. It's laziness, I know. And I feel a bit bad about it, since music used to be so important to me. There are times when I want to buy new stuff, to learn more about new artists or a new genre (jazz is still untapped for me). But I've yet to really muster up the focus or energy to do it.
What about you? Do you still buy CD's? Do you visit the record store? Heard any good new music lately?
Posted by Nakia at January 17, 2007 10:49 AM