More On The Future Of Record Stores
by kperfetto

I did something yesterday that I rarely do anymore: set foot in an actual brick-and-mortar record store. You know, the kind that sells those little silver discs? The kind that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, sold those big vinyl discs?

(Or for those of us that came of age in the 80s, the lowly but under-appreciated cassette tapes.) i still buy a lot of music, but never in the years since the dawn of the ipod would I have thought that I would completely abandon the haunts of my youth were I would fight over that rare copy of some long out-of-print gem with some guy whose wingspan is twice mine. Why bother anymore when Amazon and iTunes has nearly anything a good music fan could want?And it's not only the mom-and-pops in trouble. A few months ago, New York City said goodbye to its last Virgin Megastore. Maura from Idolator:

Not with a bang: “It was the final day of business for the Virgin Megastore chain in North America, which at its peak had 23 locations but by Sunday was down to two… when the [Union Square] store opened, perhaps 90 percent of the merchandise had already been sold, leaving two tables of CDs and DVDs, a dozen T-shirt racks and a few other scattered displays.”

Carrie From NPR's Monitor Mix packed up or sold her CDs prior to a move, but refuses to part with her vinyl albums:

I've sold off or packed all of my CDs for storage; I've loaded the content of the ones I can't live without onto my computer. That's right: Not a single CD is coming along to NYC. Yet I can't seem to part with the glorious and tactile experience of vinyl.

As someone who got into music in the late-eighties and early-nineties, I've never had tons of vinyl. I'd always wished I'd built a better collection, but I'm not tidy or organized enough to be a true record geek. I've ditched a lot of my CDs, too, moving twice in the past eight years. The songs I've found indispensable, I've ripped to iTunes, while the physical artifacts were shipped en masse to whatever used CD store would take them. The cassettes a distant memory. I should feel guilty about this, but I don't. To me, it's still music, regardless of the format?How about you? Do you buy CDs still?

Submitted by kperfetto (view blog) on Fri, 08/07/2009 - 5:53am

Comments

 

Vinyl

I cannot part with it. And bless my mother, she has allowed me to store my collection (big by civilian standards but tiny by collector/industry standards where I know those who've built wings onto their property). If I had to transport back and forth across country it would have been a major problem. I rarely get into a record store. It's so much easier to track down rarities online than to hunt in a store. I'm sad though that I am contributing to the demise of stores.

But CD's aren't too much of a problem. I could fit my collection in the trunk of my compact car so it's easier to hang on to them than to spend the time digitizing them all.

BlogHer Contributing Editor
PopConsumer
Beyond Help

Submitted by Maria Niles on Fri, 08/07/2009 - 07:43
 

I do still sometimes buy

I do still sometimes buy CDs, even though I'm just going to turn around and put them on my iTunes.  But I have this strange fear that my computer will crash and my iPod will get stolen, and then all of my music will be lost.  Which I know isn't rational since I also back up my iTunes to a portable hard drive. 

Plus there's just something about flipping through the liner notes and lyrics while listening to a new CD.  Or taking the CD to a show to get it autographed.  Or having selves of CDs to look through.  I don't know, I guess I need to have the tangible, and visual component to go along with my music.  

Submitted by no_I_am_zoe on Fri, 08/07/2009 - 09:44
 

I cut my teeth

on vinyl. For some reason the other day I was attempting to remember the first vinyl I ever bought. It was probably a 45 RPM (For those of you who don't know what this means, it was a small disk with only one song on each side.) It was probably an artist like Sarah Vaughan or June Christy.

At BlogHer08, I had the pleasure of staying in a San Francisco home that had walls (literally) of vinyl on display. Looking through those albums was like seeing the history of recorded music on display. And the equipment to play it included vacuum tubes that had to warm up before you could use it! Really, I'm not kidding. That home was a museum of music.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer CE
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Submitted by Virginia DeBolt on Sat, 08/08/2009 - 04:49
 

Vinyl will never die in our house!

No choice....I married my 1980's DJ which came with a collection of about 8500 albums that are proudly displayed in his nightclu....our basement (-:

I love the fact that he still plays and mixes on turntables (once a thrill always a thrill I guess) although we will buy CD's every now and again.  

But for me, there is nothing like Old School! (him & them (-:)

Melyssa

Submitted by Grandmasunderwear.com on Sat, 08/08/2009 - 04:50
 

Missing Record Stores

I lugged my records around for years, but then I moved to NYC. I had to let them go and move entirely to CDs.  I download some music now, but generally end up buying the CD b/c I miss the liner notes.  And for DJing, I've moved to CDs but its not the same as vinyl. sniff sniff...

I worked in record stores for years and miss those too.  I try to find tiny independent brick and mortar stores and buy used CDs. The smell of vinyl and all the rock posters make me nostalgic for days when I barely eked out an existence and had purple hair. OK, maybe not eking out an existence on $6 an hour.

What about 8-tracks?  Anyone remember those, before cassettes? I think that I had "Breakfast in America" by Supertramp on an 8-track. 

Thanks for your post. Virgin, Tower, HMV..R.I.P. 

~DJKyrawoman

Submitted by DJKyrawoman on Sun, 08/09/2009 - 19:04