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Record Shops RIP ...................................

D

dss

Musical Bons
Went to Oxford for a look for vinyl

Now , I knew Green River, Chalky's and Manic Hedgehog all went years ago, but now Massive Records has gone as well!

This used to be mainstay for dance / electronica / drum'n'bass and some indie, but now shut up and stripped out, no clue what happened, but the website is gone as well.

Also Avid Records have closed the dance basement, and are holding a half price end of lease sale, so will be probably close down soon.

So for new vinyl, we have HMV .... that's it!

The VIrgin sale was surprisingly good for krautesque electronica, with To Rococco Rot and Murcof and Villarobos

A found another second hand shop Vinyl Frontier in Cowley, picked up a few goodies, but fairly slim pickings amongst the soundtrack LPs.

My theory of good record shops being clustered around centres of higher education, (because the time wasting students buy more records that anyone else) is blown.

Where will it all end = only decent shops in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow?

DS
 
Where will it all end…
Click to expand...

Sadly it ends with people like me. I know a good few second hand record dealers and we are all working on line now.

The only reason a physical shop is of any use is that occasionally punters bring records in to sell. A shop is of comparatively limited use as a selling tool now; (a) rent is really expensive, (b) you need lots and lots of stock to fill it up, (c) old stock decays and devalues as punters inevitably bend / damage the sleeves, and (d) inevitably it only works in a comparatively small geographical area. The big city shops like MVE in London and Vinyl Exchange in Manchester will survive the longest along with large independents like Sister Ray and Piccadilly, both of whom almost certainly make most of their sales online.

It is a real shame that the small local record shops can no longer survive, it isn’t that the market is diminishing, just that it is changing. The good dealers are still out there but are now sitting behind their computer screen.

Tony.
 
What worries me about music sales in general, is that the diversity is going.
'When I were a lad'.. there was a shop in Nottm that sold everything from Jazz, blues, pop, classical etc, to novelty stuff, humour and even recordings of bird song and steam engines. (They also sold decent hi-fi.. for the time) Whilst the average punter might not go in looking for this stuff, the odd discovery or impulse purchase was possible.

These days, it seems most people buy from ASDA, whose limited 'best-seller' type stock is hardly going to extend anybody's listening experience.

I know loadsa people who claim to be big music fans, but whose knowledge is restricted to chart stuff. It's all very depressing. :(

Mull
 
Yer quite right. I'm off to get my golf handicap down. That'll take my spare time from now on.
 
These days, it seems most people buy from ASDA, whose limited 'best-seller' type stock is hardly going to extend anybody's listening experience.
Click to expand...

Convenience music sales have always existed, motorway service stations always stocked crap cassettes etc, and you could, IIRC, buy 'Top Of The Pops' albums from Woolworths. I suspect serious most music punters these days buy from Amazon etc, a very wide range and simple enough to do whilst pretending to work at work. I can’t understand why someone would waste time going to a shop to buy a CD.

Tony.
 
Tony L said:
I can’t understand why someone would waste time going to a shop to buy a CD.
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Still works well for those times when you feel like getting some new music but have no idea what. Grazing the larger stores can be an enjoyable thing from time to time.
 
Tony L said:
I can’t understand why someone would waste time going to a shop to buy a CD.
Click to expand...
I go for the lower prices (than Amazon), the better recommendations (than Amazon), and the free live shows (sorry Amazon). Sure, in my case buying from Amazon is also supporting the local economy but I'd rather buy from people who know music, who know me, and who are way cooler than the average dot-com retailing millionaire (IME). Plus my local shopt threw in a free shop tshirt once. Amazon just give me direct marketing inserts with my orders.
 
Quite.

I also like passing wind in the aisles, putting the records out of order and threatening the shopkeep.

There are still great music shoppes out there, you just have to find them and you can't take them for granted any longer.
 
Down here, in Auckland, Real Groovy have done a great job pandering to the vinyl junkies, to the extent that they appear to be importing S/H vinyl ex US.
They cater for all tastes, and nothing phases them.
The really expensive stuff is stuck up on a wall , out of reach !
Still, they are the only one, so the ratio is 1,000,000 people : 1 specialist vinyl / music store.
New vinyl I tend to buy online.
 
In my mid size Swedish town one record store went a couple of years ago, another one changed owner and aren't like it used to be. The third one, who specialices in Heavy Metal is doing very well.

I have heard from others in the trade that it's the stores who sells mainstream that are suffering (blame MP3 if you like), the ones who specialices, wether it's HM, Folk, Rockabilly or name your favourite, are tugging along quite well.

I like to flip through records in a store, even if CD doesn't offer the same proper "feeling" as vinyl. But I can live with mail order...

JohanR
 
PeeWeeKiwi,

I've been to Real Groovy several times, it is a good shop , but the prices for new vinyl LPs was eye-watering - NZ$60 -$70 ! I did pick up some bargins in the 2nd hand cheapies though.

I found Play and other shops on K-Road were well worth a visit. Play did a wide range of dance, electronica and indie and some mainstram rock too.

There were several other stores with quite a specialist slant too (Trance 12" ONLY, or downbeat). Well worth a couple of days browsing.

DS
 
Well, 'K' Rd is just not a place I'd ever think to go,as Real Groovy is 2 min from my office.
I'll check out the yellow pages and take a wander down 'K' rd!
 
Nothing much to say here, except that one of the best times in my life was the monthly visit to Groucho's and Rockpile in Dundee (over a five year period). It is difficult to explain the feeling of anticipation whilst flicking through the thousands of second-hand LPs, looking for those ones I had been after for ages, or indeed the newly arrived stock. The cool sounds being played by folks who were really into the music and not whiling away the time on the day job. The music (or whatever) chat with the owner / staff.

...and most of all, the feeling of success when going home with a large pile of albums. I always felt cheated if I came away with two or three. A dozen was a job well done indeed!

Ah, well. To the second-hand shop, gone but not forgotten, cheers!
 
Things are bleak in the UK I have to agree. Even Cheapo Cheapo - an old fave 2nd hand shop in Soho (nr Sister ray) has gone almost all CD these days. Used to get exc condition Lps in there for £2.50.

Take a trip to Boston USA. In one (long) street (Massachusetts Avenue) there are several secondhand CD/vinyl stores and cheap prices - especially with the exchange rate so good. You'll laugh at what I've picked up but original Herb Alpert LPs for a couple of dollars each, Sister Sledge (for my DJing) at $4. But seriously, all types of music catered for and reasonable prices. A decent break away from home, Boston is a great city to walk round and you can come back with bags of music. I never come back with less than 20 CDs and some vinyl.
 
Here's a twist for this thread... the best music store in town is getting into the used vinyl business! Woohoo!!

They had always carried the occasional new vinyl release, but I was just in there yesterday and they had signs up announcing, "Coming soon... Vinyl Resting Place" with a cool logo of a record on a tombstone, and an epitaph that said "Gone but not forgotten".

Sweet.
 
Good news for you kasperhauser! Make sure you support them. ;-)

All of the dealers I visit / used to visit, have given up on vinyl.
 
The vinyl shop I visited in Aldershot today was selling half his stock to to be exported to Poland. (!)

Still managed to sift out a few bargains though.

DS
 
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