Record Collecting for Fun and Profit: The Compact Disc Store

Okay, well, maybe not for profit, but hitting a kickass record shop to rifle through their bins of vinyl records? That’s some A-plus fun, folks. We recently went down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Elizabeth took me to The Compact Disc Store, a local record shop she’s quite fond of. In fact, she wrote about the store back in August, more or less proclaiming it dead!

Luckily enough for us, the store’s still alive and kickin’ and we gave it a healthy cash injection. She picked up some cool import CDs, but I made out like a bandit and scored an armful of magnificent vinyl. Sure the music’ll be good, but these 12″ sleeves must be displayed like the works of art they really are.

The Decemberists "Picaresque" LP

Chic "Le Freak" 7" Single

Lionel Richie "Dancing on the Ceiling" LP back

Lionel Richie "Dancing on the Ceiling" LP back

Ashford & Simpson "Street Opera" LP

Ashford & Simpson "Street Opera" LP back

Neil Diamond "Moods" LP

Neil Diamond "Moods" LP back

Roberta Sherwood "Country Songs for City People" LP

Steve Perry "Street Talk" LP

Neil Diamond "Headed for the Future" 12" LP

As you can see, it was like finding sunken treasure.

Hopefully Elizabeth will jump back into the fray soon and raise the IQ of this blog back to where it belongs.

And Another One Gone…

I can’t believe I’m blogging on the same topic in less than a week, but I think it’s important.

In the ongoing theme of the death of the independent record store, Kim’s Video–formerly Kim’s Music and Video–by Columbia is closing.  I wouldn’t be sad, considering that I never much liked the store, except that it provided an ease of shopping for my lifestyle: go to school, pick up an album on the way home, no trips downtown required.

No, what makes me upset is that if Kim’s, the cockroach of independent record stores, can’t survive, nothing can.  Kim’s, a long-established chain of stores in the NYC area, has survived raids for “piracy,” after all.  And it’s been in the uptown location since April 2001, hardly an auspicious economic time itself.  Though I foresee that their downtown locations might have a longer life–NYU kids are always hipper than Columbia kids–I don’t think that any of them will exist primarily as music stores for very much longer.

And here’s why: This year, the top 5 music retailers were, in order, iTunes, Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon, and Target.

Everyone thinks that digital music is responsible for the death of the independent music store.  And to an extent, it is, since we are again shifting from an album-based musical economy to one that is single-based, thanks to iTunes and Amazon (and everyone else online).  And, Columbia University, from which Kim’s uptown rents its space, is undoubtedly a hotbed of online music purchasing and, shall we say, exchanging.*

But, within those top 5 retailers, you may notice that Walmart, Best Buy, and Target are still primarily brick-and-mortar stores.   There are still a LOT of people who do not buy music online, and they could theoretically buy from independent stores.  Those people, though, are going where it’s cheaper and more convenient: all three of those stores sell new releases at a loss, or bargain with record labels to buy in such large quantities that the label gives them a greater discount.

Basically, an independent record store can’t keep up with this, no matter where it’s located.  Most major-label distribution companies sell new releases in small quantities to independent stores at about $10-12 per CD; Best Buy, Walmart, and Target sell them to customers for about $10 each.  If independents sold them at the same price, they’d lose money on every CD they sold. And, though we’d all like to think that the cool music on indie labels that the big boxes don’t sell is the bread and butter for brick-and-mortar independent stores, it just isn’t–and those stores often have the big indie releases anyway.

And now my eulogy for Kim’s Uptown:  I never liked you.  Your staff was rude, and they never wanted to answer questions.  And they often overcharged.  I’m pretty sure that I visited the store on occasions when the security staff outnumbered the folks behind the counter, making me think that you thought customers were more likely to steal music than to buy it.

Unlike your downtown locations, Uptown rarely had new releases consistently stocked, unless it was (ugh!) Vampire Weekend. How you never managed to have anything I wanted in stock, I’ll never know.

Finally, your coy way of categorizing music–”indie” is music from the past ten years, “establishment” meant anyone coming before that–was needlessly precious.  It appealed to people who were needlessly pretentious in their music tastes, like the person I knew who claimed never to have heard Sonic Youth because they were “too mainstream.”  That dude got lot of music at Kim’s (and Other Music, a perhaps even more irksome store).

So, goodbye, Kim’s Uptown.  I won’t miss you, but I will miss many other, more homey stores like you.

*The university certainly does not condone file sharing.  In fact, they have rather grave repercussions if students get caught file sharing with Columbia accounts.

Another One Bites the Dust

And now, a moment of silence for The Compact Disc Store, the last independent, non-genre-specific-yet-thoroughly-satisfying-in-its-selections record store in Baton Rouge, my hometown.

The Compact Disc Store is not dead yet, exactly, so perhaps mourning it is a little bit premature.  And I hope it is.  But when my friend Jonathan and I visited it this afternoon for our semi-annual CD-splurge fiesta, a sign on the door read, “For Sale: This Store.”  And, while we were in there–the entire half hour or so that it took for us to scour the store’s used section, peruse the new releases wall, flip through the extensive vinyl section, examine the boxed sets, and run around putting back non-essential purchases–only one other person came into the store.

In the end, both of us bought probably more than we should have.  The air felt funereal, but if the store is on its way out, we weren’t going to be the reason.

About five years ago, I wrote about the death of the independent music store in my now-defunct webzine, Smarty Pants.  Back then, we were in the early years of the digital music revolution, when Napster was the Big Bad that the majors were trying to combat. Now, it’s pretty much accepted and expected that most people simply want the convenience of getting their music online, whether its purchasing obscure out-of-print CDs from Amazon’s Marketplace, throwaway singles from iTunes, or just about anything illegally downloaded from Limewire (or Bittorent).  Furthermore, CDs, unless they are the aforementioned obscure and out-of-print highly prized collectors items, are just obsolete (and pretty much second to vinyl in the obscurity category).

But the Compact Disc Store, despite its bland name, is more than just a place to buy CDs.  Like other great independents, it is a place with a well grounded, well versed staff who, despite their hipster beards, probably know that a recording of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau performing Schubert’s Winterreise is going to be just as good a listen as Billy Bragg’s latest release.  Every time I’ve purchased music there, pretty much since high school, I’ve had an interesting exchange about music with the person behind the counter (or on the phone, when I once called them while interning at a hip indie label).  No one has ever been rude or exhibited the stereotypical High Fidelity arrogant judgment.

And, like other great independent record stores, the Compact Disc Store has its own quirky character.  Employees artfully collage the promo posters on the wall: Miles Davis turns into a giant alien-esque being; Barbra Streisand’s hands are altered so that she appeared to be gleefully holding a giant po-boy sandwich.  A chubby cat and shaggy dog occasionally emerge from the back room to hang out with customers and subtly demand attention by rubbing up against your legs as you shopped.  Far Side cartoons and Bushisms adorn the empty spots on the vinyl wall.

Most importantly, though, the store has always had great selection (despite its weird blind spot to Britpop).  Today, I purchased Billy Bragg’s Mr. Love and Justice; a compilation of Tony Allen’s solo releases from the 1970s; Jaguar Love’s brand new self-titled EP (used); Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s recording of Schubert’s Winterreise (used); INXS’s Kick (used–hey, I was 11 when it came out, and it is still awesome in my eyes); the Julliard String Quartet’s recording of Shoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht (used); and Paul Weller’s Wild Wood (used).  Not a bad haul in terms of used CDs, in particular.

But the world has changed.  Despite my sadness at seeing the for sale sign, I have to admit that I buy most of my music online these days, too.  I hope someone buys the store, and that it can survive our current recession, but it is just one of many such stores stuck selling a product that most people don’t want anymore, and it doesn’t look good.

Ave vale atque, Compact Disc Store.