Record: Stores not dead yet Vinyl conflictPatrick Burns. Intelligencer Journal. Lancaster, Pa.: Jan 23, 2007. pg. A.7(Copyright 2007 Lancaster Newspapers) Mark Glessner, owner of 52-year-old Stan's Record Bar, might be considered the grandfather of all the local independent record shops. Unfortunately, there are no grandchildren to speak of. "Fourteen years ago there were 5,000 record stores in this country," Glessner said. "As of last month there are less than 1,800." Of the handful of record stores remaining in Lancaster County, only Stan's and Record Connection in Ephrata Township can be considered true specialty music retailers. Glessner, who in 1980 purchased Stan's, 48 N. Prince St., said the pending doom of the record store became evident in the early 1990s. That's when the recording industry hinted it was losing interest in its traditional record shop distribution system. Wal-Mart, Target, Circuit City and Amazon.com now account for about 62 percent of all music sold in the United States, not counting download sales, Glessner said. "Before, record companies would call and ask how a new album was selling and ask if you needed anything like posters to help sales," Glessner. "But they stopped calling in 1995." Stan's survives by selling used CDs and records. It stopped selling new releases when Wal-Mart began selling CDs cheaper than the wholesale price offered to Glessner. Andy Kamm, owner of Record Connection since 1984, has endured by positioning his store early on as a niche business selling vinyl albums. Customers come from all over the world, and Kamm replenishes his inventory at music shows, auctions and estate sales. Both Kamm and Glessner agree the death of the record store occurred because of the saturation of big-box retailers, a shift to cybershopping and, of course, the advent of computer music downloads - legal and illegal. Kamm said last month's death of 46-year-old Tower Records - which had been on life-support since filing bankruptcy in 2004 - marked the end of an era. Though it was an 89-store chain, Tower always was about the music and operated on an old-school record shop model that emphasized variety and a large inventory. "I understand that it's the nature of any environment to change - my childhood home is now a Subway," Kamm explained. "But, as you can see by the closing of Tower, the effects have been devastating." Record store closings have accelerated recently with the rise of personal digital music players, Internet MP3 downloads and big-box-store music sales. In 1999, Tower was one of the largest music specialty stores, operating 179 outlets. But by 2005 it was the eighth-ranked music retailer, behind Apple's iTunes Web site, according to Retail Traffic Magazine. In 2004, iTunes ranked 14th. During this "downloading decade," Lancaster has lost most of its record stores, including Music Room, Music Den, XYZed, Young Ones and BBC. Record store chains also have vanished, as Sam Goody, The Wall, Music 4 Less, Coconuts and Camelot Music departed from the local landscape. Remaining chains in Lancaster include CD Warehouse, a three-store Harrisburg-based franchise that sells mostly used products, and FYE, whose parent company, Trans World Entertainment, also owns Coconuts, Strawberries and Suncoast Video. Of the 16 businesses that paid to advertise in the 2006-07 Lancaster Yellow Book under "CDs, Tapes and Records," only seven remain in operation. That includes businesses with diversified sales, such as Latinos Grocery and CI Records and Skates, which combines skateboarding culture with music sales. Longtime music retailer Angry Young and Poor, 356 W. Orange St., serves an alternative/punk demographic. But 90 percent of its sales are Internet or mail-order transactions, and revenue is bolstered by a large inventory of clothing and other nonmusic products. Kamm in 2000 nearly doubled the size of Record Connection to about 1,800 square feet, yet sales have dropped a third since then. The store's floor inventory includes about 30,000 albums, 60,000 45s and 6,000 old and new CDs, as well as concert and movie DVDs and other items such as keychains and posters. A "tiny fraction" of Record Connection's sales come through its Web site, said Kamm, who has no interest in adopting Angry Young and Poor's business model. "I have sold online," Kamm said. "But I think you have to do one or the other, and to me the Internet has less to offer. It doesn't provide the record shop' experience." Record Connection relies heavily on its "vinyl room," which offers customers a trip back to a 1970s record shop. The room is filled with endless racks of classic albums, live customers and even knowledgeable employees. "Our CD sales are equal to our vinyl," Kamm said. "Vinyl has kept us afloat. If we had to rely on CDs, we wouldn't have lasted." Sharing a preference for vinyl, Kamm and Glessner said the new generation of music downloading has ultimately led to the devaluation of music. They say the iPod culture accepts substandard audio quality compared to LPs, and the music downloading process robs customers of a tangible reward for taking a trip to the record store. Value, Glessner said, is gleaned from the act of pacing through a record store and filing through racks of music to get a physical connection with the album jacket, and actually carrying home the music you purchased. Glessner remains perplexed as to why the music industry abandoned record stores and capitulated to Wal-Mart, which sells CDs at a loss to bring customers to their super-centers. He is equally puzzled as to how the music industry evolved to the point where rapper Yung Joc has actually made more money selling a 20-second ringtone than he did from a CD that sold 1.5 million copies. "Maybe the music industry is like Wal-Mart," he said, "and is selling CDs at a loss while making it up on $3 ringtones." Contact Pat Burns at pburns@lnpnews.com. |
