There’s been a lot of press recently regarding the ‘death of the CD’. (Actually, it started a couple of years ago, but seems to have gained momentum in the past month or so.) CD sales are in a continued state of decline, and everyone seems to be blaming downloads (which are at least on the rise). I’m not so sure that downloading is the culprit. I blame the major record stores – which out where I live here is (the self-proclaimed) Best Buy.
Maybe my tastes are getting ‘more selective’, but I find that I’m increasingly unable to find the CDs that I want in my local Best Buy (in fact in any of the three Best Buys that are within 10 miles of my house). A couple of months ago, the Zappa section disappeared – yes, I know I have everything he’s released already (and several things he hasn’t…) but I still like to thumb through the section once in a while. And then last week I was in Long Beach, CA and called into the Best Buy there to pick up the new Dylan album (I make no apologies) and there was no Dylan section! In fact, at that particular store, the entire music section was reduced to maybe 8ft of facing, which is just pitiful – especially when they had twice that amount of space dedicated to electric bicycles. Really.
In a fit of pique I completed the on-line customer (dis)satisfaction survey advertised on my receipt, bemoaning their lack of choice. I was so incensed I left my phone number and said they were free to call me to ‘discuss’ my comments. And to give them credit, a rep from Best Buy did indeed call me back a couple of days later. Unfortunately he just confirmed that Best Buy were in the process of implementing a program to deliberately downsize their music selection to “less than half of what it currently is”. The rep’s justification was the expected stock answer that people are simply buying less CDs nowadays and just downloading stuff (hopefully legally), but if you reduce your store selection then people will have no choice but to find their music online.
I’ve never been a big fan of downloading content (legally or illegally). I like to have the physical product in my hands – as a backup, and so I get caught out by Apple’s ludicrous ‘five-PC’ limit on iTunes purchases. So this weekend I finally sought out my local independent record store, Soundwaves (on Montrose) in search of real CDs by a bunch of bands I’ve been after for a while but never found in Best Buy. Actually, calling this my ‘local’ store is a bit of a stretch as it’s some 30 miles from my house. So I don’t know that I would necessarily nip down there to pick up the one CD but as I’ve been building up a decent wishlist from listening to Sirius XMU all summer, I figured that a handful of CDs was worth the trip. This is actually the first time I have been to Soundwaves, but now I’m beginning to wish I’d discovered it sooner (although my bank balance may think otherwise).
Despite actually being half record store and half surf shop, Soundwaves (the name makes sense now, huh?) is an indie kid’s dream. There’s racks and racks of excellent music, listening posts, a meaty second-hand section, and a great staff who actually know something about the bands they stock. This independent record store even has an entirely separate section for truly independent records. Naturally, this was the section where I found most of what I wanted: No Age, School of Seven Bells, Serena Maneesh, Deerhunter (incidentallly, there’s a lot of great bands with ‘Deer’ in their name at the moment – Deerhunter, Deer Hoof, Deertick, The Dears…). And even the ‘major label’ section was a goldmine – Los Campesinos!, The Besnard Lakes, A Place To Bury Strangers, The Depreciation Guild… They even had a Fall section. A whole section! Of The Fall! I know!
OK, I know I’m going to lose a lot of people by naming a bunch of obscure bands that you’ve probably never heard of (“Whateverrr” – you know who you are!) but that’s kind of the point. Not losing people; the fact that you’ve never heard of them. And even if you had heard of them, you wouldn’t be able to find their records in Best Buy anyway. None of these bands are likely to sell millions of albums. They should do, but how can they when the chain stores won’t even carry their CDs? I accept that there’s probably not a dozen people in Katy, TX who will buy the latest (and very excellent) Dead Heart Bloom CD, and understand that from a logistics point of view every Best Buy can’t afford to stock a dozen copies just on the off chance, but if we had less branches of Best Buys, each could afford to carry more CDs and with more variety. The Yellow Pages lists 63 Best Buy stores in the Houston metropolitan area – and there just isn’t the market to support these. Cut that down to 10, give each one 6x the shelf space, and the aggregated sales would maybe make it worthwhile them stocking some smaller bands. But no, Best Buy would rather hawk electric bikes, instead. (Is there really more of a market for electric bikes than for music??)
Anyway, I don’t care any more. For me, it’s bye-bye Best Buy. From now on I’ll be ordering my ‘mainstream’ stuff (like the new Dylan ‘mono’ boxed set) from Amazon, and making monthly pilgrimages to Soundwaves for the rest. And yes, I see the irony that I am contributing to Best Buy’s problems by removing my extensive patronage, but screw them. They had their chance. And when you are all forced to go to Soundwaves to buy CDs at least you’ll be exposed to some decent music…
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