I don't know about you but I loved going to record stores. Wherever I lived I needed to know where the closest shop was because I knew I would be spending a lot of time there. Now I am not talking about Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart or Target, I am talking about the local record shop and the stores that only sold records. When you walked into a real record shop you knew that if you had a question about a record that someone inside was going to know something about it. If they didn't have what you were looking for they would order it for you and call you when it came in. Those days are long gone. The internet has assured us that we will never run out of music, electronic files are never out of stock which some might say is better than the old days. Of course I disagree. Just because something is more convenient doesn't make it better. We have become more and more disconnected with our music the more we become connected through the web. It would be easy for me to blame the technology in what it has done to music, but when in reality technology has been a huge help to the music industry however only when it has been used properly. This leads me to my specific point and who I place the blame on, the record companies and the industry itself. I really think that they took us, the fans, for granted and believed that they could do whatever they wanted. For example when they changed the formats of the music, specifically when they changed over to compact discs. Vinyl production is a very expensive process and does not guarantee a lifetime of durability, so initially the CD was partially a welcome change. The sound was better, they lasted longer and were a lot smaller to carry around. They were also way cheaper to produce but those savings were not passed on to us the consumer, in fact prices actually increased. Matters got worse when the big box stores, a la Walmart, started to sell music, effectively pricing out the record stores. Walmart (the worst offender) could purchase huge numbers of cd's and price them accordingly, effectively steering the business in a more price driven direction which was not good. Since when did we purchase our music based on price? To go off on a bit of a tangent, Walmart became such a power in the industry that they demanded certain records to be cleaned up for their stores essentially censoring the music we wanted to listen to, how fucked up is that. So by changing the way we purchased our music moving it more towards the price, it forever altered our perception and gave us reason to look towards other avenues. Like file sharing. Record stores just couldn't compete and were getting squeezed by the industry that it helped to build. For instance a cd over at Tower Records that was going for $13.99 could easily be found at a store like Target for a couple of dollars less. You'd walk into the local record shop, finger through the cd's, look at the posters on the wall, listen to the music playing over head and then drive on over to the Best Buy to make the purchase because it was cheaper. The record stores were doing all the work and getting none of the credit. Honestly I have to admit to doing just that, but what else was I supposed to do, I was almost forced into it. I would have loved to have purchased all my music through a record shop but couldn't afford to spend the extra money. The record companies didn't have to do this to us, they could have charged less for the music from the start as well as offering us some better product. Yes for a time they also disregarded the quality of the content they were pushing on us especially towards the end of the 90's and beginning of the 2000's. The industry seemed to think that it needed to regurgitate the trends of the past giving us probably the most bland period in music history. Not to say that there wasn't great music during that time, there was. The rock scene at the time was exploding with new and emerging artist but the industry basically ignored it by leaning towards the pop and hip-hop artists which, I am sorry, don't have quite the staying power. Throw-away music is what I like to call it, not that's it's completely bad but it's the music you too often forget. Through the decades before this period there had always been a great mix of styles showing up on the charts. Where you had Marvin Gaye next to the Beatles and Huey Lewis and the News next to Run DMC, it kept the industry healthy and offered everyone an option. So when the industry types (some musicians too) started to complain about illegal file sharing hurting their business it fell on deaf ears because they were blaming the consumer when all along they should have been looking in the mirror. They were too slow (or too arrogant) to react to the emerging technology to put protections in place before it all strted to go down the tubes, when actually all they had to do was respect the consumer from the beginning. Unfortunately the record stores were caught completely in the middle and have been a dying breed ever since. But the industry, the music itself, is coming around and more and more the artists are relying on themselves to promote their music. Most recently Thom Yorke of Radiohead commented..."It's only a matter of time before the music business establishment completely folds. I guess I would say don't tie yourself to the sinking ship." He thinks that bands should release their music directly to their fans and as challenging as that sounds it's still better. Now would record stores still have eventually disappeared? Probably yes, everything we know changes eventually, but it's just hard for me to let go. Then again I have to change too.
