For over 25 years I bought music CDs at Record Theatre. As I wandered down the aisles of great music over the years, I had the feeling Record Theatre might end up being the last record store in Buffalo. When the Internet arrived in the 1990s with “file sharing,” music CD sales started to slide. When APPLE introduced iTunes, CD sales tanked. Record Theatre tried to diversify its product offerings by selling DVDs and Blu-rays in addition to music CDs. And, they always had a small section of the store devoted to vinyl records (that section would grow over the past five years). But even loyal customers like me ended up buying 90% of our music online, usually through AMAZON.com. So after along run of selling music, Record Theatre is closing its doors today. Like the closing of a book store, the closing of a record store makes me sad. Are any record stores still operating where you live?
There are a few oldies, used record and CD shops, but no new ones! Places like Fred Meyer department store sell CDs but the selection is tiny! Not that I buy much; maybe 2 or 3 CDs a year!
Bob, we used to have a dozen record stores in Western NY just a few years ago. Now we’re down to two. The CD sections in Wal-Mart and Target are jokes.
Most of our big electronics stores in Europe still have a small section where you see the best selling CDs and DVDs/Blurays – but not a large selection.
On the other hand I fondly remember too the good old times when I would browse through stores in Frankfurt, London and Manhattan.!
I still have a poster (actually it’s half a brown paper bag) from “The Colony” near Times Square where I bougt some record by the “fusion group” GO! with Stomu Yamashta, Steve Winwood, Al di Meola and Klaus Schulze – must have been on one of my business trips to the USA …
And there were many small stores in Greenwich Village and in some parts of London (Soho, Covent Garden e g) and in my hometown too (because of the students) – but now?
Of course the availability of all kinds of music nowadays is much higher, so that’s a kind of advantage for us consumers and it would be too for the musicians – if they made money out of all that music online, but I doubt it.
Everything’s pirated nowadays …
Wolf, I’ve had students tell me they would never pay for music. “It’s all free on the Internet,” they’d tell me. No wonder the music industry has collapsed and artists can’t make it today.
Well, yeah, it’s free if you steal it.
Wolf, yes! I remember the Colony well. As I said, the Village does still have old record stores.
Another brick-and-mortar store bites the dust! We still have an FYE store in our local (dying and on life-support) mall. They have bins of CDs, DVDs, and video games, but I suspect their meager sales come primarily from t-shirts, bobble-head figures of favorite pop culture characters, and other ancillary items. We still buy DVDs (not everything is on Netflix or Hulu) and occasionally CDs (especially me, since I don’t have an iPod and I don’t use my cell phone as one), but we’re a dying breed. I think within another generation the idea that you once “owned” a copy of a piece of music or a movie will be as baffling as the idea that we once had to rent our phones from AT&T.
Deb, you are so right about “ownership” of music or movies! Patrick and Katie have no interest in owning discs. MP3 is their medium.
Houston still has Cactus Music. I have hundreds of CDs, but now I listen mostly to music from online services like Napster and Pandora.
Bill, we have Sirius/XM in our vehicles (they came standard) so I listen to the commercial-free stations. On long trips, Diane and I will play CDs or listen to audio books. I’ll listen to CDs while I’m working in the basement.
Noooo!!!
This stinks. All the Tower Records and other huge record stores are long gone. If you want vinyl or oldies there are places in the Village in particular, but for new music we get everything on Amazon.
Jeff, I buy over 90% of my music on AMAZON.com. I used to buy an occasional music CD at Record Theatre when they had a SALE, but apparently that wasn’t enough to keep them in business. The University Heights store (across from the South Campus of SUNY at Buffalo) has been at that location for 40 years. But, it will be closing today…forever.
Here is the article from when the Colony closed five years ago.
Thanks for that – though it made me almost cry to read that.
On a forum for Germans interested in the USA (immigrants and tourists) I just read an article on the decline of malls all over the USA – and of course thousands of closures of J C Penneys, Maceys, Kmarts, the imminent bankruptcy of Payless Shoes etc …
Business has changed – and will be changeing even more!
Totally OT – but connected to shopping:
I just remembered a story from Astoundin/Analog from many years ago where it was forecast that people some day would no longer buy and wash clothes – they’d get them from a machine in the morning and after a day’s use they put them in the disposal chute (where they might be recycled). My thoughts at the time were:
Ok, for men – but women who want to decide which style to wear every day … 🙂
When we lost some CDs in Florida, Jackie wanted to go to a “record store” (sic) to replace them, but there wasn’t one! Instead we ordered the replacements (those that were available) from Amazon, and we had them in the hotel within two days.
Jeff, with FREE SHIPPING and much lower prices, the Internet will crush bricks-and-mortar retail stores. That’s what’s happening to SEARS right now.
We still have an FYE too but it’s on life support, I think. We also have several used stores. Amazon will not be content until they are the only store to buy anything in. And I admit to using them all the time: fast, cheap, reliable, comprehensive. What’s not to like except their greed,.
Patti, today’s NEW YORK TIMES Business Section features an article on AMAZON’s plans. They’re going to make a big push to grab the market in India!
Now for the good news (in a way …)!
My sister called me a few days ago that her son got a new job at Amazon in Munich – he was with them in one of the “poor” locations in a smaller town, but now he’s with the bigwigs it seems – good for him!
And he already told his parents that he’ll go to California this summer for some courses (paid by the employer of course).
It surely helped him that his girlfriend grew up in the States and that they converse a lot in English – and he also wrote his bachelor’s thesis a few years ago in English.
We stayed with his parents for a night in Munich when he was just finishing that thesis at their house – and I had the pleasur of reading it and giving him a few tips where I thought his English wasn’t perfect (not on the facts of his work of course but on grammar, spellling and style). And his Chinese (!) prof was quite happy with the result!
Wolf, AMAZON continues to grow in the U.S. and all over the world. AMAZON controls a lot of “The Cloud” and is investing heavily in robots.
B&N have a music and movie section in some of their stores. Borders used to have a good music section, but they are gone
We have a good used vinyl store, which has some CD’s.
At Christmas, my friend Eileen’s husband stunned me when he said he was thinking about getting rid of his vinyl. He has a fabulous collection. I culled mine way down.
Boy, do I feel like a dinosaur, no smart phone, still have cable tv, read “real books” have lots of dvd’s and CD’s.
Maggie, we’re dinosaurs together. I wouldn’t part with my Real Books, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, etc. Art Scott has been culling his vinyl and selling off much of his comic book collection.
That’s too bad, but, but in business it’s always been true that you keep up or get left behind. The brick-and-mortar stores couldn’t keep up with, as Patti put it, “fast, cheap, reliable, comprehensive” and most of all convenient.
I’m old fashioned. I want either to buy the album in MP3 format or have a physical CD to play. The sound on a CD is far superior to streamed music, but Millenials don’t care about quality of sound, just cool, fast and easy. As to your comment that iTunes caused the crash, iTunes was just Apple’s music app at first, and then they added the iTunes store to compete with Amazon music when the latter when from books only to music too. Or that’s how I remember it. Could be wrong.
I made the switch when Tower Records closed it’s stores, where I got a lot of music and sometime hung out with the classical music guy there. After that, it was on line or nothing, pretty much.
Rick, I prefer a physical CD to play. As you point out, the sound quality is much better than MP3 files. The Market doesn’t always reward quality.
We also prefer CDs – even in the car. Again here quality is the point – we’d rather listen to the same music instead of having new songs (which we don’t like …) all the time.
Wolf, I can’t listen to much contemporary pop music. It all sounds the same.
I bought several books on CD’s at my library for 10c a book. (why when I have probably 40 of my own????) I’m listening to a Brad Thor right now and enjoying it.
If anyone going to bcon has an interest in it, I’ll bring it for you.
Maggie, thanks for the generous offer but like you I have dozens of audio books to listen to…whenever I find the time.
George, this seems to be happening everywhere. Not long ago, Bombay lost its iconic music store Rhythm House. I bought more cassettes and CDs than LPs from the store. The internet is not such a good thing, after all.
Prashant, the Internet is a disruptive technology. There are winners and losers as a result. Sadly, book stores and record stores are losing.
George, it’s only starting right now!
The destruction of the inner cities can be seen even here in Hungary, so many shops closing down and in the USA it’s already hurting the malls where people used to go to shop, meet and eat …
And the general insecurity that many people feel is “nicely” described here:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-research-identifies-a-%e2%80%98sea-of-despair%e2%80%99-among-white-working-class-americans/ar-BByCdsY?li=BBnb7Kz
PS:
I might have given that link already – seems I’m really getting old …
Wolf, the Internet is impacting all bricks-and-mortar stores…mostly adversely.
Here in Winnipeg our excellent independent bookstore, McNally Robinson, has a large section devoted to CDs and DVDs. The large HMV stores in malls are closing, but a couple of lcoations are being taken over by another national comany that does sell CDs along with other goods.