you know you're in a shitty record store when....

1. the "international" section is 80% johnny clegg and savuka LPs
...

Where was this?

2. when you get sent home from a trial shift because you don't know enough about acid jazz and liked Washed Out last summer

The Classical section has any Three Tenors CD

HA! They're are funny things and then they're are really funny things. I'll leave it to you guys to sort out!!! take care guys (or gals!!!!)

coyote browsing the racks

redneck-y client asks his lady how this can be a music store if it doesn't have any Beatles. the clerk escorts him to the Pop section, letter B. "yeah these 5 shelves are very easy to miss; take yer pick."

Limited edition Kings of Leon pigeon shit 12" on the wall behind the counter

middle-aged dudes ask you if you have that John Fogerty album, thinking you're an employee because you're in your early 20s and look sullen and maybe have khakis on.

(I've been mistaken for a record store employee at least 4 times over the years, but I guess I shouldn't place the blame on the stores themselves, i.e. mostly N3wbury C0mics)

middle-aged dudes ask you if you have that John Fogerty album

You know you're in a dece record store imo

Dan Fogelberg is probably closer to the truth, tbh

nearly all 2-disc sets are priced in the $20-$30 range ($18 for a beaten-up copy of Ash's singles collection! $25 for the essential Roy Orbison!) regardless of how chintzy and undesirable, and regardless of the fact that all single CD's are on sale for $9.99 or less. god I hate FYE, avoidable as it is.

many of the used CD's are kept behind the counter, so when you want to buy one, you bring the empty case up to the counter, and the cashier retrieves the disc and pops it into a resurfacing machine for a couple minutes while you wait. it comes out scratch-free and shiny and (probably) playable. I appreciate the transparency of the process, but it's hard not to get a little squicked out imagining just how scratched and filthy the CD looked just before its makeover.

numbers, people, numbers!

also -- i'm not liking nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-ILM

Where was this?

― Shut Up. Kenny G. Etc. (u s steel), Saturday, July 31, 2010 2:14 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

at a shitty record store, duh.

I didn't know there were any shitty record stores left.

I can see 'em surviving.

it's the good record stores that are in real trouble.

...when you walk in and hear the phrase "Welcome to Best Buy!"

11. Copies of R.E.M.'s Monster priced higher than one dollar.

Timely thread, as I've just returned from a trip to the new "record store" in my neighborhood.

12. As you wonder why there's a shelf that is completely stuffed with nothing but George Benson, you realize that the entire store's selection was assembled by winning 7 separate "POP HUGE LOT 1000 Records ANDY WILLIAMS EDDIE MONEY NEIL DIAMOND" auctions on eBay for $39.99 apiece.

13. You inadvertently blurt out "oh COME ON" more than three times.

14. when i pay $$$ for a near mint record and still have to take it home and wet clean it

(I've been mistaken for a record store employee at least 4 times over the years, but I guess I shouldn't place the blame on the stores themselves, i.e. mostly N3wbury C0mics)

think I've been mistaken for an employee two or three times in various N3wbury C0mics stores over the years

I am mistaken for an employee nearly every single time I go into a record store or a bookstore.

When I worked at Blockbuster I would sometimes go to WalMart right after work to pick up a few things and basically have to run from people asking me for help.

Probably deserves its own thread so...

Being mistaken for a record store clerk

Bluegrass section is just Bela Fleck and that Yoyo Ma/Edgar Meyer collabo.

16. the Prefab Sprout album Steve McQueen is filed under M, for McQueen.

(I dutifully moved it to its proper place. no wonder I get mistaken for a clerk all the time!)

17. A sign at the entrance it reads "HMV".

18. Larry the Cable Guy album playing on the sound system.

16. the Prefab Sprout album Steve McQueen is filed under M, for McQueen.

(I dutifully moved it to its proper place. no wonder I get mistaken for a clerk all the time!)

― if you see her, say ayo (unregistered), Saturday, 31 July 2010 19:26 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah I was gonna sort-of do this one - tons of records alphabetised by their album title betraying the fact the owners don't know who they are

17. charley pride in the soul/R&B section

i put all my dan fogelberg records out on the street for free. still there i think. i keep putting hundreds and hundreds of albums outside for free and nobody will take them all. i wish someone would take them all. oh i'm getting rid of some, i just need a good hoarder to drive by in an old hoarding truck who will take them all away.

19. All the albums in the store are made of play-doh

wait what was 18

20. every time you make a purchase the clerk kicks you in the nuts

oh there it is...what happened i am confused

21. they don't have m&ms/skittles/runts dispensers near the entrance

22. sections for too many artists contains only a) their final album, b) three best-of's, and c) a string quartet tribute

^the only record store in town for a very long time

and 23. any vinyl even remotely recognizable to DB college students=$20 regardless of anything

i just need a good hoarder to drive by in an old hoarding truck who will take them all away.

He will bring them back the next day and try to sell them to you. I work at a store now and we have people picking shit out of our garbage and trying to sell it back to us. It's amazing.

24. Store lacks a sassy quipping robot who dispenses fresh fruit from a compartment near its "crotch"

i mean, nothing says record shopping like a nice, steel-tasting nectarine

25. store used to be cool then gets franchised by a shitty chain, suddenly 3/4 full of tchotkes and dvds, music section razed, only Pop & Country and 5 large 'bargain' bins full of Candlebox and Martina McBride

(that was the music store in my hometown.

Who would turn down Dan Fogelberg records?!?

26. Lack of a plum vending machine (UK-specific)

27. there's no shelf for letter X (sadly, that's about every record shop I remember)

28. It has a collection of used jazz mags for sale, and I don't mean 'Straight No Chaser'.

29. When they complain about a lack of business due to internet sales without realizing they need to change their business model where all new items are 16.99 and above (making 2 - 3 dollars on when sold). Instead, focus on your used items. I don't get why more stores don't realize this solution.

i think most do realize this. tons of stores have been living off of their used cd sales for years. they stock the new stuff because they kinda have to. no business owner wants to spend 10 dollars and up on a new cd just to make 3 or 4 bucks. not unless they can sell a hundred of them. but the new stuff gets people in the stores. sorta. i dunno. its hard no matter what you do. of course there are always gonna be people running music stores that might as well be running copy shops or dry cleaning businesses.

love this thread. keep it going! its like market research for me. i'm totally overhauling all my crap today and tomorrow. everthing i'm sick of looking at will now be a dollar or two. and i'm gonna keep putting out boxes of free stuff. its really easy to get buried in the record biz. you keep getting stuff in and you lose sight of, um, everything. then you realize that you have 10 synergy records in your stacks and nobody even wants one synergy record. how does this happen? so, yeah, just give your synergy records away to someone who might enjoy them. start fresh.

but the new stuff gets people in the stores.

This is def. true at least for me, I walk into the store because there's a new release I want and that's when I buy 4-5 used CDs which presumably provide way more aggregate profit for the store.

...the DVDs, action figures and computer games take up most of the front shelf space, and the records/CDs are in the back half. (See: any Slackers location in the STL area.)

That's weird. In Orlando, Park Ave. seems to have almost no turnover in used records, which there are too few of and are almost always priced too high. They have more than a wall full of new records, though. I don't know about the turnover at Rock n Roll Heaven, but their records are so expensive that I can't imagine they could have the space to put more used records. They want the place to look curated or something. Retro Records is okay, the turnover is okay and the prices are okay (just okay!), but their stacks don't look like they suffer from the getting buried problem.

At Silver Platter in Fort Myers, I hoped all the time for customers to bring records in for sale, but it was very rare, and when they did customers wouldn't notice the new, cool, cheap and weird records we'd put out in the front of the display stacks. And the in-take couldn't be TOO cool because then it'd wind up on ebay.

Record Trader in F.M. actually has okay turnover, but Ralph has ended up segregating new old records like this:

1. ebay
2. dollar records (he has a great rotating dollar record pile)
3. a very few records go to the specialty sections like reggae, "punk," and Beatles - his display racks aren't deep enough for proper browsing
4. on the floor by the comics (which are possibly the biggest part of his business) in three separate piles (jazz, comedy, and everything else), because he's done nothing for the records in the actual stacks, which remain overpriced and beat to hell from overstuffing and people laying boxes on the tops of records

That's not to say I don't like the Record Trader.

ee: any Slackers location
Yeah, Slackers is a video game store that happens to have some records and cds. The staff at the Columbia store does a pretty good job getting some great random stuff, though.

The Dimple stores left in the Sac area are good at mixing new & used, they don't have them in separate sections anymore so if you're looking for an old release you might have 2 or 3 price points/versions to choose from.

They have taken over the old Tower/R5 location on Broadway...hope they can revive it, R5 drove itself into the ground, that store was NASTY when I went in last time. Tumbleweeds, srsly.

I meant an emphasis on used items. New (as in shipped from the distributor) items are very important, but if you still stock your entire store with new items and have just a "used section," I think you're fooling yourself. Unless you're Other Music, you shouldn't rely on those sales, because you'll scrape by.

The most successful strategy is to price used items based on their demand. Amazon has other sellers to reference these price points. The system you use to buy these items from independent sellers is up to you, so you are in control.

Then you don't make this mistake on a used item:

"11. Copies of R.E.M.'s Monster priced higher than one dollar.

― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, July 31, 2010 12:20 PM (Yesterday)"

because people aren't willing to pay higher than that. And think of all of the old, factory shipped CDs like that title that people won't buy at 14.99. And you paid $9 for each copy!

At a new shop I always check the Beach Boys section hoping against hope for anything other than a couple comps, Keepin' the Summer Alive, and a beat-up copy of Party!

A local store here still has about 5-6 copies of Monster in the racks at $8.99 apiece, used. The employee I used to know said they had hundreds more in the back that were going unsold, and the owner refused to ever lower any used CD below $8.99 apiece. Which I guess is why the store is going broke, and recently switched all its employees back to minimum wage... laying off a good bit of its long-term staff in the process. Brilliant, huh?

i do really well with the beach boys. i can't keep them in the store. i always need more. luckily, i almost always get more when i need them. see, with the beach boys, you get younger dudes buying them AND sad boomers who ditched all their records for CDs and now they feel bad about it or something. they want them back. they were duped! i do have this pristine pressing of M.I.U. that nobody will buy. i'm not even selling it for much. sounds so amazing! i refuse to give it away for nothing. its too pretty. i should just bring it home. i appreciate it!

30. The listening station seems to function only for decorative purposes.

I'm sure this has been mentioned upthread somewhere, but the worst kind of record store for me has always been the store where anything even marginally more desirable than Goodwill sludge automatically has a price slapped on it that clearly came verbatim from a price guide (if you're lucky; such stores often price above the guides). This was true in 1985, in 1998, and it's true today. It's even more true today--you want to take the owner aside and explain that these are records, a dead technology that it would be in his best interest to move out of the store. (Yes, I realize vinyl has made something of a comeback the last two or three years; longer view, I still don't see it ever coming back.) The record stores I've always liked best are priced to turn stuff over; six or seven dollars and out the door. That may seem self-evident, but there really is a different mindset between owners who hang on to stuff for dear life and those who are in business to sell.

Uh you go to buy a CD and they keep the discs behind the counter and then they can't find the disc you want. For christ's sake.

This complaint is totally gonna bite me in the ass at work one day, of course.

they keep the discs behind the counter

Super annoying. I especially hate flipping through those plastic sheets with the album art inside--you can probably visually scan over 10+ CD spines for every one piece of denuded album art in a shoebox. Wuxtry Decatur I'm looking at you...

the selection of Beach boys albums on both cd and vinyl is almost all greatest hits, no studio albums, and you put several threatening signs on your door warning people going to the restaurant next door that if you park in the spaces in front of the store, you'll be towed. (even though the lot is small, fills up fast, and a restaurant uses more spaces proportionately than a crap record store that has TWO PEOPLE IN IT MAX at any given time).

That's not to say that Wuxtry Decatur is a shitty record store.

clemenza OTM. I've bitched before on this board about a place called Vintage Vinyl just north of Chicago. Ridiculous, ridiculous prices. A beat up copy of Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town? $15. What is even more disappointing is that the store does carry a fantastic selection of kraut and psych releases, but at even more astounding prices. Want used Can vinyl? They start at $55 and go up from there.

Also, they sell CDs. But only sloppily assembled CD-Rs of live boots. You know the kind, the Dylan shows on two discs for $45.

I hate that place with a passion.

Vintage Vinyl is the basis for the record store in High Fidelity.

is the vintage vinyl in st. louis or the one in chicago the original (or another location)? Anyway, same deal with the stl version.

That's not to say that Wuxtry Decatur is a shitty record store.
― skip, Sunday, August 1, 2010 10:43 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yeah, that place was OK. had a big country section in the back that i enjoyed scanning through. ended up with some mickey newbury records IIRC.

the two words every record store owner should know (and i think i'm repeating something scott mentioned on another thread): SUNK. COSTS. it doesn't matter if you paid the distributor $9 for it in 1995. if it hasn't sold in that time, mark it down. then mark it down some more. make it liquid. get it the fuck out of the store.

the worst record store i know right now is a little place in madison, wisconsin called sugar shack. i don't have the willpower to recite all the problems with this store.

just to give you a small sampling: VHS tapes. lots of them. priced at $5. also, the owner typed up a little list of "rolling stone's 500 top albums" or something from the '90s, printed them out, and has them at the front counter... for $0.99.

there's a real pathos with that store, because the guy is clearly tethered to a sinking ship and has no business acumen whatsoever. i see him around town all the time -- downtown, near frat row, etc. -- stapling these little signs "S.O.S. SAVE OUR STORE BIG SALE SUGAR SHACK RECORDS" up to every post, tree, and streetlight. as if some bro from alpha sig is going to travel three miles off campus to visit some random record store. oh and the "BIG SALE," the one that's supposed to save his ass? buy one used item full price, get the second half off. you know, like you'll pay $4 for that beat-up copy of "bridge over troubled water" (direct from a radio station, with the station's call letters written over the jacket) instead of $8. whoopee.

vintage vinyl in evanston... we've discussed this elsewhere a few times, i think. guy is an asshole, no doubt. as you say, almost everything is hideously overpriced. he doesn't price ANYTHING at under $10, and most records are at least $20. he'll find any old excuse to mark something up. "VAN MORRISON MOONDANCE -- GREEN REPRISE LABEL. $40." oh, the GREEN label you say? i know that sometimes shit like that matters but i swear he's making it up half the time. that said... there are some genres (indie pop, industrial) that he knows nothing about, and you can (could?) actually find some bargains there. not that they would be cheap, mind you, but very occasionally his default prices of $10 or $20 are actually a bit low.

ok, rant over for now.

just to balance this out, shout outs to some of the best record stores i know:

harvest in asheville, underground sounds in louisville, permanent in chicago, twisted village (RIP!!!) in cambridge...

ya know in 1988 Vintage Vinyl in Evanston was one of the best record stores in the midwest, I bought a Legendary Pink Dots box set there, a Rip Rig & Panic 7" and maybe my Mark Beer single. Lo how the mighty have fallen.

i'd be surprised btw if sugar shack sold enough CDs and LPs (and VHS tapes, ha) in a week to make back the minimum wage he's probably paying the 16-year-old girl working the counter on weekends. the last four times i've been in there (over a span of two years), i was the only customer.

xpost

wow old school. i first scoped out vintage vinyl around 1993 and it's true, if you wanted stuff like a television personalities or chrome record on vinyl, you didn't have many other options.

sugar shack has a decent website, it just doesn't have anything good to sell:

http://www.sugarshackrecords.net/

set of star trek: the next generation VHS tapes anyone?

twisted village (RIP!!!)

Oh no, it's gone? I got some really contemporary classical/psych/kraut stuff there when I lived in Somerville, and the people working there were always really awesome.

I've not been to Permanent here. So far I've only been to Reckless but they don't really have much of what I look for now.

There was a place near me called "Music, Music, Music" that had no used section and the whole inventory of non-used CDs were 15 and above.

It is now a Papa Johns.

twisted village is gone now, yeah. sad.

permanent is fucking awesome. just awesome. i was just there today. the owners are wonderful people.

re. sugar shack:

just a few years ago he'd get a smattering of the big new releases (on CD--he doesn't seem to have figured out that folks are buying new vinyl), and post them on a little dry-erase board out front. eventually he stopped doing that and simply had a "recent releases" box up front, with CDs dating back to about 2004.

now even that's gone. no pretense of "new" or even "recent" stuff at all. the CDs that are in that store right now, not to mention the LPs, are likely the exact same ones that were in there two, three, even five years ago. i imagine he doesn't have relationships with distributors any more. :-(

ha--just looked at sugar shack website. a sampling of the merch.

"national treasure" dvd, used - $12.50

john lennon - shaved fish LP - vg - $8.50

demi moore: choices / the master vhs - new - $4.99

the passion and dazzling virtuosity of flamenco - 3 cassettes - used - $9.99

any takers?

put me down for the demi

Oh shit Permanent is right by my house. My wallet will hate me for this.

30. i'm just gonna say 30 cuz the numbering seems to have dropped off there and most of the immediately above is not bad record store situation. mine is weird old moth-eaten dust store with no fucking prices on anything. and you have to take your weird japanese art blakey nori box freebie interview flexi up to the moth eaten dust guy drinking off-brand dr. peeper at the register and extract feeble price suggestions like rotting teeth. while have really interesting conversations about what gum used taste like before people discovered mint. i know that it is digger heresy to suggest that such stores (often run out of mystery spaces no bigger than a station wagon, presumably shoehorned in because no self-respecting alley would have them) are bullshit, but damn they are bullshit. put a price on a thing. it is not hard. then i will pay the price and leave before i contract old lung off you.

put me down for the demi

― the itsytitchyschneider (s1ocki), Monday, August 2, 2010 12:29 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

should i throw in a few of those "rolling stone 500 best albums of all time" print outs for $0.99 each? party favors?

Was listening to Synergy - "Cords" on mp3 lately, probably wouldn't pay record collector prices for any but a box full of free Synergy LPs sounds like a good find to me!

(Sadly I am in the UK and a few bad experiences have led me to give up on getting vinyl shipped from overseas ever again, so I won't make you any offers - hope you find a good home for them though, surely w/all the Oneohtrix/Gavin Russom heads around these days Synergy shd be due for some hipster appreciation)

PS jealous here cz my town now has only an HMV, and even when we had a record shop from which I bought many cheap CDs, all the vinyl was so expensive - LPs started at £5, no matter how common/shitty/scratched; anything vaguely genre-specialist was £10 or £15; anything in a price guide was marked up to twice the guide price, again regardless of condition or how long it went unbought.

Even when it closed down the owner sold off the CDs at a pound each but only took 10% off the vinyl cz he still thought he'd make his fortune on eBay.

So, I guess,
31. Several price guides spanning 20 years on the counter, with thumb marks visible everywhere except the "condition" column. Find highest price in any book even if the bottom has dropped out of the genre, ignore the fact that the cover looks like a dog's chewed it and the record itself sounds like you're trying to pick up Radio Omsk on a stormy day, and double the price. If the highest price was in the 1984 catalogue, multiply by at least 5, to take inflation into account.

If it's not in the price guide, that means it's too underground or too new and hip for the book, so put a nice high price on it. You might have to wait 15 years for someone who's heard of it to come in, but you don't want him to have found a bargain!

Re CDs behind the counter: plastic sheets with the album art inside

Reckless in London used to do this, except in rigid unopenable plastic which took up as much space as the actual box, with stickers all over them. I bought a CD by a different band of the same name once, which I could probably have managed not to do if all the information on the back hadn't been obscured by price tags and an index card with 14.5 square inches of blank space and one disc storage shelf reference number. Annoying.

32. Shops that use stickers that when you peel the goddamn sticker off half of it is left behind on the sleeve.

33. Shops that have "staff picks" sections, often with little cards next to the picked albums hand-written by the staff member in question and telling why he likes the album. Obviously going for the "hey, we're not some faceless corporate concern here, we love the music just like you do and we're so enthusiastic about it that we're gonna tell you all about it" vibe. But you know what, I really couldn't care less what you like, I just want to know if you have any Anthony Braxton CDs.

32. Shops that use stickers that when you peel the goddamn sticker off half of it is left behind on the sleeve.

This. Especially when put on digipak CDs or directly on record sleeves, so you either have to leave the sticker on it or tear off half of the sleeve.

I'm looking at you, Music & Video Exchange.

They still do that? Cursed mellon farmers.

34. You walk in and there is this terrible old mouldy smell

33. Shops that have "staff picks" sections, often with little cards next to the picked albums hand-written by the staff member in question and telling why he likes the album. Obviously going for the "hey, we're not some faceless corporate concern here, we love the music just like you do and we're so enthusiastic about it that we're gonna tell you all about it" vibe. But you know what, I really couldn't care less what you like, I just want to know if you have any Anthony Braxton CDs.

eh I don't really care much for this either but I'd never see this and think 'well this is clearly a shitty record store'

ya jesus christ dude why not just buy everything off amazon if the slightest hint of humanity bothers you that much

should i throw in a few of those "rolling stone 500 best albums of all time" print outs for $0.99 each? party favors?

― by another name (amateurist), Monday, August 2, 2010 1:37 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

you should sic rolling stone's lawyers on this guy

Just to balance out my karma for the bitching, Permanent in Chicago is totally awesome and the couple that runs it are the nicest people ever.

my favourite record stores are the ones where i've come to trust staff enthusiasm (more in person than through comment cards but whatever); a friend told me he used to get real bugged when people would come in and ask him if they could order something, because the whole point was meant to be seeing what a store was like, what was on the racks, what they suggested, what you heard playing (e2-e4 in other music, eddie marcon in monorail). it made me shop kinda differently. i order things online a bunch, but in stores it's nice if you come away with something you didn't specifically go in there to buy, or something you were only ever curious about but had the chance to hear or look at. a lot of people are big aquarius fans, and they're pretty ocd on the comment card front.

But why shouldn't they be encouraged to order something?

i once had to write some of those 'staff pick' cards when i worked in jazz dept of huge rec store on xford st - they were AMAZINGLY effective! like, we were selling tens of copies a week of things like Sun Ra and Derek Bailey albs - we cldn't keep 'Spiritual Unity' in stock! whereas beforehand, we would've been lucky to sell one a week of most of my picks. so, while they may be irritating to know-all music snobs like ourselves, for many ppl they are pretty welcome, especially in a vast, intimidating area like jazz.

people bitchin' re record shops in 2010 !?
come to bristol city uk : hmv + fopp and thats about it these days.
one sole trade-in shop left now (which i'll admit pretty much ticks many of the boxes as described upthread)
i would love to have access to a "shitty record store" within lunch hour walking distance.

Bristol only has HMV and Fopp now? I remember I used to visit friends there in the mid-nineties and probably easily spend £100 in a weekend (which was a weeks wages for me in those days) because of the excellent range of shops then.

i think those cards are great, they personalize the store, introduce u to new shit, all the stuff we're supposed to be keeping record stores in business for

i mean the idea that they're the sign of a BAD record store is just... ridic

Way xp.

Just to clear it up

Is Vintage Vinyl in STL connected to the one in Evanston? I had a great afternoon in the STL one a few years back..... and they were nice too.

re bristol : yup.
i have seen so many go to the wall in the last 10 years.
hence why threads like this make me hurt.
oh to have the luxury to bitch about record shops in 2010.

but surely the point of this thread is that if some of these pointers had been followed the shops might not have gone to the wall

And I thought Brighton had it bad! We still have the 5 or so indies who have carved out a little niche for themselves as well as a few second-hand shops.

Unfortunately there is only one decent dance-music place left and that's mostly second-hand really. Ten years ago you couldn't move for 'em.

Yeah Brighton is a great place for record shops, or at least it was when I lived there about 5 years ago. Can't say how it's changed since then.

33. Shops that have "staff picks" sections, often with little cards next to the picked albums hand-written by the staff member in question and telling why he likes the album. Obviously going for the "hey, we're not some faceless corporate concern here, we love the music just like you do and we're so enthusiastic about it that we're gonna tell you all about it" vibe. But you know what, I really couldn't care less what you like, I just want to know if you have any Anthony Braxton CDs.

This one is totally RONG, I love this stuff.

Is Vintage Vinyl in STL connected to the one in Evanston?

Don't think so. Or at least: I'd be surprised, since the one in St. Louis is at least 20 times the size of the one in Evanston.

Yeah, I'll rep for staff recommendations too. Even in Fopp Cambridge, where they just copy quotes from press reviews, it adds something positive to the personality of the place.

there are a few things in bristol; isn't one of the st nicks market stalls pretty good? i heard they order in new mississippi things. and there's still a place for new dance and soul vinyl on gloucester road. there are totally shops that fit into the shippy-record-store mold, too - plastic wax is infinite racks of simple minds lps, copies of double fantasy and an 80s only jazz vinyl section, with new stuff in the back. but yeah it sucks that there isn't just some go-to place that's comprehensive, or a specialist store that's good for one thing.

But why shouldn't they be encouraged to order something?

oh sure, yeah, and i'm only conveying my friend's neurotic retail annoyances; it's good to order through stores, but the point was that he wanted the primary function of his store to be a collection of records, loosely arranged by the store's taste or agenda or whatever, rather than an internet style portal whereby people could get the preordained thing they wanted irrespective of the shop's content. it doesn't have to be either-or, but it's nice to think of shops as the kind of reliable thing you can mine, in the way you do if you have a friend or radio show or record label which has good taste.

uh, shitty record store.

a friend told me he used to get real bugged when people would come in and ask him if they could order something

Your friend sounds pretty stupid tbh

I mean I get how his pointed is rooted in good intentions but talk about having your head in the clouds wrt how people actually spend their money

pointed = point

The second hand Replay in Bristol was (a) one of my fave record shops I ever went to and (b) pretty much my model for the point Scott (and others) made about swallowing your pride and pricing stuff the fuck down if no-one is buying it. Um, then it closed (that mnay have been more the fault of the new-stock-only one on Park St tho?)

Your friend sounds pretty stupid tbh

yeah yeah, i'm bringing him up to illustrate the point i was making; that he had the kind of minor retail annoyances one gets in any job (people hold their change for too long and give you clammy coins; people to not dock their trolleys back in the trolley dock); it wasn't meant to form a persuasive case for staying at home and only ordering online and never darkening a record store's doorstep again. it's just the kind of fussiness you get when you feel not everyone truly understands the special mission of your magical store.

xp there's also a new place called Rise up on Queens Road in Bristol. total Fopp clone. has some interesting stock. decent selection of (pricey) vinyl too.

35. they can't be arsed to stick anything on the stereo. nothing deathlier than a silent record shop.

the number of times of I've been into Haggle Vinyl and the only sound is the fuzz and pop of a run-out groove. round and round and round for half an hour or so. piles and piles of records and the dude just sits there waiting for the eviction notice.

bristol :
i've heard of rise. too far out of town for lunch hour browsing.
st nicks : been ages, and last time it was pretty dreadful stock and over priced. will have to revisit, ta for the reminder.
rooted on glos rd = 'shitty record store' but perfect for dubstep fans. tis all they stock now, hence the lack of interest from yours truly.
plastic wax : the one and only place to discover weird new/old stuff for a decent price. totally chaotic, and impossible to find anything. every time i go there, they have re-organised the place.

ok, I get the message that I'm the only one here who dislikes staff picks. probably because I'm an antisocial bastard lol. I'm constantly on the lookout for recommendations but I tend to get them from other sources, principally the wire but also last fm, this board, whoever's playing in town this week &c. just saying that in the days when I visited record shops that used them I would never bother to read them.

where I live now (Vienna) there are two great shops that sell primarily new stuff mixed with second-hand stock. no complaints about either of these.

Do Rooted literally just do dubstep now? I've not been there for over a year but it was pretty good and varied iirc

rooted : just about. they may have diversified, it has been a while. suspect its a great shop though for vinyl lovin' folks, just that the cd selection is mighty slim.

oh, and i like staff picks.

Kramer and Elaine stand before the 'Staff Picks' rack again. Elaine picks a video off the 'Vincent' rack.

ELAINE: Oh, this is the one Vincent told me about. The Pain and the Yearning. (reads from the box) 'An old woman experiences pain and yearning.' A hundred and ninety-two minutes?

KRAMER: That's a lotta yearning, huh?

ELAINE: You know, these movies are great, but they're just so emotionally exhausting.

KRAMER: Yeah, well, what you need is some summertime adolescent high jinx.

ELAINE: Really?

KRAMER: (looking at 'Gene' rack) See what doctor Gene prescribes, huh? (pulls down a cassette) Oh, here, look at that. Weekend at Bernies II. Now, that's a hilarious premise.

Post very much in character for me, and hinted at by other people above, but honestly this is the only litmus test I care about at this point:

36. No dollar bin. (Preferably well-stocked, preferably vinyl. 50 cent bin instead is okay, though. Will look through your $2 bin, if that's really the best you can do, but I'll have to be pretty desperate to buy anything.)

Staff lists: good; however:

37: Staff lists are full of C grade albums that reek of high-school level naivete and are agonizing to read, portentously describing Muse as if you've never heard them before, and that you must buy their records because they WILL change your life.

General assertions that you're obliged to buy things (e.g. MUST BUY, ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL) are, for me, a total dud.

I like staff picks, because they'll get me out of my usual patterns.

Silent record stores, totally otm. Though to counter that, the horrible dying record store downtown got to the point where they were cranking awful numetal at ear-piercing volume. Like they were trying to drive people out of the store. But the staff pretty much hated everyone anyway.

** staff lists that are full of. Not all staff lists are like that.

38. everything priced according to musicstack/discogs marketplace, i.e. what one or two delusional assholes imagines their shit is worth

horrible dying record store downtown got to the point where they were cranking awful numetal at ear-piercing volume.

exclusive company in madison to thread. a few times i've been tempted to go up to the counter and ask if they're TRYING to keep people away from the store by playing hideous music.

btw staff picks are great. the more labored and shaggy-dog the stories written about the records, the better.

38. everything priced according to musicstack/discogs marketplace, i.e. what one or two delusional assholes imagines their shit is worth

ok, strictly discs in madison to thread. they have a basement full of 1,000s of unpriced records. you bring them up to the counter and they price them for you. which basically means they look at discogs and pop sike and charge you the max. or try to. i once demurred and suggested that $25 was a bit much for a VG copy of some random arhoolie reissue, and he proceeded to give me a long, somewhat bonkers lecture about pricing vinyl, which i sort of stood through, stunned, before i walked out the door.

actually i think it was $35 he was asking.

the flipside of that store is that if something is obscure enough not to show up on discogs or pop sike (a 1960s african record for example), they don't know how to price it and will sell it for under $10.

walking up to the counter and asking if there's a Mr. Bungle album in stock and being told "I think we have the one with 'To Be With You' on it".....

LOL that's awesome

another one -- repeatedly asking me if you can help me. maybe it's cuz I'm such a private person but if you ask me once, I appreciate it as a customer, and if I have a question, I'll ask it.

if I get asked again by someone else, no harm no foul, they probably didn't know.

When the SAME PERSON comes by every 20 minutes to say "you sure I can't help ya find nothing", I usually leave. Cuz I mean for me to leave a record store empty handed is a rarity, but if you're going to make me uncomfortable, I'll take my business elsewhere.

Record store in my hometown makes me so sad. It used to be awesome, and then in the late 90's it joined the 'Leading Edge' group, i don't know if they are still going in Australia, but I swear they gobbled up every record store on the Princes Highway from Geelong to Warrnambool, til every cool little record store was exactly the same. They all carry the same stuff, no deep catalog...and the owner of the one in my town was the same guy that ran it when it was cool, and after a while it felt like he was some kind of hostage. I was always dying to ask him, 'Dude what happened to you?'. It's still in business, which I guess is good, but god...I mean the owner really knew his stuff, was a huge music fan...maybe it's just trying to run a business in a small country town, it gets to you after a while I guess. Bums me out though.

another one -- repeatedly asking me if you can help me. maybe it's cuz I'm such a private person but if you ask me once, I appreciate it as a customer, and if I have a question, I'll ask it.

if I get asked again by someone else, no harm no foul, they probably didn't know.

When the SAME PERSON comes by every 20 minutes to say "you sure I can't help ya find nothing", I usually leave. Cuz I mean for me to leave a record store empty handed is a rarity, but if you're going to make me uncomfortable, I'll take my business elsewhere.

― San Te, Monday, August 2, 2010 4:42 PM (7 minutes ago)

This sounds like a large chain kind of policy. Never had that problem at a Mom & Pop.

it is, generally, but there are some mom and pops around here that act that way. This one place (I don't even remember the name cuz dude disgusted me so much...it was the same 'car-towing' guy I mentioned earlier) the guy'd eye you intently like you were a thief...he's the one that wouldn't let up.

fortunately, for every 1 like him, there's 3 that aren't, as you implied above, so no skin off my back, just his!

ok, strictly discs in madison to thread. they have a basement full of 1,000s of unpriced records. you bring them up to the counter and they price them for you. which basically means they look at discogs and pop sike and charge you the max. or try to. i once demurred and suggested that $25 was a bit much for a VG copy of some random arhoolie reissue, and he proceeded to give me a long, somewhat bonkers lecture about pricing vinyl, which i sort of stood through, stunned, before i walked out the door.

Oh man oh man oh man - that's the absolute worst! Did they price and display it after that too? I've been in similar situations and sometimes I think I'm owed something for digging through the shit hole for them. Some of these record store people need to be taken on a "Ghost of Christmas Future" ride. I mean, do they know what happens to record stores that don't turn stuff over? Maybe they're hoarders? They are hoarders. Some of them are hoarders.

Sorry - the first paragraph there is quoted from amateurist's post.

39. We asked for Mojo Nixon. They said, "He don't work here."

When Dave Matthews is playing on the soundsystem. <- Silver Platters Northgate.

Truly awful record store.

silver platters northgate is okay but not a favorite. wtf at your no holds policy for used vinyl? understand if you don't wanna do holds in general, but why the harsh treatment just for the dusty vinyl ppl? every other store in town will hold a thing or two for a day or two if i ask nice and spend a lot of money. plus your store has no soul and charges way too much for the bizarre collection of 80s euro/brit imports that fill the vinyl bins - some very cool, i must admit. only saving grace is the odd policy of radically underpricing every 10th thing, as though all pricing were done by a faulty robot.

Pretty much agree with that. My experience is that I have found a much better (but much smaller) selection of used vinyl at the Bellevue location.

lower queen anne location is good for jazz and the occasional contemporary rock/pop thing. they rarely charge more than 8-10 bucks for anything released in the last 10 years. then again, they almost never get anything released in the last 20.

walking into the FYE store across the street can be scary. i'll go in and i'm the only person in the place and four employees will be standing there staring at me and asking if i need any help. as soon as i walk in the door! and then they ask me again every ten minutes. and while i'm looking they stand together and discuss their lives, like, ten feet from me. get to work, people!

Wait, I buy lots of stuff at Strictly Discs in Madison! New releases and lots of used CDs. Prices for used stuff seem fair and I have acquired at least one really splendid record (Nigeria Rock Special) thanks to their staff picks. Didn't know they had a basement. Not at all my idea of a shitty record store.

Exclusive I rarely go into but that's just because I never find anything I want there. Have never heard them playing nu-metal.

a shitty record store is where "Virgin" or "HMV" is written on the sign of it

a shitty record store is where "Virgin" or "HMV" is written on the sign of it

42. you manage to drag your girlfriend into another used record shop and when she asks the creepy guy at the counter if he has The Stooges record she wants she gets a lecture on how he doesn't like "that kinda thing".

i hate that guy

from travelling around the US a bit and seeing the equivalent of HMV there which is usually a Best Buy or FYE; i'd say most brits criticising HMV should shush a bit. they do a pretty good job in comparison (though it varies hugely from store to store and sad to see the music stock reduced in comparison to games etc every year).

HMV is really, really f((k1ng expensive though. Are the shops you're talking about charging £17 for a new CD?

without sounding too naomi klein there's something personally frustrating and soulless about hmv, irrespective of their actual stock (which otm can be pretty good). going in there is like entering some kind of multi sensory assault chamber, and they're so far separated from - i don't know, distributors? - that just ordering a record becomes impossible, everything operating on their own weird protocols. i have the same thing going to huge cinemas that have WE LOVE MOVIES written on the walls but show shitty films and charge a lot; it's like you expect more from the most visible purveyors of this kind of thing.

I picked up LeToya's "Lady Love" for £4 in HMV last week. It's about £20 on Amazon! My joy at discovering said CD at such a wonderful price was, however, cancelled out by them playing the new Richard Ashcroft on the loudspeakers.

meant to add redeeming coda to my post to say that i was there recently trying to unfurl a long-running unspent gift voucher imbroglio, and they were playing the chromatics, which made me feel better

It never even occurred to me I could order a record in HMV. Can I get a grouse in Tesco, then?

a shitty record store is where "Virgin" or "HMV" is written on the sign of it

― Zeno, Monday, August 2, 2010 5:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

these don't exist in the USA anymore.

re. strictly discs, fine, they have a reasonable collection of new stuff. the place--and the owner, in particular--still blows.

A shitty record store is when you click on Store in iTunes.

I don't work in the music industry so I'm saying this completely as a consumer, but I sometimes feel like stores get too caught up or paranoid about the popularity of Itunes, and the way I see it is if you make your store a place that people want to go to, you won't be made obsolete.

This is probably a bad parallell but my hometown didn't have a movie theater, just a drive-in. When home video took hold, suddenly the drive thru freaked out and shut its doors, because supposedly VHS drove them away. But our town spent the next 15 years driving an hour and a half to the movie theater in the next town, because we had nowhere to see new movies. Forget vhs. It was so stupid, and it made me mad.

It's like the 'new thing' that business owners get afraid of isn't always the thing that puts them out of business -- they freeze up and forget how to be good at what they may have once been good at doing.
you know?

and the way I see it is if you make your store a place that people want to go to, you won't be made obsolete.

Yeah, sorry, but this isn't how it works. Especially not now. There are tons of completely beloved record stores that went out of business in the last five years due to plummeting sales.

that reminds me of a few weeks ago. i was in a record store (a not-bad one) and some dude came in. he looked around at the shelves, nodding knowingly. he walked up to the owner at the counter said, "i'm really glad there are still places like this," nodding all the while. then, after sort of ambling a few paces through the store, walked right back out without buying anything.

and that, my children, is what you call a "douche."

Maybe he was broke?

This. Especially when put on digipak CDs or directly on record sleeves, so you either have to leave the sticker on it or tear off half of the sleeve.

I'm looking at you, Music & Video Exchange.

― a fucking stove just fell on my foot. (Colonel Poo), Monday, 2 August 2010 12:48 (Yesterday) Bookmark

fuck them in general. I had a trial day at the soul/dance shop a few weeks back. Was told to go home after an hour or so because my acid jazz knowledge wasn't up to scratch, I'd heard of Washed Out last year and I had the nerve to have only been into house/techno for 5 years (i'm 20).

he likes watching record stores go out of business, and he's pleased there's some still hanging on

It's like the 'new thing' that business owners get afraid of isn't always the thing that puts them out of business -- they freeze up and forget how to be good at what they may have once been good at doing.
you know?

― VegemiteGrrrl, Monday, August 2, 2010 7:42 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and the way I see it is if you make your store a place that people want to go to, you won't be made obsolete.
Yeah, sorry, but this isn't how it works. Especially not now. There are tons of completely beloved record stores that went out of business in the last five years due to plummeting sales.

― no turkey unless it's a club sandwich (polyphonic), Monday, August 2, 2010 7:55 PM (34 minutes ago)

Actually, your beloved record stores may have gone out of business because they didn't know how to adapt. Like I said earlier, if they rely on sales on items they ordered from their distributor, they aren't going to make any money these days. But if thats not how they operated, then I take it back and I am sorry for your loss.

43. Camper Van Beethoven in the classical section.

HA

Yeah, from what I've heard about HMV, those would be heaven compared to Best Buy and the big box options you get once you get any distance from a big city or college town.

I was always amazed at how many people, especially young people who supposedly never bought music any more, there were at Amoeba in San Francisco when I lived there in 2007. You can barely move through the aisles at Princeton Record Exchange on the weekends. I'm not sure of Amoeba's financial situation but PREX recently renewed their lease and aren't going anywhere any time soon. It's not like there aren't shops that aren't deserted 24/7 just because people can download now.

Examining the difference in management decisions between stores that made it and stores that didn't would be an interesting business school case study. Of course the internet has put tons of B&M stores out of business but you get the feeling that many of those stores were serial culprits of actions discussed in this thread.

As far as I know, hours have been cut back at both Amoeba locations in the Bay Area, but they're still doing quite well.

I've been pretty lucky in my life re: record stores. Philly has always been relatively good, Cleveland had some good stuff (before Bent Crayon went under, but see 44 below), and the Bay Area is sort of like heaven.

THAT SAID:

44. You have so many amazing records that are completely, totally and utterly scattered. You do know where certain records are, but you can only give me a general vicinity. (Bent Crayon was like the apex of this sort of thing).

45. It sucks to complain about Amoeba, but FOR FUCK'S SAKE I KNOW YOUR STORE IS LARGE BUT I CANNOT JUSTIFY SPENDING $12 ON A RECORD I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN'T FUCKING LISTEN TO IT. I mean, would it kill them to just put up a few listening stations? Damn.

At our store we'll let you listen to any CD in the store, we'll even tear off the shrink wrap on a new album if you're curious at all!

see, they have listening stations at Amoeba, but only for the new stuff. there have been so many times where i would have spent more money there if i could have listened to a sealed, used record— i mean, even sealing used records is a bit shitty imo.

are you allowed to open a sealed used record at amoeba before you buy it? i assume you mean that they seal already opened records, right? i can't imagine ever buying a used record that i couldn't check out. ever. unless it was factory sealed.

They let you check out re-sealed used records before buying.

Mitch Hedberg: "I went to a record store, they said they specialized in hard-to-find records. Nothing was alphabetized!"

That is straight up :D

or should that be : D

ugh, still doesn't look right. It's supposed to be a smiling face, because it's funny, and it made me smile.

that reminds me of a few weeks ago. i was in a record store (a not-bad one) and some dude came in.

Was this in Madison? Which store?

b-side, downtown.

I like that place too! I think I'm just a very gentle judge of record stores. Can't think of one here I think is really shitty, actually.

I liked B-Side, did some great shopping there last time I was in Madison.

Actually, your beloved record stores may have gone out of business because they didn't know how to adapt. If they rely on sales on items they ordered from their distributor, they aren't going to make any money these days. But if thats not how they operated, then I take it back and I am sorry for your loss.

your adapt and flourish suggestion is valid, but far too optimistic, i think. if indie record stores deemphasize expensive new product ordered from distributors, then they're prioritizing sales of used merchandise and/or merch ordered directly from artists. i.e., narrowing their market niche to focus not on the general music consumer, but on specific subsets. these subset may be extremely dedicated, but they nonetheless spend a LOT less money than all music consumers in general. due to the number of indie businesses competing for that same reduced niche market, most are gonna go under, or at least feel profound stress. there's no way around that.

giving people a positive experience and a reason to shop small stores = great goals, but this kind of thing can't make up for the massive drop in casual consumers with money to spend and nowhere else to get what they want. especially in times of economic hardship.

Actually, your beloved record stores may have gone out of business because they didn't know how to adapt. Like I said earlier, if they rely on sales on items they ordered from their distributor, they aren't going to make any money these days. But if thats not how they operated, then I take it back and I am sorry for your loss.

They adapted pretty well before people started getting their music for free.

Well I manage at a record store that bases its business on used items, while keeping a percentage of new items in stock, to keep people coming in for current releases. We advertise that we'll "buy your stuff" and accept items for cash every day. We have a high turnover rate due to the constant management and market-conscious pricing of our used items based competitively on other Amazon sellers. We also send out loads of items to customers all over the world who order our items through Amazon, where our whole inventory is available. We periodically run through aged inventory to be re-priced to make sure they sell. Our store carries whatever people are willing to sell to us, and we have a bit of everything, and if we don't we probably did and will again very soon. Our customers are not narrowed down because of this; we appeal to everyone.

I'm not saying any of us are as successful as we used to be, but we just recently opened our fifth location, if that is any indication of success relative to current times.

46.When you ask about Jonathan Richman records and the owner says "he's easy listening isn't he?"

47.When all you've bought from the store is disco and soul and the owner tries to impress you with his new over priced Incredible String Band arrivals.

48.When the owner tells you about his massive Northern Soul singles section even though you've told him constantly you'd rather just buy CD compilations.

49.When the owner says he doesn't understand why people listen to so many different genres of music and says if it was up to him he would stock just records by bands like Slade and The Little Angels (that was the nearest record in the rack when he was telling me this)

50.When you over hear the owner at a record fair talking to some poor young guy saying "Pop in to the shop we've just got a rare picture disc of The Spaghetti Incident in"

51.When you take in a bunch of records to sell and the owner picks out the second Dr Buzzard's Original Savannah Band album even though he has 3 copies already in his bargain section. At the same time passing on some great Motown records because "no-one really cared for Motown in the 70's"

52.When you happen to notice all the Queen albums are priced at twenty five pounds or over.

53.When loads of records are not priced so every time you have to go up and ask how much is this followed by an uncomfortable silence where the owner looks confused and tries to come up with a good price (always four pounds) whilst telling you a little bit about the record and it's origins..the Cristina record I picked up was the one that really got him thinking.

Well I manage at a record store that bases its business on used items, while keeping a percentage of new items in stock, to keep people coming in for current releases. We advertise that we'll "buy your stuff" and accept items for cash every day. We have a high turnover rate due to the constant management and market-conscious pricing of our used items based competitively on other Amazon sellers. We also send out loads of items to customers all over the world who order our items through Amazon, where our whole inventory is available. We periodically run through aged inventory to be re-priced to make sure they sell. Our store carries whatever people are willing to sell to us, and we have a bit of everything, and if we don't we probably did and will again very soon. Our customers are not narrowed down because of this; we appeal to everyone.

I'm not saying any of us are as successful as we used to be, but we just recently opened our fifth location, if that is any indication of success relative to current times.

― Evan, Tuesday, August 3, 2010 12:24 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark

you should write a book. i'd buy a few copies and distribute them to some of the shitty record stores discussed in this thread.

btw your description also describes reckless, in chicago, pretty well. great inventory management, smart pricing. they actually have a good website where you can buy anything from their inventory, although they don't push it very hard.

totally get where you're coming from evan, and yeah, a few really good stores like yours can certainly survive and even thrive. but i doubt that even the best management could rescue all the troubled indie stores in the states (or could have rescued all those that have gone under in the last 10 years). customer base is reduced, so something has/had to give somewhere.

54. the staff don't compliment you on your super-cool purchases. :'(

what?

When the store puts its most interesting (i.e. unpopular) sections in some back corner or nook and the owner assumes that the only reason anyone would go back there is to conceal an act of shoplifting, so he hovers around you, glaring, not asking if you need help, just eying you with suspicion.

I know that shoplifters are scum, but when the fear of them turns a store against your actual customers and causes them to not want to shop there then the owner may as well close up the physical store and just run a website or something.

the idea that a store would be mad about you ordering something is so insane to me... can u imagine any other retail business where a customer would come in looking for something, not find it, be willing to WAIT 3 weeks for it instead of going somewhere else with their business and getting a hard time for it

56. When you have to be let in, and the door is then locked after you. There's a shop in Holloway (north London) that does this, and for that reason I've never been in there as I'd feel like I'd been taken hostage until I bought some shitty Elvis Costello record or whatever just to escape.

56. When you have to be let in, and the door is then locked after you

That was the BEST thing about the old These Records in Elephant & Castle. No shopfront, just a buzzer with 'These' by the beat-up old wooden door. Man I loved that shop.

totally get where you're coming from evan, and yeah, a few really good stores like yours can certainly survive and even thrive. but i doubt that even the best management could rescue all the troubled indie stores in the states (or could have rescued all those that have gone under in the last 10 years). customer base is reduced, so something has/had to give somewhere.

― a CRASBO is a "criminally related" ASBO (contenderizer), Tuesday, August 3, 2010 3:27 AM (7 hours ago)

I agree. I never said that they would definitely be able to "adapt and flourish," it was more of how to "adapt and survive." Things like location become a variable in the equation that can affect how successful a store is no matter how smart it is run. So I would never guarantee success, but it is frustrating to see stores go because they are as delusional as major labels these days about music consumers.

you should write a book. i'd buy a few copies and distribute them to some of the shitty record stores discussed in this thread.

― by another name (amateurist), Tuesday, August 3, 2010 1:58 AM (8 hours ago)

I get upset enough watching documentaries on failing stores that I often want to write one!

the turn it up stores do a good job around here. for a small chain anyway. they have four stores. they make their money on used CDs and they have some choice new cds and the used vinyl is priced to move. all the freaks check out the store in northampton daily cuz they want to sell stuff quickly and will put great records out for almost nothing. i've found awesome stuff in their dollar bins. i like this! i mean, CDs are their main thing/$$$ in the stores and they don't worry/get paranoid about selling a record cheap even if its worth more. thus, they sell more. i know i spend money everytime i go to one. i always have to remind myself of this when i'm pricing. do i want to sell it or do i think its so cool it doesn't deserve to be owned by anyone? i prefer to give it a good home.

One of the HMVs by me has totally obliterated the music section even more and replaced nearly all of it with a mobile phone section. HMV sell phones???

i would like to bitch about amoeba's anti-theft technique of mummifying the pricier used records in packing tape. takes like 5 minutes to open unless you just slice open the outer sleeve. you end up with a wad of tape the size of a baseball. there are ways to do it with much less tape that provide the same level of theft protection. but i guess jerks that are pros at swapping discs know their way around most respectable packing tape jobs.

^^^ everyday music in seattle does this, annoying as hell. but they got their reasons, i figure, and at least they shrink them first, so the original packaging isn't fucked by the tape.

My one complaint about the really great store in my town is that they do the whole "keep real cds behind the counter, just the liner artwork on the floor", which in and of itself doesn't bother me when space is limited, but they affix all kinds of stickers to the liner notes that then get slid into the jewel box when you buy the disc. Sometimes the stickers come off easily, other times they are there to stay. I can deal with this on cheap used discs, but to be completely honest, this annoys me on brand new stuff.

57. its in a mall.

putting stickers on liner notes is inexcusable savagery

otm. would never shop at such a store. would more likely don corpsepaint and burn it to the ground.

it really surprises me that the intake - pricing - output work in used CD's hasn't been completely automated. the employee ought to be able to swipe the barcode, and the system should be able to spit out a price based on how many are in inventory vs how many have been sold recently.

i knew a dude who worked at a local-ish chain of record stores and he described the used CD system as hilariously corrupt -- beer money for the staff's friends, basically.

the employee ought to be able to swipe the barcode, and the system should be able to spit out a price based on how many are in inventory vs how many have been sold recently.

^this is exactly what we have.

oh!

ha as soon as i posted i figured something like that is in operation somewhere. i guess i don't shop in places that sell used where it isn't done by hand.

Actually it doesn't do the pricing FOR us, but all of that information is in our system when we scan the barcode if we've had it in stock recently. If we've never had it or we had it 6 months or more ago, we consult Amazon to see what others are selling it for, and price it competitively.

I read what you wrote slightly wrong initially.

Someone above is talking about Second Layer re: door buzzing, although
they do buzz people in i've never had trouble leaving. Great shop too.

No I was talking about this place called DCA (I think), it gives me the fear every time I even walk past it. Second Layer (previously Sound 323) is great!

the employee ought to be able to swipe the barcode, and the system should be able to spit out a price based on how many are in inventory vs how many have been sold recently.

^this is exactly what we have.

how does it count the demand signal for unrealized demand (customer looking for something that you don't have inventory of and walks out empty handed*)?

*and not saying "i'm glad you guys are doing what you're doing?" lol

in my head i was vaguely thinking of "the data" this system would be checking would be from more than one store, either across a chain, or some kind of open source db. or something. i just think it's crazy that this process hasn't had more quantitative ish brought to bear on it.

shasta how could any business take that into account? unless the customer says something? unless you get the employee logging requests, which i guess you could do, since we're talking hypotheticals anyway.

shasta how could any business take that into account? unless the customer says something? unless you get the employee logging requests, which i guess you could do, since we're talking hypotheticals anyway.

hehehe. welcome to the life of a consultant.

so "hire a consultant" is how you know? jesus

haha, no this is what i did in the late 90s as a consultant. without saying too much, it's an integral piece of the supply chain and you'd be surprised how many companies are trying to capture this signal. There's a field/db in SAP ERP/SCM that has an allowance for it.

One shop whose (a) logic (b) continued success I can never fathom is Rough Trade. Every time I see an album I'm interested in, I realise I can get it much cheaper elsewhere in town. Just one example, anything on Sublime Frequencies/Numero Group is somewhere in the £17-20 range in Rough Trade and £12 in Honest Jon's just round the corner. The Brick Lane location always feels like a desolate warehouse whenever I'm there so I don't even go browsing anymore...

hey evan would you be willing to tell us where you work? sounds like a tight ship.

>Cleveland had some good stuff (before Bent Crayon went under)

???? Still alive and kicking as of this morning.

I work at Tunes in Hoboken, NJ.

If I am ever in the neighborhood, I solemnly swear to purchase many many musics :)

Hey thanks! Sounds good to me!

The Brick Lane location always feels like a desolate warehouse whenever I'm there so I don't even go browsing anymore...

the space is great for instores and all sorts of other parties. i live not too far from RT EAST and there are *many* reasons to go in there all the time, new releases, instores (in some weeks there's free gigs almost every night, and at least some of them are worth catching), looking at the ever changing gig posters to see what's going on. I don't find them overprized on all of their stock, just some of it, but I sometimes make a point of buying things I could possibly get marginally cheaper elsewhere from them since i'm so happy they are there and have hosted so many fun free things.

Yeah the Brick Lane one seems to be invoked by everyone who puzzles abt the 'how can record shops survive in these END TYMES' thing... idk if setting aside a bunch of seats for folks to sit and hang out and read magazines or whatever is some sort of magic all-purpose solution (also, like with the staff recommendations on cards thing, I don't really feel like it's something *I* need especially, but if other ppl do then fine by me) but I guess it can't hurt. Just look at Borders OHWAIT

Someone above is talking about Second Layer re: door buzzing

And I was talking about These.

RT East is expensive. Around £1 on each 12" when comparing with west end shops, CDs and vinyl on average priced unfavourably. I guess it's the cost of location? I live locally so I do go in there regularly and I hate being kicked out when a band is doing a soundcheck (yesterday), even if I wanted to see the band I couldn't get a wristband anyway. It's pretty sad when I think of how great the Covent Garden shop was. I'm not sure I can see them surviving. There seems to be herd of tourists that file in and then leave empty handed.

just seems like rough trade is coasting on its name

What is the deal with those stickers that you get along the top edge of jewel cases stating the artist and title? They also bind the two parts of the jewel case together so I guess they are an anti-theft device as well as an aid to browsing. Fair enough, but they are completely impossible to remove. I have never successfully removed one of those stickers in one go, they shear off in little bits. Hate them.

oh and I was going to add, they seem to be an American-only thing as I have never seen them in Europe

did they change the material on those stickers? I swear, I used to be able to get those things off cleanly in one swipe 3-4 years ago, but now it takes me two to three attempts to get it off, and usually leaves fragments, and of course the sticky residue....

They are easier to get off if you unclasp the CD case from the bottom hinge and tear off by slowly pulling the two parts of the CD case apart before reattaching. Even then there are little bits that can be left behind from the edge of the stickers though.

yea generally I'm so impatient to hear my music I get what I can off, jerk the case open, then get the rest off....

Just leave them on? They're not too offensive, surely?

it bugs my OCD nature. I don't like leaving fragments of something that isn't part of the actual product on the outside of the CD! plus well it's an eyesore and tacky looking!

I'm in Europe and have pretty much only seen those on imports from the US/Canada, so yes, they seem to be an American thing.

They annoy me too, I've given up on trying to peel them off and now just open the case by the tiny crack that it's possible to open it with the sticker still on, then tear through it with a fingernail. Got to open the case gently though, as the case hinges snap off occasionally what with the sticker pulling one way and me pulling another.

(skip's method is probably much better, as my first paragraph suggests I'm not really used to dealing with them)

I think it's a conspiracy by record stores to sell those "CD openers" for .99 cents to every customer.

wait, there are CD openers?

I'm with skip. Get that bottom hinge off and it becomes cake.

Seriously try it.

anagram -- year, they're oddly shaped plastic pieces of crap with little plastic 'blades' that slice the labels when you slide them across the top of the case.

They still leave a mess behind and are (at least for me) utterly useless.

*yea, not year

thanks, I never heard of those.

Ready? Heres the step by step:

1. Slightly lift off the bottom right corner of the door so it remains open.

2. Now move to the bottom hinge, and stick your fingernail between the hinge and the back panel.

3. It should barely take any effort to pop it off the base of the hinge.

4. Now use the door to peel the sticker from one end to the other, then once off, grab the sticker and peel it similarly off of the door.

Should come off pretty clean.

Sticky residue can be removed with surgical spirit/rubbing alcohol type solutions and a clean cloth.

Ready? Heres the step by step:

1. Slightly lift off the bottom right corner of the door so it remains open.

2. Now move to the bottom hinge, and stick your fingernail between the hinge and the back panel.

3. It should barely take any effort to pop it off the base of the hinge.

4. Now use the door to peel the sticker from one end to the other, then once off, grab the sticker and peel it similarly off of the door.

Should come off pretty clean.

^^^^^^^^

I used to do this when I worked at Best Buy waaaay back in high school, 16 years old, 2001-02, first summer job. Customers thought I was a genius. I also had a trick where I would ZIIIPP the bottom of the CD along the edge of the checkout counter, and it would tear open the shrinkwrap enough to remove it easily.

i think they are so you can file CDs standing up and be able to see what's what from above

yea i did the Best Buy tour too and that was mostly it -- while "farming" CDs (aka, reordering them after dick customers make a whole mess of the system), it makes it go by real quick just glancing at the tops.

>Cleveland had some good stuff (before Bent Crayon went under)

???? Still alive and kicking as of this morning.

― Jeff Wright, Wednesday, August 4, 2010 2:57 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

And there's Music Saves on the east side, anyway.

xp - I guess RTEast might be livelier during the weekend, I've only ever been there on a weekday. Whenever I'm in London I prefer to hang out in Sounds of the Universe and Honest Jon's and always buy something there; I completely agree with the idea of supporting stores you like and want to see continue even if they're not the absolute cheapest, but for me RT isn't one of those stores (RT Covent Garden used to be).

okay, i checked and these are the beach boys albums i have for sale in my store:

endless summer
best of vol.2
made in u.s.a.
beach boys (s/t from 1985)
concert
best of (on scepter)
little deuce coupe
surfin' usa
greatest hits (wand)
all summer long
m.i.u.
light album
holland

i always have to scramble up more cuz someone will come in and buy five at once. same with dylan. in one shot someone will wipe out my stock. not that i'm complaining.

okay, just put out a copy of 15 big ones.

all summer long

I approve!

I've still never heard Holland. You don't see that one much, it seems.
Though I am rarely looking for Beach Boys records.

I like the record stores that have their Used sections sected off by genre as well, because in those I have found some absolute shockers for cheap.

with that said I know that's a huge pain in the ass

I remember seeing Holland quite a bit in CA, usually in awful shape. That and Surf's Up for some reason always were beat up to hell and back.

I love when there are giant stacks of records unsorted except by genre or by letter--that's where all the good stuff is.

So today I found myself running an errand just down the street from the Vintage Vinyl store I moaned about earlier in the thread and thought I'd duck in to see if anything has changed. Of course not, in fact, I think the prices have gone up! They were selling some of the latter day Amon Duul II reissues on CD for $29.99 and $39.99 each! One of which I had just bought at another store in town for $18.99. Ridiculous. I flipped through the Neil Young section and saw they had the audacity to be asking $109.99 for a three-disc bootleg compilation of International Harvester Tour stuff. I mean, who the fuck pays for this stuff??

But the icing on the cake was the new vinyl section. Copies of fairly new and easy to find stuff for insane, insane prices. New Ariel Pink record on vinyl? $24.99. The one that pushed me over the edge and caused me to actually laugh out loud at the prices, however, was the $39.99 for a Wilco vinyl.

jesus

Oh! Almost forgot the Velvet Underground bootleg compilation that was $149.99!!!!

I just cannot fathom how this place is still in business. I mean, anyone that is savvy enough to know about Velvet Underground and Neil Young bootlegs in 2010 can figure out how to use fucking Google and save a hundred dollars.

i was late for work once when i was living in evanston, missed my metra train so i went to the vintage vinyl while waiting for the next one & this was right before 'zwan' broke up. billy corgan was shopping there w/ his niece. he was wearing a bucket hat & he let me take a picture of him while doing the devil horns

I suppose he could afford to shop there, yeah. I think he also showed up there during Record Store Day a couple years ago.

I went to Permanent this weekend. Lovely, lovely place with super-nice people and a beautiful kitty. I found a Milton Babbitt LP for $3.

permanent is very nice & very rarely has music i want to buy

r u in chicago?

None of you know anything about horribly mismanaged CD stores until you walk into Rainbow Music two stores up from the new Kim's location in NYC. Holy shit. It is a tiny place with stacks of CDs and records floor to ceiling, literally, on top of everything. If you can peer between the towers you can see they sit on old racks with layers of dust on new copies of pretty much unsellable titles (for full price) like Heart. Basically merchandise hasn't moved at all, but the old man who runs it keeps acquiring CDs and stacking them, and stacking them. Totally mind-blowing to walk in there. Not even the slightest bit different than this:

http://collegehunksblog.com/images/hoarder.jpg

Though the piles went all the way up.

r u in chicago?

― albino python on cocaine (corey), Monday, August 16, 2010 10:45 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes

the owner typed up a little list of "rolling stone's 500 top albums" or something from the '90s, printed them out, and has them at the front counter... for $0.99.

I thought you meant he was selling each of the 500 top albums for $0.99 and was wondering why you balked at such a great deal. But actually you meant....no....really? Wow that's just sad.

Just want to add 2c that Tunes in Hoboken is such a pleasure to shop in, and very well priced. No, not friends with anyone involved.

Evan - got a feeling that dude will have a going out of business sale sooner than later.....

x. a dry-erase board over the vinyl section asking "does vinyl sound better?" and spelling out the "depends" for us.

I was in a Toronto store called She Said Boom! yesterday, and while most of the vinyl was (to my mind) overpriced, they didn't seem to care much about doo-wop. I got perfectly conditioned compilations by the Channels and the Jacks for $6 and $7, and also a Barry Mann compilation for $7. (They'd clearly given up on this stuff, as there were older, more expensive price tags underneath the current ones.)

I went to Permanent this weekend. Lovely, lovely place with super-nice people and a beautiful kitty. I found a Milton Babbitt LP for $3.

Love love love love this place. Miss living several blocks from Permanent, but of course probably better for my wallet in the long run. Used to spend tons of time in there talking with that couple about Oneida and Southern Lord stuff. Strikes me now that I never even knew their names, for as much as I talk to them. Funny side story, I was in Lawrence for a wedding and stopped at the awesome Love Garden (where I scored a very reasonably priced Chronic Town vinyl). When hearing I was from Chicago, he immediately asked if I knew the Permanent peeps because he thought they were the "best couple ever".

Liz and Lance, great folks.

Ok I definitely did know she was Liz!

They were both managers at S1ackers here in Mid-Missouri before moving up to Chicago.
Really glad to see how well they have done for themselves. The in-house label is pretty stellar, too, in my maybe somewhat biased opinion.

Just want to add 2c that Tunes in Hoboken is such a pleasure to shop in, and very well priced. No, not friends with anyone involved.

― paulhw, Tuesday, August 17, 2010 4:39 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Thanks paulhw! :)

Evan - got a feeling that dude will have a going out of business sale sooner than later.....

― plate of dinosaurs (San Te), Tuesday, August 17, 2010 4:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

You'd think! Have you seen that show "Hoarders"? Yeah.

I was at a popular Toronto flea market this morning, and slowly but surely, more and more vendors are putting out vinyl. One guy had it right, and I bought a few things, perfect condition, at $1 and $2. (Including two LPs by Pure Prairie League; I think I may have crossed some symbolic barrier there from which there's no coming back.) Another guy, though--much more typical--I wanted to slap him upside the head. Three boxes of stuff, all of it $10-plus. Thriller: $25. The LP that Tina Turner made after her big one: $10. What is this guy, and all the other guys just like him, thinking? The thing that they don't get is that people like me who go to flea markets to rummage through vinyl already have thousands of LPs. We already have Thriller. What we don't have, like the Pure Prairie League and second-tier Tina Turner albums, we don't have because we decided long ago that we didn't need to have it; if you want us to take it off your hands, put the record guide away and put it out for one or two dollars. That 17-year-old kid who doesn't already have Thriller? He hasn't spent $25 on music in his entire lifetime, and he won't be turning up at your flea market anytime soon. He doesn't even know what a flea market is.

Not even sure how to describe the place I dropped into yesterday...a mostly abandoned mall, with just a grocery store and a partitioned space with six small shops crammed in where there used to be one store. The section way at the back sold records. Fair amount of inventory, but the prices were absurd. Once example that you may have to be Canadian to fully appreciate: a sealed copy of the first Glass Tiger LP (they did make more than one) for $20.

there are few sadder feelings than that of plastic name tab after plastic name tab bumping against one another in a conga-line of empty sections.

Used vinyl, overpriced, shrink wrapped, with "mint" scribbled on it in black marker.

I've bitched at length in this very thread about Vintage Vinyl in Evanston before, but I have to chime in again because I think its even worse now. Why was I there? My dentist's office is literally right around the corner and I have 15 minutes to kill for my appointment, so I figured I'd head in for a much needed laugh.

Jesus. Want the recent reissue of The Cure's The Top on vinyl? $49.99. A used copy of Neil Young's Journey Through The Past? I shit you not, $179.99. I bought a copy in better shape from a thrift store in Michigan for $8. The Revisted Records reissue of Amon Duul II's Yeti? $49.99 (Just FYI, you can order it from Aquarius for $18).

The icing on the cake? There was a stack of five or six records laid over the 'kraut' bin, so I shifted them out of the way to look and dude nearly leaped over the counter literally screaming, "DON'T TOUCH THOSE! I'LL MOVE THEM!" and proceeded to huff and puff at me. I just laughed and walked back out.

I mean, obviously fuck this dude, but it just pains me to see good, quality record stores run by wonderful people close down all over the place, but this fucking clown is still in business.

I've been going there off and on since I was a kid. I bought a handful of records over the years which were probably overpriced at the time but not so much in retrospect (promo copy of Kick Out The Jams for $15...in 1985). But every time I'm back there and poke my head in, it's just a mindnumblingly baffling experience. I don't know why I bother; I haven't actually bought anything there in 20 years.

2nd Hand Tunes is still around, right? That place was amazing. I'd literally find stuff there for 1/3rd the price of what VV was charging.

no wonder he's an asshole, Billy Corgan loves him and his store :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk7qoHa_S-Q

correlation or causation?

I'll grant that the VV guy is pretty knowledgeable about certain things. Unfortunately, said knowledge does not carry over to bootleg sound quality (e.g., "It sounds great! It's soundboard!" = it doesn't, and it's fucking not).

And ugh, fucking Corgan. What an embarrassment to Chicago music. Makes Kevin Cronin look like Howlin' Wolf.

ha!

its funny cuz its true.

there are few sadder feelings than that of plastic name tab after plastic name tab bumping against one another in a conga-line of empty sections.

― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Monday, April 2, 2012 5:29 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^
THIS

That could be a shitty record store or just a struggling one! I guess they could remove those things though.

Anyway, Soundfix in Brooklyn is closing, finally. Not because I'm sure of any reason why it should except for the fact that nobody was ever there when I walked in! Not sure why, since it is better than Earwax for example in every way except location. Is that really all it took? I guess I remember it being much busier when it was literally a block away but on Bedford.

Anyone else have any clue?

2nd Hand Tunes is still around, right? That place was amazing. I'd literally find stuff there for 1/3rd the price of what VV was charging.

Yeah, thankfully they're still around. Such great dudes that work there. My only minor gripe is that they are really, really weird about what new releases they do and don't get. Been shopping there for 8 years now and still haven't wrapped my head around what they think will sell.

If your store don't have Mojo Nixon your store needs fixin'.

I'm far from a Smashing Pumpkins fan, but I think Corgan comes across well in that interview, especially seeing as he's just out looking for records and somebody sticks a microphone in his face.

The store itself does sound like a nightmare, though.