A:
It is almost redundant to say that the record industry is not doing too well, and that ultimately, it has been retail that has been hurt the most. I have spent many hours at the shop for which I work trying to figure out something to do to help. Even though I am pro-MP3, and do appreciate the endless possibility of online purchasing, ultimately, my heart is in independant physical retail. May be this is because a good store is also a meeting place for like-minded individuals, or maybe it is because a good independent store adds to the complexity of the urban environment.
I can't imagine a city without a good record store, and, though they will probably survive in very large markets, in smaller cities like mine, the possibility of no stores being open seems not like alarmist paranoia on my part, but rather a real, rational, concrete and obviously negative possibility.
Many solutions that at first seem positive are ultimately, with closer examination, more nails in the coffin. From Itunes to Universal's price drop, no solution really helps independant retail as much as the record companies. Whether independant retail is better, or more valid, etc., than "big box" stores is not the issue. At least for the purposes of this thread, it should be stipulated that both should exist.
B:
Over those hours at the shop, I have started to realize that maybe the only solution is education. People who know a lot about music simply tend to buy more. Would it not be beneficial for retail and/or record companies to spend more time and money into educating their customers on music in all of its variety? How could something like this be implemented? What would it look like? Would it work?
I know many of you are already sharpening knives, ready to dissect. You may be assuming that education automatically means something sinister. After all, education can be the Cannon, with its emphasis on the proper, the rational, the important, at the expense of the personal. With the Cannon, and its Educational counterpart, every purchase becomes an aquiescence. How could that be advocated on a popist board like this? Frist of all, the Cannon is not as is not as monstrous as depicted above. Many albums or books or movies or whatever that are now conisdered Important, works that MUST be processed by those who aspire the Know something, most likely gained their fame because they could actually affect the emotions. Secondly, I am not concerned with any of this shit anyways.
There is another type of education, one that is less concerned with facts and figures and hierarchies for their own sake, but is rather conerned with those things as a means to another end. This type of education is more difficult to describe, and I wont even pretend to be able to do it justice. The general characteristics of this type of education, though, involves knowledge as an means to insight, to passion, to discovery, revelation and also independance. It is not vertical but rather horizontal. Hopefully we all know what I am getting at.
C:
So where does retail fit in? That is what I am trying to figure out. All I am sure of is that the passivity that I see around me at my store, the fatalism, is not going to keep us in business.
I have had a couple of ideas so far:
1. Unless I am mistaken, I remember reading that labels (maybe just Universal) is not going to be paying retail stores for space on their listening stations. If this is true, stores will lose money, but wouldnt this give them an opportunity to stock the stations with employee favorites? I like the idea that our 4 listening stations with 12 cds each, filled with 48 of the greatest cds of any genre, representing any ideology, era, etc.
2. Its a little twee but I like the idea of having little free listening parties where we could have someone come in and talk about, say, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and then play the whole thing, and conveniently have a lot of copies in stock. I figure that for all the pretense of the small record store as community center, we could probably be doing a lot better at that instead of resting on the laurels of moral superiority.
What do you think?
― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Thursday, 2 October 2003 03:48 (twenty-two years ago)
2. Its a little twee but I like the idea of having little free listening parties where we could have someone come in and talk about, say, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring
and then play the whole thing, and conveniently have a lot of copies in stock. I figure that for all the pretense of the small record store as community center, we
could probably be doing a lot better at that instead of resting on the laurels of moral superiority. Like a music version of the book club. As sappy as it may sound to be compared to something that Oprah revolutionized, I think that's a really good idea. I mean, it's almost a localized, realtime version of ILM. Hell, why not call it ILM even?
People, music fans especially, are always eager to not only defend their taste, but to extol the virtues of their favourites. The trouble is, what is the right time and place for this? Why the bi-weekly meeting of the ILM club of course!
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 2 October 2003 15:32 (twenty-two years ago)