Amoeba Music's "Music We Like MMV (2005)"

By Chris Morris Thu Dec 22, 2:19 AM ET

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - 'Tis the week before Christmas, and Karen Pearson, wearing a Santa cap, is wheeling stock around the floor and working the checkout counter at Amoeba Music in Hollywood.

Pearson isn't a clerk at Amoeba: She co-owns the mammoth 38,000-square-foot record store, and two enormous shops in San Francisco and Berkeley, Calif., with partners Marc Weinstein and Dave Prinz. But in times such as these in the music biz, even the savviest retailer must take a hands-on approach to the game.

So here's Pearson -- who moved to town from the Bay Area four years ago to run Amoeba's L.A. operation -- trucking CDs into the Christmas music section and handing a bag to a customer at the security gate. She takes a moment to shove some 2006 Amoeba calendars into one regular customer's hands.

On this Monday evening, the floor traffic at Amoeba seems almost unnaturally light. Pearson confesses that, while the weekend flow of shoppers was "insane," it's a little sleepy at the moment.

"We've been busy," she says. "We're holding steady with last year. Even though there was a feel that maybe it was a bit lighter or slower, it's by no means dead."

Pearson does acknowledge that this year's holiday titles are not powerful. "That is such a major factor, if you don't have something that's really exciting," Pearson says. "This year, there's not a lot of great releases."

In the thick of the season, when retailers collect the lion's share of their receipts, this isn't great news. And other shadows have been cast on the holiday sales season in Los Angeles.

Perhaps a mile away from Amoeba's sprawling floor, Aron's Records, one of the most popular independent record stores for three decades, is conducting its going-out-of-business sale. Sources also say that Richard Foos, the owner of the 32-year-old Rhino Records store in Westwood, is looking for a buyer for his shop.

Anyone who talks to indie music retailers has heard their end-of-days chatter. Certainly, Pearson has heard it.

"It's a difficult business," she says. "It's an uphill battle. The margins are really small. . . . I hope we're not seeing an end to (record retailing) because it's such a part of our culture and our history."

Because of its huge stock of CDs, vinyl, memorabilia and DVDs as well as its buying clout, Amoeba appears ideally positioned to weather the swing away from physical music product into the digital era. But Pearson notes that she and her partners are considering a move into some form of digital offering.

"We've not been looking at it for a while," she says, "(but) it's all so new, and there are a lot of players in it. . . . That would be silly, to put your head in the sand. But to say it's the end of stores and shops would be silly, too."

Some technocrat naysayers are quick to make the Scroogean claim that the old-school record store will soon go the way of the dodo or the 8-track tape. But Pearson and her Amoeba partners believe that, yes, Virginia, there is a future catering to those who love nothing more than thumbing through bins of old LPs.

"We have the energy and the passion, still," Pearson says. "Damn -- we're going to keep doing it and boppin'."

(Chris Morris hosts "Watusi Rodeo" on Indie 103.1 (http://www.indie1031.fm) in Los Angeles from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Sundays.)