Why are so many record stores still closing?

Hopefully the two In Your Ear stores are still going strong?

 

Amoeba's rising prices for new vinyl are making it feel a little like Tower Records in the 1990s. The Hollywood store is still always busy, but how are Haight St. and Telegraph Ave. doing?

 

LOL... they'll do neither

 

This isn't as big of a deal as it sounds. As the article even points out, there are other sources to get everything WEA was selling, and lots and lots more. In fact, the biggest distributors are known as "one stops" and many record stores are effectively run on those alone, at least for new, major label product. It's not effective for them to service accounts (remember, this is time/labor intensive B2B sales) that simply don't order anything.

 

I personally don't find anything special about Amoeba Records. It's a large space for sure, but it has the worst mojo of any record store I have ever visited. I have absolutely no plans on going there in the future. I guess its OK if you're a tourist from out of town and what to check out the sites of Hollywood, but I would never use that place as my regular source. I don't care what happens to that place.

 

Eh, come to Pittsburgh. Attic and Jerry's are both as healthy as ever.

 

I am going to say Amazon does price some of their records cheap but most of the time they cost the same or just a bit more than my local retail stores.

 

Have you ever been to Record Collector on Melrose? I think there's a lot of stores with bad juju out there, but definitely not Amoeba. The prices are high, yes. It's basically the standard for high prices at this point, but it's a store you could LITERALLY spend days in, and keep finding interesting things! It's a totally overwhelming experience. Maybe we have different ideas of what bad mojo is, but to me it's usually small places, that don't have much, that have nasty or just oblivious owners/people working there, and you pretty much determine instantly you're not going to find anything there yet it's too awkward to turn around and leave.

 

Record Collector is the worst place ever .... record store or not .... Worst place on earth

 

I was fortunate enough to visit both Amoebas in the Bay Area during a trip to Northern California in April 2015. I was highly, highly impressed by both stores. I visited the Haight Street branch on a Saturday and the Berkeley shop on a weekday; taking that into account, I thought both were drawing good crowds.

The selection of used CDs in particular was outstanding at the Amoebas. I haven't been to the Hollywood branch yet (someday!), but the Amoebas in the Bay Area have to be the most impressive brick-and-mortar record stores I've ever visited, and I've been to my share across the U.S. The only stores I've been to that are even close in terms of quality and selection would be places like Twist & Shout in Denver, the Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton, N.J., and Waterloo in Austin, Texas. But Amoeba clearly is a cut above.

I can't really comment on the vinyl selection at the Amoebas as I pretty much spent all of my time looking at CDs. I spent hours looking through the bins, and I could have spent even more! And -- at least for the CDs -- I thought the prices were pretty reasonable and fair. If you live near one of these stores, consider yourself fortunate!

 

It's the very definition of bad juju to me.

 

Amoeba Hollywood is the biggest Amoeba, I'm pretty sure. If there's a bigger record store in America than Amoeba Hollywood I've never heard of it.

 

I was just at Telegraph and they are thinking of cutting the size of the store in half and focusing on LP's and DVD's. As I mentioned elsewhere, it feels like the end of an era. For me, Amoeba filled the void when Tower closed. They became the place with the insane variety where you could find virtually anything and, at least with CD's, they were usually very reasonable. Over the last few years especially, they have really cut back on their inventory, as all stores seem to be doing, so the selection isn't as eclectic, so people shop online instead and the whole thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy of retail doom. I think retail in general is going through a major shift right now and it will be interesting to see how it evolves.

 

Yeah, that's what I've heard and read (and hence why I need to check it out). Pretty sure the San Fran store has a little more foot space than the Berkeley store, but they're both massive, too.

 

Amen. And I'd add that If you can't find great buys at Amoeba Hollywood, you're simply inept at record shopping. Sure, if you go in looking for a new Radiohead album on vinyl you're going to get jobbed. (Like anything in retail, if you pay full price you're a sucker or you gotta have it.) I've been going to Amoeba since the first month it opened and have never had a crappy experience there. Some visits are better than others, sure. But I never had serious employee attitude or condescension there, compared with say the old Tower Sunset. All in all, Amoeba remains an exciting place.

 

Wow, that's interesting about the Berkeley store. That's the original branch, right? It would be a shame if they made that shift in focus, in my opinion, but people like me who are still hardcore collectors of CDs are clearly the exception rather than the rule these days.

I was able to fill my baskets with numerous collectible, out-of-print CDs at both branches of the Bay Area Amoebas during my April 2015 visits. What those stores were offering was awesome and rare in this day and age.

 

Over here it's the demise of the ''high street store'' in general.
Online I have the choice of gazillions of albums in all formats, other than sympathy (or: pity), there's no real reason why I should visit the local record store, there, I've said it.
There's even an Independent record store in my village (kept afloat by buying and selling 2nd hand cds and dvds), but its collection is backdated (i.e. just cds) and as a rule about 20% more expensive than online stores....

In the Netherlands there's still the proud and busy "Concerto" in Amsterdam and I might offend Dutch fellow Hoffmanites by saying that the shopping experience over there is terrible; high prices and no room to move around in. Lovers of the old 'browsing through LP-racks' may love it but it all comes down to 20 (mostly) men moving about in a confined space through small alleys and bored personnel behind the counter. Compared to that headache-inducing experience online sellers like JPC.de or North End are paradise!

 

No! I have not and it doesn't sound like a place I want to go either.

First of all, parking around that area sucks. The employees there are full of @#$%, and aside from a decent section of new records, that store is full of records that I have found in better condition in thrift shops for a lot less money.

Unfortunately, the shops that I use to frequent are long gone, pushed out by expensive retail cost and congestion. I am just fortunate that I purchased most of my stuff prior to 1980. I don't know what I would do today.

 

For the youth of today (and older generations) everything they want is on-line with an abordable subscription of in most cases for free on YouTube etc. Hardly anybody cares about the infinitesimal "loss" in sound quality on their telephone.
As for me, I'll only buy a CD if it's as cheap as an on-line buy, so I'll rarely pay over 6 or 7 euros. Faced with this, my (used) record store in town has decided to privilege DVDs/Blue-ray, with only about 20% of stock now devoted to CDs/vinyl.

 

Are these part of the UK company? Quite surprised as thought the closures had stopped. They have moved the Coventry branch to smaller premises recently.

 

A lot of worn out junk in their bins, questionable titles priced high. Bad juju all over the place.

But it might not be their fault if the trade in counter is not receiving quality stuff, then what can they do?

I think folks have about all dumped their vinyl by now, or they wish to keep it. This results o
In the poor selection we see at Amoeba.

The only folks who love the selection there are the o we with small collections with holes to fill. For the long term collector it's pretty much dried up.

 

HMV was bought by a company called Hilco a couple of years ago, heard it on the news that they are to close all shops over the next couple of months!

JG

 

Record shops the way of the dodo.
Ridiculous.
Noticed some magazine shops / gas station have no music related /hifi mags. latest no Film related mags now.

 

Great point. The general populace is being manipulated as part of a divide and conquer effort. The goal is to put a much smaller emphasis on the fine arts, which has been proven to bring people together. I immediately think back to WWII and the large role music played in unifying people from many different nations.

 

Thank you for artculating that Point so well.