Why are so many record stores still closing?

at gerosa some beatles and pink floyd albums were 5 bucks in great condition.and they have a section you have to look through for real cheap and found some of my favs on vinyl for dirt cheap.

 

Daven23,"
That's not all my quote !!!

 

Yeah, I'm not sold on that either. It's still more overhead and you have to be good at two things instead of just one. Having a coffee shop operated by someone else in the building next door would be nice though.

 

Sorry I totally messed up trying to quote! Lol

 

I’ll be in the area tommorow and I’m looking forward to picking up some Pink Floyd and Beatles for 5 dollars a piece! Il post back tommorow with what I pick up!

 

Easy Street Seattle is this. Very popular greasy spoon diner within the record shop. Occasional live performances and a great used and new LP section. CDs books and musical prayer candles too

 

100% on this

- The profit margins on vinyl now sucks unless you are extremely careful what you buy and from whom. The only one making $$$ off vinyl is UPS moving the boxes around the country.

- Many small labels now compete directly with retailers by offering special versions/bundles/colored vinyl on new releases.

- Retail costs rise every year, without exception. Employees, rent, utilities never, ever cost less. And if you're in a lease with a triple net (N/N/N) you're really screwed as property taxes in commercial zones are absolutely killer.

 

I feel sorry for the owners
Ditto ...customers.

 

Also-
Blast From The Past in Roseville
Flames Favorites in Detroit, near Wayne State University
Weirdsville in Mt. Clemens
Hello Records in Detroit, Corktown area
Rock City Records in Detroit, at Jefferson and McDougall
Dead Parrott in Windsor
Cheeky Monkey in Sarnia, Ont.
and opening soon, Ripe Records in Grosse Pointe Park

 

Why? I love them. I'm sorry Volcanic Tongue closed. It made a trip to Glasgow worth it.

 

You were one of the smart ones who saw value in something that others saw as "throw away". I too started to buy more vinyl in the late 1980's because I was stumbling upon so many great titles. Some people were actually giving me(free)their whole vinyl collections because they didn't want to deal with it any more. I can't tell you how many "coveted" vinyl records I passed on to other collectors because I just didn't have the room to store it all. Because of that, I have some great vinyl records in incredible condition. CD's are now my next interest. I just find myself playing them more than vinyl these days.

 

Not all will be that cheap but I got dark side for 5 and 5 for peppers.and I found those in the bins in front where you have to dig though them yourself.

 

The only bricks and mortar shoppers left are cheapskates and bottom feeders.

I can't count the non-customers who wanted the world for nothing. Like the lady who came in and asked for Tom Petty's Wildflowers.
Me: That's a really expensive record.
Her: Yeah, I know. They're $300 on eBay.
Me: We'll, what were you expecting to pay for it in a store if eBay is too expensive?
Her: I was hoping to pay about $10.

Needless to say, my personal copy is safe at home. That kind of stuff happened all the time. The market has determined the value. Put up or shut up.

Weekly, I would dump boxes of Anne Murray, Babs, Vic Damone, and Helen Reddy lp's at the Goodwill across the street. It always amazed me that people would fill up their carts with worthless records by the hundreds and pay all that money for junk from Goodwill at a buck a piece but wouldn't take them from me 10 for a dollar with no scratches. There's a lot of mental gymnastics involved in retail. Perception is a huge part. But it's exhausting and ultimately unrewarded.

As for the brilliant idea of opening a coffee shop that sells records, I see more coffee shops fail than record stores. Starbucks and Dunkin have cornered that market. How many independent coffee joints renew their first lease let alone, make it to the end of their first lease?

Everybody knows how they can do it better. You need to sell coffee! You need to hire a kid who just ebays all day! You need to hire pretty girls! You need to sell candy! You need a coke machine! You need to be open later! You need to open earlier! You need to talk to your landlord about reducing the rent! You need to do PA/instrument rentals! You need to provide music lessons! You need to do a rock school! You need to start a DJ service. Podcast! Advertise more! Get more signage! Get a mascot and have him hold a "records" sign out on the curb! Do a punch card system! 5 for the price of 4! Blah, blah, blah...

No. I need to get a job that provides a steady paycheck and health insurance for a family of five.

 

I read all 40 pages of this thread over the last 2 days. Great stuff. Big thanks to all of those record store owners who persist in today's climate, and big kudos to those with stores consistently turning a good profit. Store owners - especially those primarily carrying used records - need to have the qualities of a good businessman, an artist and a magician to keep things above water. Based on some of the statements in the thread, I think one can see a number of similarities between running a record store and running a restaurant. I think they attract people who want to run that specific kind of business, rents are a constant worry, the product being sold is an inessential luxury, profit margins aren't high, the customer base is fickle and everybody complains about how expensive everything is despite probably having no clue what the costs to the store are and how little money they make.

Some thoughts on the thread:

The sale of new records and used records are pretty much two different businesses. Both businesses need to know their customers and how to reach them, but the ordering and pricing of new record stock works much like any other retail business. With a few exceptions, each label is going to have a particular price for new product, and that's it. The business of selling the records comes down to knowing what and how much to order. However, margins for new records is low, because of the very high prices being charged the stores. For used records, though, each piece is its own product. So either the store owner or an employee needs to know not only what pieces are worth bringing into the store, but how much to pay for them and how much to sell them for. And those targets are always moving This requires a level of expertise and an endeavor of time that many businesses selling other products never need to consider. In this respect, used record stores function more like an antiques store than a new record store. Also, the products themselves are mostly a fixed lot; that is, unlike in days past, there is not really a replenishing stock of used titles. I mean, there are *some,* but nothing like it once was. Probably this is much more the case with CDs than with LPs, but the stores can't charge as much for CDs and used CDs don't move in a brick and mortar store like used LPs can (from a consumer point of view, there are fewer reasons to buy a used CD in a store as opposed to online). But for those vintage 1950s - 1990s first-run vinyl titles that everyone wants, a fixed amount were made and what we've got is all we'll ever have.

That being the case, there needs to be some amount of expertise in acquiring the product to begin with. I suppose one can passively wait for people to contact them about selling off collections, or just bringing them in unwanted items - and maybe in some of the healthiest record store markets that's enough - but most of the good record stores I've known in the past 10 years or so have someone very aggressively scouring estate sales and record shows for items, have built relationships with thrift store managers for first look at things, etc. I often ask stores I do repeat business with how they get their items, just out of basic curiosity. I've had some places not even want to give specific answers. Which is another thing - this is often a low-return, high risk business that seems to attract some people to it simply because they love records but they're competing with everybody else doing the same thing, especially those in close physical proximity. Again, there's only so many of those desirable titles out there, and they need to constantly be acquired in order for there to be a business.

What's the future of the record store? For new stuff, it's worth noting that records are only as valuable as the music on them. Are there new artists who sell a lot of vinyl records? Not really. Insofar as vinyl, only 2 of the top 10 vinyl records sold in 2017 was a new release, and one of those - Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack - was comprised of old music. And most of the pressings of older music that anybody who buys used records cares about owning - they've already been pressed.

I feel like major cities and college towns will have a record store scene for some time to come, but it's an industry in decline, despite the upward tick of vinyl records in the last 12 years or so. If you were a bank, would YOU give a business loan to a record store?

 

I think some record stores are banking on the sucker market, the people who will see a good/nothing special copy of Heart Like a Wheel by Linda Ronstadt for, I don't know, $8.99 and pick it up. There are people like this out there, but not many. The smart and best stores either price them perfectly fairly or a bit below the regular rate. They price them to move, so that more regular buyers will come in with more frequency because they know the turnover will be happening more often.

To cite one, the best record store I've been to in recent years remains Angry Mom Records in Ithaca, NY. When I went a couple summer ago, the prices were great. I picked up a whole bunch of great, clean copies of albums for $3-$5 that at Amoeba or others in L.A. tend to go for $15-$20. Maybe there are plenty of stores like that elsewhere that I'm missing, but it's been a long time since I shopped extensively outside of L.A., SF, or Chicago.

 

Do you not think that maybe Goodwill was throwing those records away, at least after a while?

My Goodwill had an LP section for a while, but now it's gone. I can only assume that good records are sent to a warehouse for ebay, the rest go to the dumpster.

 

A Mister Richard Fader from Fort Lee, New Jersey writes in and says, "Dear Roseanne Roseannadanna, you wanna know why I hate owning a record store..."

Good luck with that job search. Given how open you are to new ideas and adapting to the times...

Love,
Billy

 

I sold a Beatles mono Parlophone Help! to a person for $10 and a couple months ago apparently he sold it to Sound Exchange in Brandon, FL and they were selling it for more than that because it was a first issue but it sounded like crap. I found that hysterical.

 

A good record store owner needs to constantly read the obituaries

 

Their CD section has shrunk in half? What a bummer, I only buy discs there and now it has shrunk?

 

Heck yea! I’m rediscovering discs by the day, and rebuying what I’ve eBayed, Goodwill’ed, and trashed! Expensive but whatever,music is music and when I’m jonesin’ for a particular album, I gotta have it!

 

'Coz Millennials. Let's blame them for that too!

 

Amazon? Heck I remember Peaches & Sam Goody. Plus local indie shops.

 

Well, the place I thought closed in NYC does both, and sells antiques. And then there's another place in LA that is primarily a coffee shop / cafe with a couple of bins of records. At least from what I've seen, the records are just kind of there and both places focus is certainly elsewhere. At least based on what I've seen, the hybrid approach doesn't make it enough of a record store to please most collectors, but, hey- a bin of new arrivals, sure I'll flip through that when I get my coffee.