“Sue Abbiss has weathered the ups and downs of running a small record store for 16 years
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And the automobile put the makers of horse buggy whips out of business, too.
The times are a changin’.
I guess the people (Little Teeny Boppers) have finally had enough of high priced shit! Sorry Record Execs…You can’t proceed with business as usual anymore by increasing prices year after year on shit albums anymore. Thanks for killing off a once thriving business (the local record shop). You finally broke the camel’s back.
Oh no…let’s throw a pity party. Wake up, it’s your own industy that’s killing you. If the music companies pioneered something before the advent of napster, or if they charged a decent price for a cd, you might be doing better. While you’re blaming people, you might as well throw in corporate radio and MTV.
This is also an example of changing times making certain people obsolete. Granted Wal-Mart should rot in hell, but when technology and times change, somebody is going to be left behind. You don’t see as many horse and buggy manufacturers anymore, now do you? Floppy drive makers had to do something else ’cause nobody does that anymore. Let’s have a pity party for tobacco farmers, too, becaue people are smoking less.
Besides, music is about the artist and the music experience, not about the middleman, even if they are an independant record store.
Yes… and when refrigeration arrived, the ice wagons were put out of business. When commercial aviation became cheap enough, the passenger trains were put out to pasture – along with their crews.
Welcome to the world, Miss Abbiss – I’m sorry your life is changing and you are having a bad time of it. I’m sorry you didn’t adapt quick enough, or that the change was just to fast to see it coming.
I’m also sorry for the owners and staff of the little hardware stores that used to be everywhere – until Walmart, Canadian Tire and Sears moved into town.
Good luck in your next career Miss Abbiss – I’m on my fourth one right now.
I for one Im tired of these so-called entertainers flashing their bling-bling in my face, which is what we do: we make them wealthy instead of ourselves, I dont feel bad at all since we all need to make adjustments once in a while, if you see business decline, move or get into something else! dont just wait until the sh*t hits the fan!
Dear previous threads,
I understand what you all are saying but I am sad that I can’t go down to the record shop and bring home a real record or cd with the frequency that I once did. I am not against the on line music stores But, with a real cd or record I can go to any machine and play it with out configuring it to do so aside from adjusting the volume or eq. I have records as old as 1910 to lp’s from today like LET IT BE…Naked as well as hundreds of cd’s. I don’t believe an MP3, WMA or AAC will have that kind of longevity. CD-R’s and other recordable computer media have obsolescents built in to them. I understand however that I am not the target market for the record industry anymore. Being 32 years old I guess I�m just Sum Dum Fahk, huh?
“Hears Music” is a small music store in Tucson that allows the customer to listen to complete tracks of all CD’s one may be interested in buying. No 30 second teases, no complaints. This is the sort of service that some brick and mrtar stores may find successful.
And one more thing, I don’t work for these guys either.
Maybe all the new music just about sucks? I attribute the recording industry for this as well, the RIAA is becoming the Walt Disney of Music – formulated crap because they have no artistic vision! When was the last great Musical movement – the early 90’s grunge scene. What happened? Every major band HATED their label! If you want anything good, you pretty much have to go independant these days…
Sum Dum Fahk,
Aside from AAC’s, good ol’ fashioned records are the way to go, imho. Not only do they sound great and last forever, but the prices are competitive with that Russian site!
well maybe if people that download music would actually get done then shops wouldnr go out of business.
I still know plenty of people that got around 1000 copies of song on there hardrives and about 80gigs of films that are illegaly downloaded.
“I guess the people (Little Teeny Boppers) have finally had enough of high priced shit! Sorry Record Execs…You can’t proceed with business as usual anymore by increasing prices year after year on shit albums anymore. Thanks for killing off a once thriving business (the local record shop). You finally broke the camel’s back.”
Lol what a fuckink cock. You are not the 1 to judje the prices what people want to put on to there thing id pissed my self if some 1 did that to you tho infact i wish that this happened to u
To artiom:
Before you start wishing anything upon SDF or put forth anything credible, you may want to start being more articulate with your words and stop being such a lazy bonehead with your spelling.
I genuinely feel sorry for small mom-and-pop businesses that become victims of major shifts in purchasing culture, and its one of the reasons I support local farm shops around where I live as well as small independent restaurants and coffee shops as opposed to always using major chains and Starbucks.
However, Sue’s business has got too many things against it: –
Greedy record companies pushing unoriginal product.
Greedy ‘consumers’ (or thieves, depending on how hardline you want to be) who don’t want to pay anything (Kazaa, Napster v1 et al).
Value-conscious consumers who buy from Amazon.
Switched-on consumers who download legally.
What’s amazing is how she’s stayed in business this long; here in the UK, you could probably count the number of mainstream independent record stores in Surrey on your digits. Those independents that do exist sell 2nd hand vinyl to the collector and dance/club music on vinyl to DJs.
Sad, but whatcha gonna do if you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
I don’t know the last time I was in an independent record store. Wouldn’t be surprised if its never happened. She’s also competing against the large record store chains too. I had to look in the phone book in order to find out that there actually are some independent record stores in my city of 150,000. I didn’t even know they existed here.
Say what?…thank you. I honestly skipped artiom’s posts and won’t be going back to try to figure out what they say.
I guess you could blame eBay too…
But, I do miss the days when getting out of work early meant a trip to one of the local independent record stores and finding a cool import, or a bootleg of a favorite band.
I think some people missed the point. It is the small business people who got hurt by the current situation. It is not their fault that CDs are expensive. It’s not their fault that artists can’t put a whole good album or that many sound the same. It is not their fault when RIAA signs talentless acts. But when people download illegally either because it’s free or because they are angry at RIAA, the first casualty is these people, not RIAA. Sure, time is changing and they’ll have to adapt, but it’s hard enough to survive in the current economy.
Yep. It’s a shame. I don’t personally think that P2P or iTMS has much to do with it. Not in the UK at least. The guys I know who are big downloaders also tend to buy a lot of music. They buy more than average, but tend to try it first, or just download it until they get a chance to go into a store.
(that’s not to excuse what they’re doing, but P2P probably means they spend more money, not less).
The problem is that although just as many people are probably happy to buy the obscure stuff that an independent would stock, people who just want the awful chart stuff just buy it at the supermarket. The chart stuff probably subsidised the good lower-selling music in independents, but a supermarket can afford to buy in bulk and sell at prices lower than the cost to the independent.
It’s a shame. We’ll be culturally poorer for this unless and until places like iTMS can expand to have a really extensive catalogue full of obscure and wonderful music.
i haven’t bought a cd in about a year.
What a lame excuse, blaming downloads, as if Wal Mart, Circuit City, Amazon etc. haven’t done the major damage. Even Tower Records is struggling to stay in business because of this.
Photographic film and paper sales are way down too, as a result of digital cameras and printers.
Einstein said it best: “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
Wal-mart exists because we are cheap.
Music Piracy exists because we are cheap.
Windows exists because we are cheap.
Internet Explorer exists because we are cheap
iTunes exists because we are cheap … or would you pay money for this free player?
Mac users ask yourself this question:
“Why should you spend more when there are cheaper alternatives?”
Inquisitive…
Mac users ask yourself this question:
“Why should you spend more when there are cheaper alternatives?”
You answered your own question when you said “Windows exists because we are cheap.”
One correction, though. Windows exists because the MAJORITY of people are cheap.
I am not, and since I enjoy using things that I perceive to be better, I buy Macintosh.
yes, the times are changing. but it kind of sucks that so many cool local record shops are going under. they are great places to hang around and get different suggestions about artists that you’ve never heard of.
if it weren’t for the smaller more intimate shops, I’d have missed out on a lot of really cool stuff.
I hope they don’t go extinct, but I know they will in time…
So why don’t the small independent stores become small, independent music download sites? If they’re dealing with indie labels, it should be a damn sight easier to set up than iTMS with the RIAA out of the equation.
Don’t fear the future, embrace it.
what exactly is quaint about a download site? the internet will never be able to replace the experience of actually stepping outside your home and doing something.
often times it’s about atmosphere, which is pretty much nonexistent in the world of 0s and 1s.
ONE WORD!
evolution