Why Don't You Buy Records?

By Brian J Barr Wed., Apr. 23 2008 at 12:54 PM

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As Hannah Levin points out in Rocket Queen this week, last Saturday was Record Store Day. Many indie record stores, including our own Easy Street and Sonic Boom, celebrated with in-store performances and storewide sales in honor their particular retail niche. Personally, I love going to record stores, but I'm a rare case given that I surround myself with this shit for a living. However, I can count on one hand the number of people I know who, when they hear about a band or artist they might be into, actually walk to our indie stores and buy a physical copy of a record.

This is a completely different case from the decline of indie booksellers; people don't frequent indie bookstores because they don't read books. But the people choosing to not patronize indie record stores are still, in fact, listening to music. They're just getting the music elsewhere. Sasha Frere-Jones brings up one of the more common (and since High Fidelity, cliche) arguments against indie record stores: they are staffed by elitists who sour the record buying experience for the general public. Despite the best efforts of some store owners to make this not the case, it invariably winds up being the case. Further, Chuck Klosterman, writing in Esquire, makes the soundest argument I've heard yet for why people (especially young people) don't buy records these days: nobody has any fucking money!

But what about you, REVERB readers? What's your reason for not buying records from indie stores? Is it because you prefer (understandably) to keep your money? Or is it because the record stores themselves are their own worst enemies? Or something else altogether?

I'm curious...

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Brian, you know that I buy stuff at local record stores; we talked about it at the Reverb festival when you caught me with a Sonic Boom bag of various things. I get free records I love and try to buy stuff to balance out my privilege. Of course, now I am unemployed and freelancing my writing, and when I paid $19.05 yesterday for a new CD, I suddenly realized it\'s going to be a long time before I can help balance things out again. (The clerks were really helpful trying to find me a used copy of what I picked out, and when they took my twenty I think we all kind of bummed out.)
I hear what you\'re saying, Tiktok. You are obviously not in the stuck-in-the-past market I was referring to. You seem to be broadening your musical horizons as you get older. My point is that most people don\'t and just don\'t care to.
It\'s not that my musical tastes are stuck in the past, I buy plenty of new music made by young bands, but as you get older, one\'s musical tastes widen beyond whatever\'s reviewed in Pitchfork that morning. People who\'s tastes are stuck in the past aren\'t going to record stores at all, because they already bought all the music they\'re ever going to listen to a decade ago, when it first came out.
I think Tiktok is really on to something. I believe most people\'s musical maturity (sophistication) level peaks at ages 13 to 22. That\'s when the power of music really resonates with a young person\'s life and becomes part of their identity. After the age of 22(sometimes later) music takes a back seat to other interests or new worries such as kids, job, mortgage, etc. So it\'s not uncommon for somebody in their thirties or older to be stuck in the past with their musical tastes. We make fun of people all the time for being stuck in the eighties or whatever. They just haven\'t had to the time or interest to refine it. That\'s why bands like Journey or Poison can still play fairs and casinos and do well. They\'re catering to a market that\'s stuck in the past. So if the peak market for music buyers is 13-22 IMHO, they are computer savy enough and likely to buy or steal music online. They are also a demographic that doesn\'t have a lot of money. Just my two cents.
First, Sonic Boom moved out of Fremont where I work and there\'s no stores in Greenwood, where I live, so now I have to drive to an actual record store if I\'m so moved. Hello, Amazon, eMusic, iTunes music store. Secondly, yes, the elitism is a drag. Thirdly, as one ages, the music that the hipsters are playing on the sound system tends to become really fucking annoying. I buy a lot of CD\'s and used to happily browse a store for an hour several times a week, combing through the used bins and so on, but I\'m hard-pressed to stay in an indie record store for more then ten minutes these days before I start to grit my teeth at whatever\'s being played in the store. However, I understand that Sonic Boom, Everyday Music, Easy Street, etc. aren\'t really chasing the dollar of men in their late thirties, even if they buy on the average of two CD\'s a week because there just aren\'t that many of us.
i still buy records but i shop online most of the time because most of our record stores aside of walmart went out of biz... as a matter of fact i purchased GNRs AFD for the first time on vinyl last yr! found it on a record stores site online...that album kicks butt on vinyl it brings slashes guitar out & axls vocals! I still gotta get incesticide by nirvana on vinyl as its my fave disc from them! as for me myself as an artist i\'m apart of one of the biggest indie online stores called cdbaby! my new record is due soon! its in the final stages and blows the socks off my first one!
I dunno about all this record store talk, but the piece on elevators in the New Yorker (there\'s a link to the right of Sasha\'s blog) is pretty fascinating.
I\'m one of the people you\'re counting on your one hand, as I don\'t own an iPod. But that Klosterman essay is great, and I\'m not usually a fan of Chuckie.
I agree, for the most part, w/Chucky\'s point. However, I think we\'ll see more people hit the record stores again in about two years when they realize that mp3s are the most disposable medium we\'ve ever had. Personally, I like what Elvis and many indie artists are doing: Giving away the download of their records when people buy them on vinyl, one of the most enduring mediums we\'ve ever had. I doubt any PB&J mp3s will be around as long as my copy of Elton John\'s \"Madman Across the Water.\"