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Total shot in the dark here, but I thought I might ask you a couple of quick questions for a Salon.com article I’m writing about the future of the record store. I’ve been given a nice anecdote about the World’s Perfect Zine party last night, and how there were hundreds of young, music-savvy people at Other Music but relatively few of them bought records.
I’m not sure how many bought records but I suspect, yeah, it wasn’t that many. Part of the reason was that the store was so packed that browsing for CDs and records wasn’t really physically possible. But beyond that, of course, people don’t really buy records that much anymore — especially people in a small, hyper-internet-savvy subset of young New Yorkers, probably some of the people on earth most likely to have already checked out the Google Music Store (they rolled it out in the afternoon I think). But a few hours before the party started, while I was waiting for the Tumblr organizers to show up, there was actually a surprisingly large (at least to my expectation) number of people buying CDs and records — all men, mostly in their late 20s and 30s. There was actually a line at the register.
So Other Music is one of the last record stores in Manhattan. Maybe the way to save record stores is in here then — to let some of them die so the remaining ones will absorb the patrons of the dead ones and do okay. There’ll be fewer stores that can survive in the future, but I don’t think record stores are in danger of being wiped from the face of the earth, there’ll just be fewer of them.
I’m also told one of the DJs asked for a wi-fi connection in order to DJ via Spotify. I love this story — it seems really illustrative of a point I’m trying to make about how we still value record stores as physical spaces and local cultural institutions even as fewer and fewer people actually want to buy the products that keep these places open.
Obviously I feel cognitive dissonance about not shopping to record stores, like I do every day when I eat meat and know that’s a pretty all-around heinous thing to do, or take a cab when I could just take the subway. I love the idea of record stores and I wish all of them well, and I have occasionally bought stuff from them, but, like, I’m 23 and I’ve been using the internet to get music since I was 11 or 12; going to record stores is a little foreign to me, like using the iTunes store is foreign to my mom.
There are a lot of places in New York that you can have a party in — I chose Other Music because I believe in it. It’s hard to put my money where my mouth is so the best I could do was put my party there.
Just curious… I’m double-checking elsewhere, but do you happen to remember which of the DJs used Spotify?
Jenna Wortham, the 28-year-old New York Times technology writer, asked to use Spotify, but she ended up using her iPod.
Also, how have record stores affected you as a music listener?
They’ve had a pretty negligible impact on me as a listener — I was never part of record store culture and have never felt at home in one.
I feel like it might be a neat twist to include some comment about the impact (or lack thereof) that record stores have had on your life, as sort of an example of a younger person who clearly cares about music.
The way I feel about patronizing record stores is probably the way everyone feels about things they know they should be doing but don’t actually do enough: heading to Occupy Wall Street after work, doing the pile of dishes in the sink and sparing their roommates, leftists not shopping at liberal-seeming megachains (Urban Outfitters, Whole Foods) whose owners hold beliefs and donate money to politicians that are inimical to leftism. I’m glad there are people who do these things, and if I had the constitution to do what I believed in 100% of the time I would buy all of my music at record stores, but alas…
TELL ME IF YOU NEED ANYTHING ELSE or you need a better answer on a question. You have always been good to me and I am happy to help you out.
:),
D
Sent via BlackBerry"In an iTunes age, do we need the record store? - Salon.com
Yesterday Salon.com posted a story I wrote about whether the record store can be saved. I quoted Tumblr’s very own Pitchfork Reviews Reviews; here’s his full e-mail answering my questions (text from me is in italics; putting it in block quotes looked janky).
(via desnoise)
Really enjoyed this piece, and the above interview is pretty good as well.
(via nebraska-admiral)
People who “DJ” using their Ipods… :/
(via nesbittslimesoda)
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