CDs were us
Aug. 19th, 2007 08:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusLet's start this tale with a morale-boosting moral: even in business, the people who survive are the people who care about things for their intrinsic value first, the money they can make from them second.
Wishful thinking? Who'd have thought, when I wrote my Stars Forever song championing plucky little East 4th Street record boutique Other Music, that it would be mega-retailer Tower Records, directly across the road, that went out of business first? How are the mighty fallen!
Good indie record stores seem to be thriving. In New York, Other Music has expanded, adding a digital download service to their shop and its fantastic newsletter. Last month Rough Trade opened a new store in London, Rough Trade East. It's located at Hipster Central -- Dray Walk, Truman's Yard, just off Brick Lane. According to my mate Daniel Giraffe, it's got "a cafe, a 'snug area', endless amounts of Naim listening facilities and, as the assistant put it to me, loads more stock coming in. For a record shop addict like me, this is wonderful". Meanwhile, in Berlin, my own favourite record shop, Dense, recently moved from Danziger Strasse to prettier quarters on the delightful Oderberger Strasse.
Defining the virtues of boutique record stores in general, Daniel quotes our mutual friend Momo Nonaka: "Momo used to say that in Tokyo, the assistants at some of the better record shops were treated as celebrities... Record shops should be like museums, people's palaces where you go to luxuriate in culture. In Tokyo, one gets the impression, rightly or wrongly, that one is being informed about old and new music, that the main priority is to inform the public first and to sell records second."
Taking off the rosy-tinted spectacles, though, we see that a lot of boutique record shops have gone out of business recently. In London, Smallfish in Hoxton is gone, together with many of the indie record stores on Berwick Street. The BBC quotes David Killington of Mister CD saying "People over 35 are still buying CDs, but no-one under 35 is" -- something I witnessed last weekend. Selling magazines, Playstation games and audio CDs off a stall at the Smart Deli matsuri, I noticed that kids and teens were going straight for the Playstation games and ignoring the CDs altogether. Only over-30s looked at the music CDs. "If these kids represent the future of music CD sales," I thought, "these really are the last days of music on CD".
It's something I look at with equanimity. Last year I got someone to photograph me buying what I had a hunch might be "the last two CDs I'd ever buy" -- albums by Hypo and Yuichiro Fujimoto. That snap ended up illustrating an entry about the demise of music show Top of the Pops. Since then, many of my music-related entries have had an elegiac tone, if they weren't outright obituaries. Music, as a cutting-edge subculture, seemed to be a spent force. Ubiquity was the abyss, and all heroes were marginal and neglected.
So I'm happy that Rough Trade has opened a new store in a location of subcultural significance, with great design values. To be honest, though, even an old music hipster like me will probably just buy a cup of tea and skim a copy of The Wire next time I'm there.
And what about the kids? Well, post-pigs in the pipe, post-baby boom, there aren't so many of them as there were when I was one. So they can't really gang together and have their own serious, important, arty subculture like we did, and see it go mainstream, like we sometimes did. But what they can have is what adults think kids ought to have: toys, and lots of 'em. Racked reports that the East 4th Street Tower Records site will reopen shortly as a branch of Toys'R'Us.
Wishful thinking? Who'd have thought, when I wrote my Stars Forever song championing plucky little East 4th Street record boutique Other Music, that it would be mega-retailer Tower Records, directly across the road, that went out of business first? How are the mighty fallen!
Good indie record stores seem to be thriving. In New York, Other Music has expanded, adding a digital download service to their shop and its fantastic newsletter. Last month Rough Trade opened a new store in London, Rough Trade East. It's located at Hipster Central -- Dray Walk, Truman's Yard, just off Brick Lane. According to my mate Daniel Giraffe, it's got "a cafe, a 'snug area', endless amounts of Naim listening facilities and, as the assistant put it to me, loads more stock coming in. For a record shop addict like me, this is wonderful". Meanwhile, in Berlin, my own favourite record shop, Dense, recently moved from Danziger Strasse to prettier quarters on the delightful Oderberger Strasse.Defining the virtues of boutique record stores in general, Daniel quotes our mutual friend Momo Nonaka: "Momo used to say that in Tokyo, the assistants at some of the better record shops were treated as celebrities... Record shops should be like museums, people's palaces where you go to luxuriate in culture. In Tokyo, one gets the impression, rightly or wrongly, that one is being informed about old and new music, that the main priority is to inform the public first and to sell records second."
Taking off the rosy-tinted spectacles, though, we see that a lot of boutique record shops have gone out of business recently. In London, Smallfish in Hoxton is gone, together with many of the indie record stores on Berwick Street. The BBC quotes David Killington of Mister CD saying "People over 35 are still buying CDs, but no-one under 35 is" -- something I witnessed last weekend. Selling magazines, Playstation games and audio CDs off a stall at the Smart Deli matsuri, I noticed that kids and teens were going straight for the Playstation games and ignoring the CDs altogether. Only over-30s looked at the music CDs. "If these kids represent the future of music CD sales," I thought, "these really are the last days of music on CD".
It's something I look at with equanimity. Last year I got someone to photograph me buying what I had a hunch might be "the last two CDs I'd ever buy" -- albums by Hypo and Yuichiro Fujimoto. That snap ended up illustrating an entry about the demise of music show Top of the Pops. Since then, many of my music-related entries have had an elegiac tone, if they weren't outright obituaries. Music, as a cutting-edge subculture, seemed to be a spent force. Ubiquity was the abyss, and all heroes were marginal and neglected.
So I'm happy that Rough Trade has opened a new store in a location of subcultural significance, with great design values. To be honest, though, even an old music hipster like me will probably just buy a cup of tea and skim a copy of The Wire next time I'm there.
And what about the kids? Well, post-pigs in the pipe, post-baby boom, there aren't so many of them as there were when I was one. So they can't really gang together and have their own serious, important, arty subculture like we did, and see it go mainstream, like we sometimes did. But what they can have is what adults think kids ought to have: toys, and lots of 'em. Racked reports that the East 4th Street Tower Records site will reopen shortly as a branch of Toys'R'Us.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 08:05 am (UTC)Are there any recommended music shops in those neighborhoods?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 08:20 am (UTC)I always thought Gandalf said "Fly, you fools" in the movie, but it makes sense that he would say "flee, you fools." I don't know, I always heard it that way.
(sorry, my former Lord of the Rings obsession is catching up to me, I blame it on the time being 1:19 am right now)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 08:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 08:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 09:14 am (UTC)yokohama doesn't really have any record stores of note to be honest - tokyo is probably a better choice for you, depending on what kind of music you're looking for.
enban in koenji is small and far away from you, but has a great reputation for a reason. check www.enban.org for directions.
warsazawa in shibuya is great for electronic/experimental music. jetset in shimokitazawa is also worth a look, although avoid it's small sister store in harajuku.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 09:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 09:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 10:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 10:51 am (UTC)Some time ago, I had a chance to speak with someone who works at a chain music store. They were telling me that they, and friends of theirs who work at smaller shops, weren't making money off the music anymore - it was all the gear (games, toys, blank discs for burning) - but not the music.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 12:19 pm (UTC)There's a large demographic of my generation who see music as nothing more than a theme-tune to clubbing... but that might be intergenerational, i don't know, but buying music on it's own isn't enough for them.
I don't think I personally have much consumer power because I don't have much money. But to me music world does look like a big massive blur. I can't, but there are many my age who do afford to produce their albums by themselves, and plaster them all over the internet. Very few people wish that "some stary-eyed day" they'll be able to record an album, they just do it in their bedroom... what would be underground is just like a huge machine on the internet and mainly in myspace that is just trying to guess at what mainstream is going to want next. It's really difficult to say "I've got something different".
There's definitely a weird effect on me by the information available on acts online. I used to have a cd, and that would be my only insight into the band... I thought the stone roses were american and i had images in my head of these generic rockers with long hair, and all from one track on a cigarette compilation.
It doesn't necessarily look like anything is too wrong, so long as I can buy my music. But I like the idea of public service retailing, there are people who as well as my friends have found out good music and could share it with me and their customers; stuff that really is amazing and could really force some sort of passion in people. Through downloads users can chose whatever they download, but their frames of references are limited to Radio Stations, the most powerful of which just want listeners. The independent record shops can put momus on the front of a centrally visible shelf, because they have their own power to make artistic risks with music that the owner likes, like an indie record company. Itunes is just there with their huge catalog and no thought about the market, reaping the rewards of Radio whims.
I've got quite a few ideas about Indie structures online to adapt indie sensibilities to the successes of huge websites... watch this spaaace, I don't think it's a totally hopeless mess, I think things can swing back.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 02:11 pm (UTC)Last child in the woods, indeed. Lobotomies'R'Us. My daughter doesn't go there.
It's very annoying to type Toys'R'Us. Bastards!
By the way, I am diggin' on your new avatar. Dare I say, you look... older in it, which is quite nice. I'm not brave enough to put a picture of myself as my avatar, as I am the least photogenic person ever.
Other
Date: 2007-08-19 02:51 pm (UTC)Re: Other
Date: 2007-08-19 03:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 03:53 pm (UTC)cross the street, the narrow one, not yasukini, vis-a-vis MAcdonalds , the Sanseido Jiyujikan (http://www.books-sanseido.co.jp/shop/jiyujikan.html) has probably the most amazing collection of japanese music, mostly vinyl, of any era in tokyo.
neither hip nor funky but you can sit down and admire the sleeve-artwork in the on-site science cafe (http://www.books-sanseido.co.jp/event/sc/index.html) after shopping.
if you search for 東京都千代田区神田小川町3-12-1 at http://maps.google.co.jp/ you get a decent map.
this is not a joke, this shop is worth a visit.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 03:54 pm (UTC)So, it being hard to even find people your own age to date or be friends with, it might take the next big generation for whatever new cultural, music, etc. movement to start from the ground up (rather than top to bottom from marketers like it has been).
Mod Lang
Date: 2007-08-19 04:26 pm (UTC)All the latest and hippest but I really love the 60's/70's/psych/folk/prog/rock re-issue section. I'm a sucker for that stuff. I grew up in the sixties. The decade when the Beatles stopped touring and "The Album" became the most important product musicians had to offer.
Record companies, musicians and people like me (old) pretend that the album is still important. But the truth is that music is just lying around all over the internet and you just need to pick it up and put it on your digital player. Kids know that.
I've given up predicting and listening to predictions about what is going to happen to the record industry. I'm a consumer and I will continue to consume music in what ever format it comes in. But I do wonder what will happen when all the old suckers die off.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 05:36 pm (UTC)http://www.enban.org/shop/cart_pro.cgi?page_id=1&disp=on&mode=new
Re: Other
Date: 2007-08-19 06:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 06:45 pm (UTC)I'm not saying you're wrong to feel the way you do, just that I don't share your view of today's relationship between music and subculture.
I think the state of music today is a result of technology making heterogeneity of culture possible. There's both good and bad in that I believe.
Re: Other
Date: 2007-08-19 07:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-19 09:52 pm (UTC)Re: Other
Date: 2007-08-19 11:32 pm (UTC)