71 new of 247 responses total.
Time to write another record store obituary. Where House Records in East Lansing is closing on May 6, as the students depart. The month-long 30% off sale should have tipped me off. What's left in the store is 40% off, but the pop/rock stuff has been pretty well combed over. There's a lot left in the classical bins, though, and some in the world music bins. Where House's MSU store opened around 1978 in the University Mall on MAC Avenue, and it moved twice over the years until it settled into the Jocundry's Books building about five? years ago. Where House was originally the cooler record store in town after the demise of The Disc Shop; one of my memories from the 70s is making a distinct pest of myself returning about every third LP that I bought in the oil-shock era of blighted vinyl quality. In the mid-80s the Discount Records chain pulled out of East Lansing, and this left Where House with a near-monopoly on the Michigan State campus CD trade. They didn't do well with this, however, as the selection got less and less interesting. I lived in East Lansing through this period, and I would generally resort to mail order, or to shopping on trips, for anything I wanted which was at all obscure. A MSU acquaintance who was on the Bitnet ALLMUSIC mailing list would regularly write entertaining rants about the cluelessness of the staff and the insufficiency of the stock. They rallied a little bit in the early 1990s, opening a classical shop (later folded back into the main store) and getting a little better about stocking obscure stuff. But their monopoly ended around 1996 when Tower Records opened a store three blocks away, the largest music shop which East Lansing had ever seen. Where House did a valiant job of trying to compete against Tower: they consistently undercut Tower's price by a buck and they bulked up the classical and world music sections. And they stocked & promoted alt.country music in conjunction with the popular "Progressive Torch & Twang" show on MSU's student radio station. I made an effort to support them by shopping there first for popular items which it was likely they would carry; I was fond of their Tuesday $2 discount sale. Now it will be Tower which has the monopoly on new CD sales in East Lansing.
I loved progressive torch and twang so much that a friend of mine used to record it for me on a regular basis.
I quite liked the Michigan Wherehouse Records in Ann Arbor, though that may have been largely because they had at least one buyer whose tastes overlapped significantly with mine. Tower's post-Wherehouse behavior in Ann Arbor was not encouraging. Record buyers in East Lansing should prepare themselves for sticker shock.
I could tell when Tower moved in to East Lansing, in its strategy, that it was trying to run all the other companies out of business by undercutting them, and then was planning to up the prices once it had a monopoly. I was also of the impression that we had laws in this country about that sort of thing, but Reno's busy with M$ and Elian.
When did Tower undercut anyone on price in East Lansing? (Or Ann Arbor.) I never saw it. Tower is at $17.99 for most discs, maybe $16.99 in more obscure titles. Where House was almost always a dollar cheaper.
Tower was never a good place to shop for discs unless they were on sale or you had one of their $3.00 coupons, but it seemed to me that the Ann Arbor Tower's prices got even worse and the frequency of their "good" sales decreased once their competition fell apart. I could easily be wrong, or the timing could be completely coincidental..
Tower undercut in East Lansing for a good year or so after it opened in E Lansing. Price differences between the Tower in E Lansing and the Tower in A2 for the same disc were around $2-3.
In the latest high-profile headline in the music industry, the FTC has apparently reached a settlement with the Big 5 record conglomerates regarding allegedly anti-competitive advertising practices. The settlement forbids the now common practice of subsidizing retailers' advertising costs in exchange for an agreement that retailers will not advertise reduced prices on most discs. According to reports, the expected result of the settlement is increased competition among music retailers and reduced music costs, by as much as $1/disc or more.
What few reports have covered is that the resulting reductions in price are expected to put further downward pressure on the profitability of small independent CD shops. But most of them are probably doomed anyway.
A two-page letter from owner Jim Leonard announces cutbacks and reorganization in the SKR empire; this is described as a "partial liquidation." This letter is posted in the Liberty Street storefronts. The former SKR Classical storefront will become "Uptown Music," and will incorporate jazz and world music as well as classical. Half of today's SKR store, the side which had the jazz cds, will become "Downtown Music" with the rock, pop, blues, and everything else. My reading of the message is that the "SKR" name is going to be discarded, but I'm not sure about that. The original Schoolkids storefront is going to be let go; right now it is a clearance outlet for unwanted stock marked down 45%. The letter also names the five (of eleven) staffers who are going to be laid off. It mentions that the owners of the "Dubplate Pressure" store are going to revive that operation in Ypsilanti. Jim Leonard seems to be complaining that (1) his stores should be seen as the true heir to Schoolkids, since they kept almost all of the old wonderful Schoolkids staff; (2) if customers don't shop at his locally owned store, it will go away and everyone will have to shop at Borders. My rude comments later...
I always get creeped out when I go in there...it has looked "under construction" since it changed from Schoolkids to SKR, and they keep moving the genres around so I can't find anything the next time I go in. Not a welcoming environment at all.
Katie I agree. But even when it *was* under construction, it was still more inviting than it is now.
Yeah, I used to spend hours in Schoolkids. Now, I cant stay in that place for 5 minutes.
Hey Ken, was Mike Perrini on that list of people getting laid off?
Carla: I don't know, I did not note down all the staff names. Katie in resp:187 :: Jim Leonard had some rather exotic plans for store decor which were never brought to fulfillment. One side of the store was supposed to be done up in "Neuromancer"-style high-tech garishness, and the other side was supposed to be done up as a tropical jungle. I do not know how far along they may have gotten before realizing the money wasn't there to support these dreams; I was under the vague impression that they had gotten the construction work underway. I went to check the SKR stores out this morning. I fished 8 discs out of the clearance center, mostly pretty good stuff: Den Fule, John Renbourn & Doris Hederson, Dave Schramm, Original Harmony Creek Dippers, Planxty, Mary McCaslin, Sonya Hunter, and Odetta. It's sad if this is the stuff they can't sell. I ran out of time and brainpower to make sense of the piles of classical discs which were 45% off. It did seem like the classical bins were dominated by lesser known performers and composers. Besides the cds at the "Clearance Outlet," there are more closeouts at SKR Classical. In the SKR Pop-Rock/Downtown Music store, there was a big 99 cent bin with some promising items in it. There were also a lot of used discs. I think the store may be going for a close to 50% new/used mix. Over at SKR Classical/Uptown Music, I found that well over 1/2 of the opera stock has been removed. Maybe they're in a box just being moved from one spot to another. There are more discs marked down 45% at SKR Classical. It looks to me like the folk and classical genres are making up the bulk of the stock being liquidated -- possibly 1/3 to 1/2 of SKR's stock in those fields is being swept out. The rock CD stock is being given a haircut, and very little jazz is being liquidated. It does have the feel of a going out of business sale.
(Which Mary McCaslin album?) Mary is playing at Green Wood in Oct.
I got Mary McCaslin's "Old Friends" out of the bargain bin. I think there were other McCaslin CDs in there, but I can't be sure.
Back to the Minimum Advertised Price policy, resp:184, resp:185 ::
this is from http://www.billboard.com/daily/2000/0518_08.asp,
from a tail end of the story:
"Merchants privately say that the elimination of MAP
rekindles fears that price wars will break out and return
music retail to the unprofitability it suffered from 1994-1996,
before strong MAP policies were adopted and enforced.
"During those price wars, electronics retailers like Best Buy
and Circuit City were selling music at a loss, in an effort
to increase customer traffic for higher-priced electronics
goods. The labels argued that MAP policies would make it
easier for small retailers to compete with the giants, thus
increasing consumer choices."
Leslie and I took another trip to the SKR Clearance Outlet today, since we were going downtown for dinner anyway. There's a new, more alarming note from Jim Leonard in the window. The discount has been ratcheted up from 45% to 50%. "The situation is critical," says the note, and if they don't sell enough clearance CDs the stores could close in a couple of weeks. So we did our part. :) I got three CDs which I'd passed over on the Thursday trip, and it amazed me that they were all still there, after being on sale at half price for three days; especially the import reissue of the Kinks' LOLA VS.POWERMAN album. And with Leslie there to answer questions I pillaged the classical section and Leslie picked up a bunch of classical vocal discs. It was 8 pm Saturday night, and there was only one other customer in our side of the store. It wasn't that no one was downtown: Borders was pretty crowded.
htat's skr classical across from borders downtown, right? i may go check it out tomorrow, if i can convince myself to drive downtown.
Like most Kinks albums, "Lola Vs. Powerman and the Money-go-round" is fantastically uneven, but it's well worth having if solely for my favorite Kinks song, "Apeman"..
It is quite a bummer to go in there. (We went on Monday night, and I picked up a Silly Wizard Greatest Hits CD, Tannas, an Irish sea shanty record, and an old Connie Dover -- all ones that I had been mildly interested in obtaining, but nothing I would have bought normally.)
I did not know until tonight that the "SKR Downtown" store was in the former Annex storefront. The two westernmost SKR storefronts, the original Schoolkids space and the early '90s expansion, have been vacated. I have said for a long time that Ann Arbor has been overbuilt for CD retailing. But I was not expecting the jolt I got tonight from the "bummed" item in the Agora conference: ---------- #977 of 984: by Yay the Happy Whale (otaking) on Sat, Jun 17, 2000 (20:12): IBB Tower Records is closing at 4PM on Sunday, June 25. #978 of 984: by Bruin the Bare Bear (bruin) on Sat, Jun 17, 2000 (20:52): You don't mean the Tower Records on South University in Ann Arbor, do you? #979 of 984: by Yay the Happy Whale (otaking) on Sat, Jun 17, 2000 (21:35): Yes, unfortunately I do. They claim to be closing temporarily, to make way for UM offices, but one of the staff members said that was a false hope. They're having a clearance sale. Anywhere from $2-4 off all CDs. 30% off all books. 20-30% all DVDs and videos. All sale prives are off the regular prices, not, the existing sale prices. Guess it's another victim of online sales.
Wow.. I wouldn't have called that one, although it retrospect it doesn't surprise me. It always seemed like there were not a lot of people wandering around in there relative to the amount of floor space they were taking up in what has to be a more expensive location than places like Best Buy, etc..
As was pointed out in Agora: the demolition of the Forest St. parking ramp has to have hurt Tower badly; there is now essentially no public parking near their store before 6 pm. But I had always thought the chain was willing to ride this period out. Still, I had detected the standard sign of retail distress in a CD shop: the stock was collapsing. In particular, the pop/rock rack space had been cut back to make more room for geegaws. I'm still in shock. I have never seen this many CD retail failures, this fast. I know this city's been overbuilt for CD retailing for at least five years; but this is supposed to be a good economy. And I certainly never expected to end up with Borders as the leading CD retailer in town, in terms of selection. As I wrote in Agora: for maybe 25 years, beginning with the opening of Schoolkids, Ann Arbor was (arguably) the best place to shop for LPs & CDs between Toronto and the west coast. Friends who were visiting SE Michigan for science fiction conventions would make pilgrimages to the Liberty St./State St./South U. area. But with the closing of Tower, it's over. Ann Arbor will no longer have a significantly better CD shopping scene than most towns with a Borders and a decent used store.
Heh. If you want to read what Grexers thought of the *opening* of the Ann Arbor Tower, almost nine years ago, it's in the oldmusic conference, item 17. (item:oldmusic,17 and eventually that link will become item:music1,17)
Somebody alert the RIAA! This *must* be Napster's fault.. :-p
re #202: I was kind of surprised to see how consistent my Ann Arbor record store opinions were over the years.. And I was mortified by the section where several of us were discussing the anticipated release of an Enya album -- can that be expunged? If nothing else, it was worth reading for the nostalgic flashback I got when I came across the responses about the demise of the longbox..
#203: You don't think there's the slightest bit of a coincidence that indie college-city-based CD outlets are going out of business at the same rate that Napster is spreading? You're more naive, or in deeper denial, than I thought.
What about the study that showed a decline in such sales before Napster was created?
don't confuse the issue with facts and statistics, Cyklone. this is an emotional issue.
I'll write more about my pillaging of Tower tomorrow. There's still a lot of stuff worth digging through, since the sale is just a standard Tower storewide sale; Tower doesn't have to liquidate the stock, since they can just ship it to another store. Even after knocking $4 off Tower's inflated prices, there were folk and world music items which would be cheaper at Elderly Instruments. And the new Neil Young album had a "base price" sticker of $19.99, though they were selling it for a few dollars cheaper than that.
Yeah, the sale at Towers isn't very impressive. That's why I only bought a couple of things there. Neither was music-related, so I won't talk about them here.
i got two cds at wazoo today
wazoo is a great place.
News item from www.wired.com, reprinted widely so I won't bother with the URL: 28 states are suing the major record labels seeking damages over the now-discontinued Minimum Advertised Price scheme, which the FTC found to be an illegal price-fixing conspiracy. The FTC was content to slap the labels' wrists and get a consent decree, but the state A.G.s want damage checks that they can wave in front of voters. "The lawsuit alleges that traditional retailers pressured the record companies to set minimum retail floor prices after a price war brought by discount retailers dropped the average price of CDs from $15 to $10." $10 is below wholesale; the discount retailers, as I've discussed elsewhere, were (intentionally or not) engaged in predatory pricing by selling CDs below cost. The goal of the discount stores was to use CDs as loss leaders and make it up on electronics sales.
I can't remember the last time the "average price of CDs" was less than $10. When exactly is this supposed to have occurred?
Mike, see resp:194 in this item.
Schoolkids-in-Exile continues to grow on me. This weekend, Steve Bergman was chatting about how the little basement store is the same size as the Schoolkids he opened in 1976. The folk music section continues to grow a bit, and I also found some goodies in the African music section. I suspect the selection continues to bear Bergman's personal stamp, so how much you will enjoy it will depend on how congruent your tastes are with his.
The only way I can conceive of "the average price of CDs" having been under $10 during the 1994-1996 period is if Best Buy, et al, sold enough of those $5.99 cut-outs at the front of the store to counter-balance the entire rest of the industry. $12.99 was a pretty average price for a retail CD in those years, at least by my recollection.
I've groused occasionally in the past about the lack of good CD shopping opportunities in Chicago. On last weekend's trip I found the new (?) Virgin Megastore on the "Magnificent Mile," somewhat south of the Water Tower. It's a classic big-city CD shop, and I found all sorts of goodies there, including discs by Lo'Jo and the Terem Quartet which I thought would have to be ordered from Europe. I was mostly poking through the World Music section and it was pretty decently stocked. The staff was chatty and knowledgable, and I ended up buying three of the discs playing in different parts of the story: Celia Cruz, the new Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington reissue, and a collection of piano studies based on Chopin. I really enjoyed lolling around in the classical section since classical CD shopping in Ann Arbor has taken such a hit this year.
Did you happen to go see Celia Cruz when some U group brought her to Hill Auditorium two years ago? It was a really fun show..
Yeah, I love that store. (I'm not sure how new it is, but it's been around at least since the beginning of last year). I was surprised to see that it's got the largest and best-stocked classical section of any store I've been in, and the listening stations mostly had <gasp> music I enjoyed hearing. As far as gigantor CD shops go, it seems to be pretty well-rounded -- I heard Macy Gray and Yat-Kha both for the first time there. From what I can tell, most of the good CD shopping in Chicago is well-hidden and not downtown -- closer to Wazoo than to Schoolkids' in terms of noticeability. Alas, since I've been here, I've done most of my shopping when I'm back in Ann Arbor, so I can't give much by way of reccomendation, other than that Earwax Cafe is a way fun place.
Mike slipped in. (Exciting stuff, no?)
Continuing on from resp:212, I condense a report from today's http://salon.com, "What The Hell's Going On In The Music Biz?" With the RIAA's Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy shot down in flames by the FTC and state Attorney Generals, Best Buy decided to offer the new Limp Bizkit CD as a loss leader. Best Buy sold 500,000 of this disc at $9.99, losing two dollars per disc; this was half of the one million Limp Bizkit units sold nationwide. Quoting from Salon: "MAP was originally put into effect to stop precisely what Best Buy is doing. Will Best Buy's move provoke an across-the-board price war? Consumers hope so. Mom and pop retailers, which can't compete at those prices, hope not. If stores like Best Buy and the Good Guys start low-balling prices again, it could finish off an independent record-retail industry that already took a mighty hit in the pre-MAP years." Of course, most of Ann Arbor's independent record-retail industry has already been finished off. Perhaps the future of the CD business is entirely as a loss-leader for consumer electronics.
from a news story on http://www.redherring.com about Tower Records' dot-com operation: It's a good thing Tower's online operations are doing well. The company's traditional business is struggling. Despite total sales of $1.03 billion last year, the company's net loss was $8.8 million. The advent of competition, such as Borders, Amazon.com and CDNow, is widely seen to be eating into Tower's sales.
I guess that's what happens when you only charge $17.99 for CDs -- there's just no profit margin..
OK, I'm pissed as hell so I'm going to vent about it here. After I missed out on getting the Peter Gabriel album OVO last night at Borders, I saw copies in the window at SKR Downtown. This was way after SKR's closing time, so today I figured I'd make a special trip downtown, pay for parking, be a supportive customer of the local business. And when I got there, I found out that SKR had priced this disc at $32.99. I complained about the price to the young woman at the counter. "It's an import," she shrugged. At that point I went ballistic and said some rather intemperate things, and stormed out of the store. Tower East Lansing, when they have stocked OVO, have had it around $25. Amazon.com prices it at $22.49. Amazon.co.uk lists it for 12 UK pounds, which right now is less than $18 in US funds. Borders.com lists it at $17.46. If SKR had been competitive with Tower, I would have cheerfully paid the $25 and I'd be playing the CD now. Instead, I'm now swearing that this is the last time I make a special trip to try to get something from SKR uptown or downtown. I'd write to the owner and tell him that he's pissed off a customer, but I can't find an e-mail address for the SKR operation and the web site claims to be "under construction."
Yeah, I was looking for the GBS Canadian stuff, and they were telling me $32. I ended up getting it for (at most) $20 for one, and $18 for the other two. That was the last time I was in that store.
Megan, was that SKR on Liberty, or Schoolkids-in-the-Basement on State St?
(Ah, I looked at the e-mail I sent you in April, when Schoolkids- in-the-Basement had the Canadian GBS stuff at $18.)
I got the GBS stuff at Basement, except for one that they didn't have, but I got recently at Media Play! (They carry all of the GBS Canadian...I was a little surprised...) The SKR on Liberty was the one that said they couldorder them for $32.
It's scary when MediaPlay has a better selection than SKR. FYI, if you're interested in Canadian bands, Festival Distribution has a nifty catalog AND charges Canadian dollars.... which means that you can get things very inexpensively.
How does one find their catalog?
I have a copy, and I got on their mailing list via the Internet.
Re Ken's unfortunate retail experience in 224: I remember being amazed to see American import rock CDs at Tower in Piccadilly Square in London priced at 20 pounds - and this at a time when that would be rather more than US$30 (and web retailing did not exist). I began to regret that I hadn't, like Westerners taking blue jeans to the old East Bloc, brought along a box of these CDs from home and sold them on the street corner. I could have given a massive discount and still have made a killing. (Yes, I know this would have been illegal. But the amazing thing is what isn't illegal.)
I bought a copy of Peter Gabriel's OVO for $22.99 from Tower East Lansing. Ten dollars cheaper than SKR. I really need to write the SKR owner a letter. Leslie and I drove out to Harmony House's classical store in Royal Oak over the weekend. Leslie has been needing to do some browsing for Tchaikovsky song discs -- and Szymanoski song discs, if any such exist. The web retailers are poor at this sort of browsing, if you don't have the title of a specific song -- and if your transliteration of a song title from Russian doesn't match their transliteration. Trying to browse through everything that turns up on a search for "Tchaikovsky" on a web store is painful. So in the bins Leslie found a couple of Tchaikovsky song CDs, and we found a bunch of other classical items, like a highlights disc from Verdi's ATTILA (for $5!) and a closeout on a set of Chopin polonaises, and a new disc of selections from obscure Donizetti operas. It's the sort of shopping experience you can't have in Ann Arbor any more, now that the best classical music section is the one at Borders. I sure hope this store manages to last. (Aside for David: Harmony House is a venerable Detroit-area music chain. Their regular shops are just mall stores, nothing special, but a few years ago when they moved to a new store in Royal Oak, they turned their old Royal Oak space into a very good classical specialist store.)
Ken - if this isn't too obvious, what you need is to consult a copy of the Schwann Opus catalog. There's nothing like a print catalog for certain types of browsing. I buy a new one every couple of years. I don't have it here at home, so I can't look up Szymanowski for you right now, but under each composer, general song recitals are listed under "Songs" with a list of the songs included (a feature Schwann didn't used to have), while song cycles assembled by the composer are under title.
Thanks for the suggestion, David! We hadn't thought of it. Is the Schwann stuff still being published on paper? I'd thought I'd read they were moving online -- but even in an online format they might offer what Leslie needs in detailed classical browsing.
Ken - Schwann is not online (though they have an informational web page). The classical catalog, which is now called "Schwann Opus", is a 1000-page behemoth released quarterly, a far cry from the smaller and less informative monthly of yore. It gives album titles (e.g. "Live at Carnegie Hall"), detailed lists of contents, (frequently) dates of recording, etc etc. I have my catalog to hand now, so I can tell you that there's one Szymanowski song collection in the Spring '00 issue. The singer(s) isn't listed, which is unusual, but the album is titled "Songs with Orchestra"; it includes "Love Songs of Hafiz", "Songs of the Infatuated Muezzin", "Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess", "Roxana's Song", and "Songas after Kasprowicz", and it's Naxos 8553688. There's also a recording of "Muezzin" paired with Felicien David's "Le Desert", sung by G. Ottenthal (soprano), on Capriccio 10379.
Wow. Weird stuff at Borders last night! I went in to the music section at the downtown Ann Arbor Borders just to poke around, not really planning on buying anything. But... wow. Several copies of Bedlam Born (Steeleye Span's newest) at *gulp* $13.99. Two copies of John Tams' Unity at ditto. Several copies of Gabriel's OVO (23.99). Maddy Prior's Ravenchild. ... Quite a lot of things that I had not thought would be available Stateside, actually. So I got Bedlam Born.
Heh. If I had known Park Records was going to end their policy of putting CDs into the US market about one year after their release in Britain, I wouldn't have ordered BEDLAM BORN as an import. Sounds like Borders got a large shipment from the UK, I will have to find time to go paw over it.
Mickey, would you write something for us about half.com?
Sure, Ken --- I'd love to do so. <grin> I found out about half.com when I was on vacation, back in September. I thought I'd take a look at their selection, and IIRC, I didn't find much that interested me at first. The site did offer a wish list function, and I took advantage of that and promptly forgot all about it. Imagine my surprise, when I arrived home from vacation, I found a notification that a used copy of "Rhodes I" by Happy Rhodes had become available for purchase. The total with shipping was just a smidge over $9 --- and better yet, was described as being in Like new condition, still-sealed. I was ecstatic, having seen the same disc in worse condition sell for upwards of $70 over on ebay.com. It was very simple to purchase with a credit card. Unlike it's sister website, half.com handles all the purchasing details, and it's not necessary for the buyer and seller to contact one another. So far, the listings are for CDs, books, DVDs/movies, and console-type games. I have been selling quite a few items, also. It's a much less painful process than eBay, for your average run-of-the-mill product. I still reserve rarities for eBay, because the ROI tends to be higher. Check it out, if you're in the mood for a good browse through a used CD/bookstore, but don't want to leave your computer. Caveat emptor! Check the descriptions carefully, as well as the rating system that sellers are *required* to honour. Also, check the seller's feedback rating and watch for things like over-rating, slow shipping (seller's should ship w/in 24hrs of confirmation), or dead-beat sellers.
Ooooh, a wish list function. I've been thinking obsessively about Jungr & Parker's album CANADA, out of print, alas....
I started item:music,291 to discuss the winding-up of the SKR stores on Liberty St., so it could be linked to other conferences. I'll probably try to keep other discussion about music retail here.
Another CD shop obituary... I hopped over to Windsor today and found that Dr. Disc will be closing on February 11. The sign in the window invited customers to stop in and pay their respects; viewing hours end at 6 pm. My visit was cut drastically short; I had planned on the store having its usual late evening hours. Dr. Disc was part of a southern Ontario chain of indie-oriented stores, and I didn't ask if the whole chain was going out of business, or just the Windsor store. I'd only been there a few times over the years; their folk stocks were always disappointing, but they did carry a lot of Canadian rock bands which I might have heard on the CBC-FM late night shows. Today, the stock has already been well picked over -- the store was about half empty -- and the sale discounts weren't too deep, so I wouldn't recommend a trip there for anything except sentimental reasons. Perhaps the relatively new (?) HMV store in the Devonshire Mall pushed Dr. Disc over the edge; the HMV store had a lot of goodies in it.
((( Due to a disk space crunch in the /bbs partition, cfadm has moved
late 1990s Agoras to a different partition. For reasons I don't
fully understand, this may eventually cause problems with items
linked from those Agoras when they are moved back to /bbs at some
future date.
This item is linked from a 1998 Agora. It seemed safest just
to cut off discussion here and start a new item on the topic.
I don't think there are any other active music conference items
with similar links; let me know if you think I missed any. )))
Stuff's been moved back - this item should be safe to discuss in again. (Doesn't look like anything got lost; let me know if you notice anything.)
Looks fine. But current discussion on music retail issues has moved on to item:music,293 and it might as well continue there.
You have several choices: