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Grex > Music2 > #154: Schoolkids II, and Music Retailing |  |
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| 25 new of 247 responses total. |
mcnally
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response 200 of 247:
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Jun 18 05:34 UTC 2000 |
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..
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krj
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response 201 of 247:
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Jun 18 07:20 UTC 2000 |
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.
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krj
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response 202 of 247:
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Jun 18 07:32 UTC 2000 |
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)
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mcnally
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response 203 of 247:
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Jun 18 08:33 UTC 2000 |
Somebody alert the RIAA! This *must* be Napster's fault.. :-p
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mcnally
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response 204 of 247:
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Jun 18 09:18 UTC 2000 |
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..
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brighn
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response 205 of 247:
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Jun 18 18:17 UTC 2000 |
#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.
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cyklone
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response 206 of 247:
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Jun 18 18:33 UTC 2000 |
What about the study that showed a decline in such sales before Napster was
created?
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brighn
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response 207 of 247:
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Jun 19 00:08 UTC 2000 |
don't confuse the issue with facts and statistics, Cyklone.
this is an emotional issue.
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krj
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response 208 of 247:
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Jun 20 07:19 UTC 2000 |
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.
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otaking
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response 209 of 247:
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Jun 20 13:30 UTC 2000 |
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.
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jules
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response 210 of 247:
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Jun 21 03:20 UTC 2000 |
i got two cds at wazoo today
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carla
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response 211 of 247:
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Jun 22 17:52 UTC 2000 |
wazoo is a great place.
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krj
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response 212 of 247:
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Aug 8 20:44 UTC 2000 |
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.
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mcnally
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response 213 of 247:
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Aug 8 22:33 UTC 2000 |
I can't remember the last time the "average price of CDs" was less
than $10. When exactly is this supposed to have occurred?
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krj
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response 214 of 247:
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Aug 9 05:32 UTC 2000 |
Mike, see resp:194 in this item.
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krj
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response 215 of 247:
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Aug 9 05:53 UTC 2000 |
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.
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mcnally
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response 216 of 247:
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Aug 9 18:48 UTC 2000 |
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.
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krj
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response 217 of 247:
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Oct 12 00:29 UTC 2000 |
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.
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mcnally
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response 218 of 247:
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Oct 12 02:28 UTC 2000 |
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..
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orinoco
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response 219 of 247:
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Oct 12 02:31 UTC 2000 |
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.
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orinoco
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response 220 of 247:
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Oct 12 02:32 UTC 2000 |
Mike slipped in. (Exciting stuff, no?)
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krj
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response 221 of 247:
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Oct 26 21:42 UTC 2000 |
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.
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krj
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response 222 of 247:
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Oct 31 19:39 UTC 2000 |
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.
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mcnally
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response 223 of 247:
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Nov 1 00:10 UTC 2000 |
I guess that's what happens when you only charge $17.99 for CDs --
there's just no profit margin..
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krj
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response 224 of 247:
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Nov 17 01:46 UTC 2000 |
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."
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