response 30 of 55:

Dec 3 18:48 UTC 2007

My old homey..
December 3, 2007

BY GRETA GUEST
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

Record Time in Ferndale will wind down operations after the holidays with a
clearance sale before its owner consolidates operations at his flagship
Roseville store.

The Roseville store opened in 1983, with Ferndale following in 2000. Owner
Mike Himes said his business will focus on the Roseville and eBay stores,
Amazon.com and his e-commerce site.

"We have lasted longer than anyone else has, so we must be doing something
right," Himes said. "I love the vibe here in Ferndale. There just aren't
enough people coming in." 
Ferndale's main shopping area on Nine Mile has declined along with Michigan's
economy. Empty storefronts are becoming more common, particularly since the
Old Navy store at Woodward and Nine Mile closed in the summer. 

But news of the impending closure of another independent music store feels
like Harmony House all over again. Harmony House went out of business in 2002.

"It's kind of a sad thing," said Jonny Victor, 32, who was shopping at Record
Time in Ferndale last week. "I much prefer to shop at an independent music
store. I like to get the actual CDs instead of downloading them." 

The Farmington Hills resident said he had been going to a music store in Novi
until it closed. Then he found Record Time.

A trend winds down

About 1,200 independent music stores have closed since January 2003, said Joel
Oberstein, president of Studio City, Calif.-based Almighty Institute of Music
Retail, which offers marketing and other services to independent record
stores. 

There are still about 2,500 left, Oberstein said. In Michigan, 42 independent
music stores have closed, leaving 63 stores, according to the institute's
figures.

Harmony House closed its remaining 20 stores in 2002. The local chain was
founded in 1947, but the mix of competition from Internet downloads and
mass-market retailers did it in. The chain had 38 stores at its peak in 1999.

"What you are finding now is there is a survival of the fittest mentality in
many of the stores," Oberstein said.

The stores that make it amid double-digit percentage declines in CD sales and
other economic pressures are the ones that diversify by selling other items
in the store, such as T-shirts, and selling online, Oberstein said. 

"You have to do a little bit of everything, I guess," said Mike Rome, co-owner
of Street Corner Music in Beverly Hills.

Putting items online

Rome said he sells records and 45s on eBay and puts CDs that don't sell in
the store on Amazon.

Himes said he expects to start the clearance sale Dec. 29, and it will
continue until he can sublet the 4,400-square-foot store to another business.
He's hoping to close in February.

Sales at the Ferndale store are down 10% to 30% most weeks, Himes said, while
the Roseville store has been holding its own.

"We sell music physically. The east side, being more blue-collar, is less
affected by techology. The west side is more affected by technology and the
iPod age," Himes said. "It feels like I'm selling typewriters or pay phones;
you don't see those anymore." 

Himes also feels frustrated by an industry where all the marketing dollars
are moving toward the digital delivery of music.

Also, exclusive content is first going to venues like iTunes, and the
independents can't get it for 60 days. Big box retailers are also getting
exclusives the little guys can't.

"We're looked at as a last stop, even though we are the people who get bands
started," Himes said. "They say they appreciate what we do, but sometimes
we've got to wonder."

Himes said he will let go about five employees in Ferndale when he transfers
all operations to Roseville.

He has 15 employees at the 9,000-square-foot Roseville store on Gratiot near
I-696.

"We are leaving Ferndale, but we want to make Roseville bigger and better,"
Himes said.

response 32 of 55:

Dec 3 19:06 UTC 2007

Re resp:30: I really feel for Michigan.  The national economy is about
to go into another recession, and Michigan hasn't even recovered from
the previous one yet.

response 34 of 55:

Dec 3 19:48 UTC 2007

I was in California visiting a sister over Thanksgiving, which meant I had
an opportunity to peruse some of the sale circulars for Black Friday and
the rest of the post-Thanksgiving weekend.

Although I remember the advertisements for Best Buy, Circuit City, Target,
etc, prominently featuring sales on DVDs, I can't remember any of them
devoting a significant amount of space in their sale circulars to music.
In other words chain stores didn't even bother really promoting music sales
this Thanksgiving weekend, either because they knew they didn't have anything
that would draw in customers or because they expected other items (DVDs, etc)
to do better.  Note that most of these chains had advertisments featuring
specials on MP3 players, so it's not that they didn't expect people to spend
money on equipment to listen to music, just not on the music itself..

(There's another possibility, though:  I didn't study the advertisements
closely -- it's possible there *was* some music prominently featured but that
the titles were so forgettable to me that I even forgot about the
advertisement.  I'm not sure that's a brighter scenario from the record
companies' points of view..)

response 36 of 55:

Dec 3 22:17 UTC 2007

Which I suppose is a blessing and a curse. 

Sure, there's something to be said about the instant gratification of getting
music online, but there are some titles that I want a full-fidelity (issues
about CD level boosting aside) rendition of. 

I don't really care too much about the latest Rhianna song sonding a bit
compressed, but I care a whole lot about losing *anything* in a Kolacny
Brothers recording. 

I used to love going to Harmony House to find more obscure albums... but then
their Novi store became a mega JoAnn Fabrics, followed by their Farmington
store becoming nothing. 

So I found a new home at Record Collector in Livonia, forcing them to promptly
close. 

Repeat the Beat in Plymouth? Gone.

Switched On CD's in Novi? Gone.

Even Borders has switched to mini kiosks of hypercompressed "everything in
the store" samples, instead of legitimate listening stations where you could
hear a full track if you wanted to.

At that rate, it begs the question: Why drive 30 minutes to listen to crappy
mp3 samples of music on headphones of dismal quality and questionable hygiene,
when I can listen to crappy mp3 samples of music on decent speakers on demand,
spend half as much money on the product, and save gas by not driving?

Then again, it also goes back to UScan. Much like I'm doing a cashier's job
at a store with a UScan, I'm doing the production factory's job buying and
burning my discs from iTunes or Amazon. 

Anyway...

Music is broken. 

response 38 of 55:

Dec 3 23:02 UTC 2007

Unfortunately, the demand for high-quality audio content (or video for
that matter) doesn't seem to be all that great.  The trend is toward
quantity and convenience over quality.

response 40 of 55:

Dec 4 00:39 UTC 2007

Re resp:38: Well, audiophiles have always been a minority.  And a lot of
them are still insisting on vinyl.

response 42 of 55:

Dec 7 03:36 UTC 2007

 re #41:  That's not even remotely plausible.  January 2008 is only about
 three weeks away at this point.  What would they replace it with?

 I suppose it's possible that by "no longer support the CD format" whatever
 source you read that in means that record companies will no longer bother
 ensuring their releases (especially the copy-protected ones) will play in
 all spec-compliant CD players.  They already crossed that Rubicon a while
 ago, though..

response 44 of 55:

Dec 7 17:20 UTC 2007

Oddly, the movie industry doesn't seem to have learned from the music
industry's tribulations.  Copy-protected DVDs are starting to appear.

response 46 of 55:

Dec 7 17:36 UTC 2007

Who cares? The movie industry is greedy. After they have you pay to see the
movie in the theatre, they want to pick your back pocket for the DVD.

response 48 of 55:

Dec 7 18:24 UTC 2007

I don't have any general news sources, just complaints on the MythTV
forum.  (MythTV has a feature that allows "ripping" DVDs to files on a
hard disk, so you can view them more conveniently, just like you can rip
CDs to your hard disk to listen to them with greater ease.)

Apparently some DVD releases now have large numbers of intentional bad
sectors.  Consumer DVD players ignore these and keep right on going, but
DVD-ROM drives spend a lot of time retrying them.

response 50 of 55:

Dec 7 20:22 UTC 2007

 4% of the market sounds like a plausible estimate for Blu-Ray and
 HD-DVD market share (combined) at this point, give or take a bit.

response 52 of 55:

Dec 13 11:02 UTC 2007

re 43 ... um, i;ll atake a look for yuo.. it was absorbed in passing so
i might ahv emis-something-or-othered the news.

response 54 of 55:

Dec 13 19:49 UTC 2007

Who cares? If your music is good, people will be begging for it.