Opinion: The Beginning of the End
For the Old-Time Record Store Fan

The Times Square Virgin Megastore in New York, which is the highest volume music store in the U.S., will shut down in April, according to a story in a recent Billboard article.

The article cites real-estate problems as the cause, stating that Virgin is paying far less per square foot than the real estate is worth.

The closure would leave the Virgin chain with just five stores, and the status of another of its’ stores, also in New York, may also be in jeopardy. That leaves the health of the company open to wide speculation. What this will mean is that buying music will totally turn into an internet business, and it will take most of the joy out of record buying/collecting. Yes, it will be mostly MP3 sales, with the odd CD purchase. Most buyers of MP3’s won’t even know who wrote the song, what the artist looks like, and all of the other great things you learned from liner notes, bios and album pictures... The songs and artists will end up being very disposable. The only way you will learn anything about the artists you are listening to is to watch the vapid shows that exist on cable... CD's will eventually become a thing of the past, as is rapidly becoming the truth already, and for the first time since the invention of the cylinder, there will be nothing concrete to accompany the sounds musicians make.

It signals the end of an era. A few years ago, the uptown Tower in New York closed, then the downtown one in the Village. Then eventually all the rest of them. This may well happen with Virgin. The mom and pop stores can no longer make a living with CD sales down as much as they are. Most are now out of business. You will have to buy your music either from a company like Amazon, or find little websites that sell their artists' music. MySpace Music has already stopped the selling of songs on artists’ sites.

If you remember records, you remember the joy of going into a record store, finding a copy of something you were searching for, bringing it home, memorizing the label, reading the credits and liner notes and looking at all of the pictures on this 12" disc while you were playing that record for the first time. It was the best thing that could happen besides girls and hot rods. Then the CD replaced vinyl, and although it reduced 12 inches to 5, it was better than nothing. Now that is almost over. And there is nothing material to replace it for the first time since the record was invented. Very sad.

The closing of this store will really mean more than it now seems. Labels will have few outlets besides Wal-Mart and Best Buy to even ship product to, so they will manufacture less. And since Best Buy is an electronics store and Wal-Mart is a department store, basically, it will relegate CD's to a department instead of the majestic record stores like Tower. Ordering from Amazon will be boring. And you won’t even know when half of your favorite artists have a new album out, because department stores spend very little space advertising twelve dollar items in a newspaper (of course, I’m assuming that there will still be newspapers, but that’s another matter…) And if you're an emerging artist, how is anyone going to find out about you when you do not have a label to back you up and promote you? It will be VERY hard to make a dent. So this goes far beyond a retail store closing. A real shame.

©2004, Further Communications