Last Saturday’s Record Store Day, intended as a celebration of independent music retailers, said as much about the incompetence of record labels as it did about the enthusiasm of music fans willing to support their local outlet.
Dublin especially has been hard hit in the past year, where well-known shops like City Discs, Sentinel and Comet have gone to the wall in the face of a combination competition from online stores and the kind of bulk-buying, sale or return strategies only afforded to chain stores.
Priced out of the market, the idea of the specialist retailer has changed in favour of community hubs, adding cafes and, in the case of metal store Into The Void, tattoo and piercing services. Know your customer and all that.
If there is one crumb of solace retailers can take from the decline of their businesses it’s that things are about to get a lot worse for the major labels as consumers are set to be offered an even cheaper option than download stores than iTunes: streaming media.
For an industry predicated on the idea that the album, not the single, is their main product, the impact of single purchases (and their limited revenue) has become the dominant form of sales the idea that customers could start moving away from the concept of ownership altogether should terrify them, yet this does not seem to be the case.
If there is one reason why labels are even entertaining the streaming model a la Amazon’s Cloud Player, it’s that they think it will be a way to claw back some of the speculative losses to piracy ($12.5 billion last year alone according to libertarian think tank, the Institute for Policy Innovation). Getting a generation raised on the ‘free Internet’ to paying ‘something’ for music has to be better than letting them loose on Bittorrent with one added benefit of streaming: you can do it on any Web-connected device you own, in theory.
That streaming service are going to be the next evolution of music retail is a given. Amazon and Google want in. Apple has been long-rumoured to be working on an all-you-can-eat service alongside a premium ‘LP’ format combining lossless audio with bonus content.
Will it work? In some cases it already is. The likes of Grooveshark, We7 and Muzu use revenue sharing deals based on advertising without a subscription model – albeit with limited catalogues. The appeal is primarily based on access, not ownership, convenience over quality. If this message gets over, then there is scope for labels to reduce the appeal of piracy by being more flexible and hip to the idea of ubiquitous connectivity that fuels the smartphone age. Offer a wide catalogue at a price reflecting the absence of a physical product and the demands of the audience then you could be on to something.
In the meantime hardcopy sales continue to decline, chain stores shift their focus to DVD and technology sales, and you can buy chocolate in HMV.
As a wise man once said: the times they are a-changing.
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