Bad news for one of the last record shops in the East Village. In a Wall Street Journal piece today on St. Mark's Place, Richard Morgan notes:
"Sounds, the last of once-many record shops on the strip, recently limited its business days to Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, said Felicia De Chabris, an associate broker with Halstead Property. She said Sounds' space went on the rental market this month, with its first showings this week."
Let's hope the Grassroots Tavern down below isn't going anywhere.
12 comments:
Sounds going is as much about changing technology as it is rising rents. Younger generation doesn't care about records or CDs. I like owning books and CDs but the younger generation is happy with iTunes and DVRs and clouds.
Used to love cruising the used CD bins there! Found so many promo copies for as low as 88 cents...
Kinda sucks about Sounds going, even thought the staff seemed to have standing orders to chase me away from the place if I even look cross-eyed at it.
While I miss going to record shops and just spending time looking at music, I have found so much more music by browsing online where I can listen to it and discover such fascinating new things. I will miss these stores but I am happy we've progressed in our technology so I can embrace so much more music I might never have found before.
I loved this store, but the last few times I tried to go it always seemed closed. Hard to cultivate a customer base when you're only open 3 days a week, but I can understand why they did it, the weekend was the best time for sales. In any case, this is not a surprise, in fact I had thought they were already out of business. Once upon a time they actually had two storefronts, this one and the one a couple doors down with used discs. I found many a great album in the used shop [and the main shop]. Bon voyage St Marks Sounds! I live in Baltimore, we still have a couple of record shops here, for how long….is anyone's guess.
Thanks to the digital music revolution, a $15 billion dollar industry has been miraculously transformed over the last decade into a $6 billion dollar industry. The Napsterization of an entire generation has led Generation Selfie to expect free or cheap music.
Today you can pirate, steal, stream and copy as much music as you want and you don't even have to pay for all those bulky cassette tapes that once required briefcase sized carrying cases to manage. This has led to the closing of most record stores, permamant job losses in retail, and to a historic decline in employment of musicians, since record labels can't afford to pay any band without a YouTube following.
The new music industry economics leaves us with breathtaking talents like Justin Bieber, disposable rap and electronic music, drum beats and loops, and brain dead pop music that's almost all chorus,and with minimal lyrics or verse.
Now it's all about being able to "embrace" as much of someone else's work without having to actually pay for it, even if that means the total crapification of an entire once vibrant and profitable industry.
One day soon we will learn that Selfie Economics works about as well as Trickle Down or Voodoo Economics. In the end when no one pays, everyone suffers.
Now if only someone would find away to Napsterize sushi and froyo and Adderall and flip flops, then the transformation will be complete.
This is incredibly sad news. A good percentage of my vinyl collection was purchased from Sounds, and my musical tastes were honed by browsing through their selection. Landlord greed and gentrification strike AGAIN. (Fuckers.)
I don't agree that the "younger generation" isn't interested in music in tangible form; that's a generalization. I see kids picking up vinyl, CDs and even cassettes all the time at live gigs, and many indie labels provide vinyl versions of their releases. If Sounds moved to Brooklyn it might survive — look at Norman's Sound & Vision.
@Giovanni: I think you are off the mark. The music industry has just been transformed. The old model with record labels as gatekeepers and a physical album as the primary medium of distribution was a suffocating roadblock on any independent artist. Independent musicians either had a geographically-limited fan base or they "broke out" mainstream under tight control of labels.
Napster is also a very old context. iTunes, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play and others have become dominant players in the market, and they let pretty much anyone who wants to try out and sell music there for a very low cost.
Youtube is a godsend, it allows some tiny band from Idaho to become nation-wide famous, or some guy making cool music in Norway to become a global phenomenon.
There are benefits to buying music online. As one poster noted, you can find so much more. But what you are missing out on is the sense of community with other music lovers. I actually made friends in record stores back in the day. My friends and I would hang out for hours and inevitably strike up conversations with employees and other shoppers. We would also discover new music because the employees would spin records we might not have known to search for, so there was that, too. For those of us who grew up going to record stores, it's a huge loss as they disappear. Those who didn't grow up with record shops don't know what they missed out on.
I certainly hope Grassroots will be OK. First bar I ever visited in NYC, and still enjoy a drink in there. My kids are now old enough to drink there too and love it just as much.
I sympathize with the loss of jobs and a place to talk to other music lovers. But I prefer not only browsing songs online but going down the unlimited rabbit holes of music I might not otherwise explore. I always pay for the songs; I don't see a reason to steal anything (thankfully) let alone something that's 99 cents. In many cases the artist is getting something rather than nothing since I wouldn't always buy an entire LP for one song. Digitized songs also means a lot less consumer waste. And while the industry has shrunk, artists also have a more direct means of sale and contact with listeners, meaning it's cut out a lot of overpaid, sycophantic middlemen who cut into the artists' profits.
I also dislike being in stores in general. I'd rather be in a park, library, museum, or botanical gardens than a store if I can help it. If I didn't have to try clothes on, I'd buy those online too. But that's me, to each his own.
I will concede, however, that there is no substitute for analog, and the compressed digital files found online leave a lot to be desired.
That's my two bitcoin.
Don't even SAY that about Grassroots, even in jest, please god.
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