Is There Anything Else Left to Say?

Well, on Thursday, Round Two unexpectedly dropped out of the sky on us like a house from Kansas when Pitchfork ran their well-written news story/editorial piece by Mairead Case on this whole fen. I have to say that while the hits on our blog were piling up, Miss Gulch passed by our insular work environment much more quietly this time around, which was welcome by all at the office. We have a lot to do, taking stuff out of one box and putting it into another, after all. Being The Gatekeeper takes a lot concentration.

Since my thoughts on this topic seem to keep coming to me at 5:30 on Saturday mornings for some reason, and since I can't jinx a dog that's already gone by writing at this hour, I figure I'll take one last last crack at the final issue that's still eating at me.

I've spent a little more time this week reading what's being written about all of this on blogs and in some of the forums from people outside the music business. I would say that most people don't care. Fine. We're not talking to you. Of those that do, many people seem to get it and generally agree with where we're coming from. A fair summary of the arguments of those opposed would be something along these lines:

• Who are you to tell me I shouldn't buy stuff for $7.99? How dare you!
• You're just mad you don't get to tell us what we can and can't buy any more.
  
• Records are too expensive.
  
• Record stores suck.
• Record stores are stupid.
• I couldn't be bothered to read everything everybody wrote because it was so long with so many words but I still have an opinion and this here internet connection God gave me and I'm going to use it.
  

Let's try to address them, though not necessarily in that order as my brain's not that linear this early. Later probably, just not yet.

First, we're not here to tell anybody where they have to shop. We can suggest that there are long and short term benefits attached to where you do shop. And we can also suggest that the sale price point for the indie titles at BB was also a consumer imperative of where you had to buy those albums for the two weeks they were on sale at that price. That's about half of the point of my original open letter. Please keep in mind that my letter was initially written to other people in the music business. Because we're all in the business of music, it would then make sense that we'd all like to see that business continue along in as healthy a manner as we can all muster. We're very protective of it. It's what we do-what many of us have given our life to doing.

So if you really don't care about it, that's fine and dandy, but why have you read this far? Go somewhere else entertaining.

I suppose the next step up the ladder from not caring, is caring about the music, but not the way it gets to you. That's fine too. I don't know the cow that gave me my milk. I wish I did because I really loved Elsie when I was a little kid, but the fact is that life's SO fast and complicated these days that we all have to pick and choose our battles.

Obviously for those of us in various parts of the business of bringing you music, we care deeply about how that gets done and we'd all like for it to be as efficiently and cheaply as possible in a method that will continue to support itself for years to come. I believe we all realize that nothing is static except your clothes on a winter day in Chicago and we struggle constantly to figure out the next right move to make buying music as pleasant and easy as possible. It's also a really cool and I think unique aspect of this business that so many music fans actually DO care about where their music comes from. They have their favorite labels and stores, and the DIY ethic that has grown up from the early SST, Touch and Go, and Dischord days is still fairly strong and shared by fans and industry nerds alike.

If you read and understand my argument that this sale could be the tip of a very ugly iceberg, then we all need to talk about it and think about it and at least be aware of possible consequences going forward. The committed music fan is already doing a lot of their shopping at indies. We applaud you. And if the music fan who wasn't aware of where her milk came from suddenly has her consciousness raised a bit and changes her buying habits to support the stores who support the indie labels, then we may have gotten a net gain out of this and that would be cool and almost as pleasantly surprising as making that right turn light at Diversey and California.

And if you love music but either hate record stores or find them irrelevant, well then I guess I feel exceedingly sorry for you. Somehow part of the argument turned to the stereotypical Surly Record Store Clerk as the source of all of our problems. Crappy service in any business leads to a bad experience for the customer who may never come back. I've experienced that and back in my retail days I unfortunately probably unintentionally dished some of it out on a bad day in a store famous for bad attitude (which I actually almost never saw once our resident coke head checked out). In my experience, for every Barry, there are four or five Robs and Dicks who are just dying to tell you what they know and share with you the next Belle and Sebastian or old Jesus and Mary Chain LP. Indie record stores and small clubs act as incubators for little bands long before they get to a level where BB or Borders or VW are interested in them. I think we're way, way past them, or me, or us, being able to act as a "gatekeeper" for music. There's an enormous gulf between Gatekeeper/Protector of the Sacred Realm and indie record store's selling, supporting and nurturing music.

I promise you that no one, not even the owners of the largest indie shops, much less their floor clerks, are getting rich off of this endeavor. Not the indie label owners and certainly not the distributors and their 14% margin. If we can make a little money, that's nice. Most of the music retail people I know are more concerned that they and their coworkers make enough to just keep paying the business and personal rent, health insurance, light bill and taxes while they do their best to make as broad a spectrum of good music available to their customers in as welcoming an environment as possible.

The days of the stupid record store owner are long gone. If a store is open right now, I guarantee that the owner and their management team spend just about every waking moment figuring out what else they can do to get people in the door and provide them with stuff they want, from music to dvds and lifestyle products. To argue that they're too stupid to change means that you haven't been in a record store in a long time. They have and they are. But the crux of what they, and we, do is SELL MUSIC. The only reason that most of us got into this in the first place is because we love music. We spend much too large of a percentage of our paychecks on it just so we can have more of it with us even when we leave work where we've been around it all day. We live it and breathe it and think about it and have it around us just about every waking moment, even during Grey's Anatomy (which has terrific and frequently daring soundtrack choices, imho).

So if you say to record stores, "Adapt or die," I say they're doing that every day or else they wouldn't be in business, and if you'd been in one lately you'd already know that. But if your idea of adapting is expecting them to turn into a home electronics store, video game palace or nail salon, or perish, I think most stores would instead close up shop and hit eBay or the beach. And when something comes along that strikes at the core of what they/we do, perhaps damaging it irretrievably, then part of our adapting damned well better be to think through the ramifications very carefully. Make no mistake, Best Buy has the muscle and market penetration to force even the most progressive, well-adapted record stores out of business. Again, I don't necessarily think this is their goal, but I don't think they really care either.

And if you think the labels involved in the original $35,000 (as reported by Billboard) coop deal, the ones that bring you the music that you care enough about to read Pitchfork in the first place, don't think that the continued existence of indie retail is important, than you didn't read past my posts. READ THE COMMENTS and see for yourself in their own words.

On an upbeat note, the hip teens with whom I am in contact are buying vinyl. Yes, VINYL. You can't download that. And at least for now, you can't buy it in a chain store. Signs of hope are few but happy when stumpled upon.

The last thought of my last last thought is that we are sad we have not heard from any of the musicians involved. When people in Madagascar and the Baltic Republics are reading about this, I find it difficult to believe that none of the artists have seen it. I wish some of them had taken the time to comment on it somewhere, because in the end it's their art for sale and most likely at least 50% of their co-op ad to pay for.

Hopefully the next time you hear from us in this space, we'll be talking about our new, baby webstore, the bugs we're trying to squash out of it, and the records we love most that are offered on it. You know. Music (and commerce).