Do you miss music stores?
 

Do you miss music stores?

When I lived in Ohio, I think it was Tower Records. They had all these headphones and you could walk up and listen to the music. I kind of miss doing that.

it was fun, i used to spend all my money in record stores on CDs and imported vinyl back in 90s

my best friend in HS worked at his dad's record store. I use to go in every payday and buy 3 or 4 cassettes. Later I was more into home theater and I use to rent LaserDiscs from them. In the late 90's the store burnt down and everybody thought they burnt it down on purpose cause it was losing so much money. After that they sold pioneer stuff out of their home and installed home theaters.

It is different these days and yes I do miss record stores of the past but I also like buying mp3 albums from amazon now.

Sure, I miss a lot

Spotify gives me all the music I need. For what's not on Spotify I'll buy tracks on iTunes or Beatport. All without leaving the couch. :thumbsup

Seriously record stores were a pain, waiting for some idiot to stop flipping through albums where you wanted to be, having the disappointment of going to buy a single to realise that it had sold out, finding the album you really want and then realising you didn't like it at all.

Embrace now, it's better.

The only thing there is to miss is the nostalgia of years past. We all have fond memories of shit we used to do when we were younger for some reason. Like AK said, embrace the now! :thumbsup

we had cd rental shops, i miss them, before internet it was the one and only source of good music, not anymore :)

wandering around music stores, flipping LPs and talking to others, was part of the UX...

I miss that as well.

Not at all. They had lots of music you couldn't listen to first. You would buy whole albums that contained a couple of good songs and a bunch of shitty ones. Usually the employees only knew where to find the music THEY liked.

Sure there is some nostalgic value for some but buying music and video is so much more convenient today. Not only to get exactly what you pay for, instantly, but you get it for far less than you used to pay. And, it sounds and looks better than it ever did too. Win win, win win win, win win.

I think many Audiophiles might argue against that, hence the recent resurgence in vinyl. Digital is all about the convenience, but it's missing that tactile quality that music used to have. B sides maybe contained "lesser" songs, but often they grew on you and became favourites. Then there was the album art, and liner notes....

I know of one still open :)

I do, there are still a few around here but they have almost nothing worthy.

As someone who looked forward to thumbing through albums to see which cover caught my eye -- I can say I honestly miss music stores. I feel bad for Gen Y to never have the experience.

Actually I don't feel bad for those punks. Fuck 'em.

I used to spend countless hours in record stores looking for "odd, one off" songs by little known groups. (There was once a time when Queen's "A Night At The Opera" [which has Bohemian Rhapsody on it] was considered an "import".)

Now the recent changes in the music industry has made it so easy to buy music. As I type this right now I am streaming Rhapsody (for free), and I can buy any song I want instantly. No more spending months trying to find a little known album by some artist no one has ever heard of.

I never, ever thought I'd live in a world without record stores. CD shops. Insane. There are a few left here in NYC but the biggies are all gone. Incredibly sad. No, they weren't the most convenient. But they were places you could go where you felt you belonged. A place where you might find other people just as into Uriah Heep as you were. Sigh.

Now, we're all fragmented and music has lost its power as a unifying force for change.

We would go to the music stores just to check out the babe posters.

Otherwise you walk into the store, you flip through a bunch of plastic and think about whether or not you might like the song.

It might be a nostalgia moment, but there is really no practical value to that. Staring at something you don't have and have no clue what it even is?

we have amoeba in Hollywood. Amazing music store.

I don't know if I've ever agreed more with a single post as I do this one. Word for word.



One music store I miss was "Disco Round", a chain of locations where people would bring in their used CD's, the store would buy them or give a credit that could be used to buy other used CD's. Kind of like those old comic book recycle shops from way way back where you'd take in a stack of used comics, trade them in and get a bunch of 'new' ones to take home.

Strangely I don't recall anyone from any of those industries crying that those businesses were hurting the artists.

I have been there!

I still frequent music stores (yes, there are still some around that sell both new and used albums and CDs) and I still flip through the albums and buy vinyl.

Yes........

me to my friend

Ahh the babe posters lol. Yeah we had those too.

And you have a point about not actually knowing if you're gonna actually like what you buy...

It was great back in the day. I remember back in the 1970's and 1980's it was a music store called Peaches down in Florida.
It was like walking into a store the size of a Walmart. And it was all music.

Back then you would hear the radio announce a new album and they'd play a song off of it. And if it was one of your favorite bands you would be all excited to drive over to Peaches and get the new album.

And of course if you had a few extra bucks you might pick up an old album that you always wanted too.

It was a lot of fun waiting and then finally getting to go to the music store and get it.

I guess that's the downside of the internet. That kind of thing doesn't exist anymore. Now it's just another easy thing to do and is kinda boring. No real hype (not compared to back then) for new albums coming out.

I used to work for MCA Records back then {A& R and Marketing & Promo}, and Peaches, Spec's, Recordland, and a million more were my accounts.
I did THE COOLEST in store signings at Peaches (Mostly the FtL one)...
Those were the days! :thumbsup:thumbsup

Artimus Pyle {Lynyrd Skynyrd} from his first solo album release (pic 2 inside Peaches FtL)

I live in Ohio and there are only a couple of good music stores left, my favorite one just closed about a year ago. :Oh crap

One time I ran into Eric Clapton at a music store in a Columbus suburb and confirmed it since my friend worked there and he used his cc. I hit on his daughter, too, but turns out that was his wife.. :Oh crap lol
true story

Not music stores but I have been ordering all my games online just based on reviews. The other day I went into a gamestop and discussed some games with the staff, it was real nice to have a real discussion with real people. Ended up spending a lot more than I planned to as well. I miss brick and mortar shops in general.

I miss Peter Dunn's Vinyl Museum on Yonge St. in Toronto. Used to hang there for hours back in the day...goin' through all the old rarities and lookin' for stuff. It had that old record store smell - musty old cardboard record sleeves, pot smoke residual, some vague incense burning somewhere in the background.

In the early 90's I wrote for a music magazine. I would get anywhere from 30-50 CDs a week sent to me by various bands and record labels hoping that I would write about their band or album (everyone that worked there got tons of free stuff like this sent to them). I used to sell most of them to music stores. It was a nice way to supplement my income.

These days, however, I don't miss them. If someone tells me about a band I can check them out online and either listen to them on Spotify or their website/soundcloud etc and/or buy their music instantly.I can't even remember the last time I actually purchased a physical CD.

This was my experience as well, but on the east coast (NYC). It was a sweet deal back then before all the Indie labels and smaller labels got gobbled up by the Majors. At one point there were about 60 record companies in NYC and I was on the mailing list for all but Elektra (the head of PR - THAT BITCH! - never liked me after I misquoted Natalie Merchant in an article. I had the audacity to make her sound intelligent. But I digress...)

So I would get maybe 200-300 CDs a week, plus whatever I picked up while visitng record labels. We're talking around $1000 a week (cash) back then. Awesome since writing about music (as a freelancer) paid shit. LOL

It WAS better back then. Now everyone is isolated and scattered.

It was a fun time. For the roughly 4 years I did that I don't think I ever paid for an album, a concert or a movie. I don't know why, we never wrote about movies, but movie studios would always send us free passes to their screenings. I understood it when they had a big sountrack coming out with the movie, but even on movies that didn't they sent passes. There was a part of me that thought most publicist had no idea how to do their job and instead would just blanket mail stuff to every magazine or newspaper in an area.

There was a certain something back then (I was a teenager in the 80's) about waiting for you favorite band's new album then going to get it. There were even a few you stood in line at midnight to get. Now with social media and the overall media blitz many artists have 2-3 singles, videos and are everywhere so you are almost sick of them by the time the album comes out.

My 24yr old cousin got an amoeba while swimming in a small lake in Texas, killed her in just a few days.

Nope... don't miss them.

i loved loitering around in music stores as a teenager and test-hearing records i wasn't intended to buy anyway

Never miss anything at all ...

Yeah i remember that i was buying new record every week and played and danced at home

it wasn't convenient and it was expensive and you often couldn't find what you wanted but yes, in some ways i do miss them. discovering a band just because of an album cover or finally finding the album you've been looking forever for. its all gone now. there is a store around here that sells nothing but records, which is pretty interesting. i'm not sure how well they do though.

I loved record stores, my mom's sister and husband owned a bunch of stores franchised from Canada's legendary Sam The Record Man. Most of the kids they hired to work/manage them were rock musicians, Neil Peart was one of the first group in their first store. There were lineups waiting for the stores to open when big new releases hit the street - they also sold concert tickets.

One of the very cool things was getting that album you had waited on. I was a big Stones fan and the wait between albums was usually a few years. When the new album would come out I'd run to get it. In the 1980's everything was cassette.
I'd get back in my car with my jacked up stereo system, put that cassette in and begin listening to the whole album in the order the artist made it.

Do people even do that anymore?

It's pretty rare. The industry has gone from being an album based industry to being a singles based industry.