Lurkers & Stuff Dr. Bob

[BREVARD Adrian R.]

Dr. Bob a few points to your recent post

Lurkers- Some of the individual responses I have recieved from lurkers after
my caffine induced ramblings reflect some of the points you provided.

Record Buyer - Wonderful little story and hopefully you friend was paying
attention; fairly rare that you can grab the ear of somebody with the power
to make changes but time will tell.  Now I disagree with some of the
thoughts you laid out though.  In the Wash area most of the record only
stores are gone or fading fast.  Why? Because of stores like Best Buy and
Circuit City.  These stores offer a wide variety of products from home
appliances to PC's;  they are the first to admit that the only reason they
are selling music is to increase store traffic.  How do they sell their
music, by basically giving it away at cost.  Selling big ticket items is
where they secure their margin.  BB and CC typically sell their cd's and
tapes at wholesale or a one dollar more.  Now a strictly record only store
cannot compete with that.  There has to be sufficient margin on every tape,
cd, or music accessory the store sells.  Thats why WoTT would cost you
$23.95 at Kemp Mill but only $17.99 at Best Buy.

Now the record only store has a choice, find a location where CC or BB is
not operating from and basically monopolize a community full of young kids
eager to spend mom and dads hard earned money or close shop.  The diversity
of which you speak (Mature Buyers and young buyers) helps them very little.
 Why?  Yes us older mature types may have considerable more money to spend
than average teeny bopper, but at the same time we are far more discerning
with what we buy.  We are as likely to spend a $100 on new software, or
vacumm cleaner than we are on cd's. Instead of buying cd's with our hundred
we would invest it in CD's with a good return rate.  A lot of us have family
obligations and are responsible enough to set reasonable priorities on
spending disposable income; in most cases spending large sums of money
repeatedly on a music collection is probably low on most peoples list.  Now
a tenny bopper who doesn't have a mortgage, who dosen't buy groceries or
diapers would probably blow a $100 a day on music if he had the money.  That
same teeny bopper if he/she were a parent and had the same obligations as
our age group would act more like us and not spend the money.

It is sad situation all around but I feel there is no easy solution for your
buddy.  Convince your company to make a large investment in older music and
risk the kids not buying it, cause they don't know what it is and watching
it sit on the shelves collecting dust.  How do you attract the market (older
people) into the store to buy this stuff without drastically incurring new
marketing costs?  Where is the balance  in serving two types of distinctly
different customers, do you court one and risk losing the other, which would
you rather keep?  There is an answer but at the rate small record only
stores are failing no one has found it yet.  Some other things I have seen
within the last year, the music business as a whole has exhibited very
little real growth as an industry.  It is roughly the same size it was a few
years ago.  This is a trend that while people may switch what types of music
they are buying the number of music buyers is either not growing or if it is
growing folks are spending less.  This again is not a good sign for the
music industry.

Could this trend perhaps explain why new wave is making a comeback?  Why
Grunge was hot and now is not?  Why MTV and the record companies are trying
to focus us on different variations of music (ie. the unplugged thing again)
in an effort to come up with something unique so that the market will expand
again?  Does this explain why I'm sitting in my car listening to the main
rock station run down its list of top requested songs and 3 out of 4 are
covers of songs made in the 60'-70's (Signs, As My Guitar Weeps and Mrs.
Robinson?)  Well maybe I've opened up a can of worms but to be completely
honest while I enjoyed your story and held breif hope that things could
change the reality for me at least is that by the fact you had to have the
conversation with your buddy illustrates what dire shape the music industry
is really in.  Sorry. to be so down.

Political correctness- An A+, but then again you know I recently enrolled in
the Dr. Bob school to study moonargraphy.  (Wish I could make a reasonable
smiley face)

Ciao
AB