Record stores Under Pressure

This really made me chuckle – Prince’s new album is to be given away free with a newspaper, and ‘the music industry’ is furious. The BBC’s article on the subject contains a string of amusing quotes from the co-chairman* of the Entertainment Retailers Association. This is a good one:

“The Artist formerly known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores”

Quite right there Mr Quirk. Record stores are a thing of the past, hasn’t anybody told you? We don’t need to come and queue up for a bit of plastic any more. And then…

“It is an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career.”

I’m pretty certain that record stores have made their money off the backs of the artists, not the other way around. Record store don’t ‘support’ artists, they stock only those they are certain will sell – not that there’s anything wrong with that, they have limited space and overheads to cover.

Apparently “this covermount culture is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.” In fact (ok, in my opinion) the value of recorded music in itself is rapidly heading towards zero for a variety of reasons. The value to an artist of distributing it as widely as possible, however, is as high as ever. The BBC article ends by mentions the 21 concerts Prince will play in London this summer. The only things missing are the word(s?) “sell-out” and a comparison of the price of a ticket with the paltry amount gained from a CD sale once the retailers and distributors have had their cut.

I think I will finish by quoting someone rather more sensible, who made my various points better than I can:

“Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left.”

David Bowie, perhaps shedding some light on why the record stores are Under Pressure.

*I’ve never come across a co-chairman before – could they not resolve the bickering over who got to be leader of the pack? That’s certainly a scenario that springs to mind after reading the quotes from what sounds like a petulant schoolboy taking his bat home.