I'm convinced the key lies in retail.

You may think that odd since shops are closing in droves.

But so they should be. There's no imagination or originality about any of them.

Our Price, Woolies, Virgin, Zavvi, HMV - just the same tired old model that stopped working well years ago, let alone in this new online world.

But internet shopping does not fulfill many of the retail needs. No impulse buying. No instant gratification. No companionship or atmosphere.

The trouble is - retailers think the old fashioned way, just like the dying majors do.

A bright new thinker will revolutionize the high street and galvanize shopping.
Rather as the Apple shops have done.
And it will be in 2009.

Hmm... 380 views, no comments or posts?

Perhaps another clue should be - get involved!

I don't agree.

Internet sites encourage impulse buys with sales, charts and the 'people who bought this also bought' section. They also offer suggestions of things you may like linked to your shopping trends.

The internet does not supply instant gratification (ignore obvious gag and move on) but it does supply the equally gratifying moment when all those brown packages land on your door mat a few days later. And if you are in a mad rush you would download the music as that is quicker than retail.

As for the companionship and atmosphere... have you been out to the average UK high street recently (i.e. not knightsbridge)? it is full of misreable people and toe-rags.

I buy far more downloads than physicals. My last experience in record shop was very inconclusive. So I don(t know what to say. I enjoy moseying around bookshops, but the same is no longer true for records shops apart from used record shops (price? illusion of rarity? memories?).

Both you and Godiver make my point Mike - by failing to create new palaces with atmosphere, enthusiasm and comradeship, retail has failed.

But new concepts succeed. Have you been into an Apple store? Packed, throbbing, bursting with companionship - a total delight.

We need to do the same thing for entertainment - books, music, DVDs and so on.

Imagine if a store had a lyric department with experts discussing and challenging and laughing and suggesting - you'd be drinking coffee in there daily!

1171 views now - and four responses.

I fear the prospect of new thinking in our industry is as bleak as ever.

Incidentally, step one in new thinking is to stop saying "music" and start saying "entertainment".

JK2006 wrote:
1171 views now - and four responses.

I fear the prospect of new thinking in our industry is as bleak as ever.

Incidentally, step one in new thinking is to stop saying "music" and start saying "entertainment".
Many people are still thinking purely in terms of records labels, not yet even music labels. So entertainment labels is some way off.

I DON'T think the KEY lies in retail.

I believe the key lies in the experience of enjoying the music / entertainment - not how it was acquired.

Mrs Stretch had 2 tickets to Take That for Xmas - bought on the interweb. In fact - we didn't even get any tickets - I had to make some to wrap up! It's the same with CD's, Downloads, dvd's etc. People want the experience of watching, or listening. The purchase isn't really part of the pleasure any more ...

I think artists need to retail off their own site. The chart people will then have to get a feed from those sites in order to REALLY represent what's actually being purchased (rather than what is being purchased in a small number of retailers - as it is now). The artist (and team) can then supply as much of a buying experience as they can - by offering their customer as many extras as possible - and building a relationship with their fan. To me it's just a logical approach as the artist (and team) are the best people to present their offer in the way in which they want it presented ...

The record label then needs to become the complete support team for the artist - acting as management, marketers, web maintenance, admin etc. etc. The artist and 'record label' (we'll have to think of a new name for this support team) then work together to fully exploit all avenues of the artists work (retail sales, live performances, merchandise, publishing etc.) and share the profits.

Record labels (as they were) are all over now. And retail stores (as they were) are all over too (apart from specialist/hard to find/deleted/vintage etc. retailers. And distributors / aggregators etc. need to find something else to do.

Just my opinion ....

Stretch

jk,

nonsense.

retail is not the future.

if specialised, knowledgeable staff were that important to the music retail experience then indies would be thriving....

doesn't get much simpler than a one-click buy to complete an impulse purchase does it?

you can't make a fair comparison between Apple stores and music retailers.....ridiculous.

paying for music is optional at this point...paying for an ipod or laptop isn't.

if i choose to pay for it - I'll buy it as a download, or I'll get someone to put it in a box and deliver it into my hand the next day......

The assumption seems to be that by RETAIL I mean more of the same old failed stores. I don't.

I mean a brand new shop encouraging enthusiasm and spreading the word.

The trouble with the above comments is the same as the "market research" method of making music - ask the punters what they want and provide that and you get generations of photocopy Spice Girls (Aloud) and Take Thats (Westlife).

The same with stores. Assume the new retail will be like the old one and you go down the path to failure. But say the future is simply an extended present (online simplicity) and you start nothing new.

The shopping experience needs to be reinvented.

Retail is not the answer JK but I do know where you're coming from. This has been debated on ROTD for some time now. The Internet has pretty much won the battle and without integrating the internet into the experience of music consumption and discovery, you are just kidding yourself.

Steve Jobs has pretty much got the music industry by the balls and let me tell you why. The number one present for young people is the iPod/iPhone and her various bastard children i.e touchscreen phones and mp3 players.

I had my hands on one of these beauties this christmas and all I wanted to do was fill it up with toons. Of course the browsing system online is excellent and there is nothing better than buying downloads for instant gratification. I indeed went to the CD shop today to buy a CD single (for mastering cross reference purposes) and hated every minute of it.

Having said that I was at the same shop at Xmas buying presents for the kids and enjoyed every minute of it. Not worth the hassle for a tiny selection of tracks.

What would be nice is the internet cafe meets hip lounge music sharing experience where you plug your iPod into a terminal and download away while enjoying fine coffee, nice music, fantastic decor and the company of nice babes.

It is subtle selling now. However, like the bankers before them, the majors are gonna crash big time and let me guess who will buy them when their share prices nosedive ?

The geeks whom they are trying to destroy.

The Geeks SHALL inherit the earth.

OK, here - strictly as a layman - are my thoughts.

(a) Music stores to follow the Argos model as well as the Apple one. By this I mean somewhere you can go where all the CDs are kept behind the desk - so that impulse buyers don't have to negotiate their way through bottleneck alleyways of CDs - and you just order them on the terminal at the front or, more crucially, you can download tracks directly onto your mp3 player.

(b) Unlike Argos, though, they need to be places that people want to come to, where they can hang out. Something like Waterstones or Borders was originally meant to be but with music - events, happenings, coffee mornings even for those who want them. Somewhere where music is available rather than sealed off for security reasons.

(c) For those of us in the minority, still buying CDs, what about making them all the same affordable mid-range price - say, £8? That would encourage casual buyers to delve deeper into the store, try new things, take chances which they can't necessarily take if CDs cost £14-15 a throw, and thereby do more to actively promote new music.

I'm sure there are many sound economic reasons why any or all of the above can't happen but businesses collapsing for fear of embracing the new isn't exactly sound economics either.

I used to have a specialist record store and Woolies on my High Street.

Today I have none. Therefore I need to drive to a big shopping centre to find an HMV.

So I now use a combination of PLAY and the ingenious 7 DIGITAL download system ( which gives you a locker !! and therefore protects you purchases ) to get my music.

I do miss the "going out" to buy and "chats" aspect of the indie retailer.....but this is how it is now.

Very sad but this is progress.

MC MC wrote:
"so that impulse buyers don't have to negotiate their way through bottleneck alleyways of CDs - and you just order them on the terminal at the front or, more crucially, you can download tracks directly onto your mp3 player."

Browsing through the racks (and finding records I never looked for) was the fun part of record shopping.

There are no impulse buys if a customer has to make orders. If you make an order, you know already what you want. And to download tracks you don't have to leave the house.

The retail experience is important, but with the current music scene (too many styles/genres) only shops that target a specific market have a chance to prosper. That is the reason why the Rough-Trade-Shop is still open, and mega stores have too close.

DJones wrote:
Browsing through the racks (and finding records I never looked for) was the fun part of record shopping.


It most certainly was and it saddens me that over the last ten years that pleasure has become almost extinct.

I'm surprised there has been no mention of eBay here because that I think has also helped kill off browsing. In the 80's I used to travel to various towns with a "wants" list and try and track those items down. Part of the fun was the thrill of the chase and eventually finding an item you wanted in an unlikely place when you least expected it. eBay though... you go there, type in what you want, and boom... there it is. Same goes for downloading. No fun in it. No passion.

And THAT'S what's missing - Passion for music. It's become far too disposable.

There are no impulse buys if a customer has to make orders.

Argh, yes, I realised the paradox approx. one second after I submitted my post *dunce's cap MC MC check your posts before you actually post them*...

The thing about major record shop chains is that they seem intrinsically hostile to what used to be known as the "customer experience."

I went to my local Zavvi last week to look for sale bargains and it was a total mess - lots of misspellings of browser markers and misfiling of CDs, items still being sold at full price (why?), and an environment which could charitably be described as dead.

But if you go into your average HMV you're immediately faced with a bottleneck of people milling about at the front because of stacks of loss leader DVDs and Guitar Hero boxes.

To attract impulse buyers it's ridiculous to price potentially interesting items out of their comfort zone and confine discounts to the same, boring got-to-get-rid-of-it stuff (stock oldies compilations, overhyped/overstocked pseudo-indie underperformers) that we've all heard a thousand times before.

Clearly DVDs are now vastly outselling CDs and there's not much anyone can do about that but I do think there's still a viable, if substantially reduced, CD market which shops would still do well to optimise.

As a regular Rough Trade Shop customer I'm a bit baffled as to what they think their specialist market is at the moment - again, the stock seems to be all over the place and priced way too high. If I have to choose between paying £50 in Rough Trade for three potentially good CDs and a total of £10-15 for the same ones in Music & Video Exchange a couple of months later then, as the parlance goes, it's a no brainer.