Death Comes In Threes: The Slow Demise Of The Retail Music Shop

This past weekend, I drove out to one of the northwest suburbs to go and trade some musical stuff for store credit at Music Recyclery, only to find out to my disappointment and dismay, that after several years of being an anchor to a particular mall, that the shop was closing its doors for good.

Similarly, Tower Records declared bankruptcy and decided to shut down all of its retail locations worldwide. Midway in the year, a favorite local record shop hang out of mine, Hi-Fi Records in Evanston, close to work also closed its doors for good.

Sign of the times sadly, but I still don’t get it, once pride-beloved record shops, where we used to wait with anticipation for the latest hot band/heartthrob’s new single/album to arrive, are folding up little by little, until one day, all record shops will soon be shadows of the past.

I first discovered Music Recyclery a few years back when there used to be a plethora of used CD/vinyl shops along the Belmont/Clark/Halsted/Broadway corridor in Chicago. I had just come from Reckless Records, a record shop that prides itself on carefully picking and choosing carefully only the finest & best and leaves you holding the bag, literally!

So, after getting a pithy amount of store credit, I stopped inside Music Recyclery and unloaded everything else I had and received a much better store credit from them and of course I was hooked!

The CD stock wasn’t exactly all that great, but as I learned later on, the stock varied depending on which neighborhood you were in. Of the many finds in those shops, I always found that the most extraordinary, were the CDs in the jazz, vocals & easy listening sections, as they seemed to be virtually untouched.

That weekend, as I entered the store, the prices had been slashed to $2 per CD, plus the ever-popular buy one get one free CD was set in place. What a great deal I thought, as plowed my way through hundreds of no-name bands and eventually found enough CDs to make me happy…at least for the next few weeks.

According to management, the only stores that will remain open are the ones strategically placed throughout the Illinois Tollway System’s Oasis’s and the web-store, which is good, considering I still have a considerable amount of credit left with them.

Similarly Tower Records, a mainstay in the retail music industry for at least 30 years, decided to close their doors too and of course it was bargains galore, once the store closing announcement was made.

It turned out, the weekend I was there, Thanksgiving weekend; the deals were sweet and sharp, with plenty of good music still to be had. The discount went deep; 40 percent off of any CD, plus if you bought four CDs, you get a fifth CD free, depending on the cost of the lowest-priced CD. That is a great deal by far, plus I picked up a bunch of great music and saved a load of dough to boot!

For all the good that Tower Records has done, I believe the greatest service they provided me with, was when they took my fanzine, Cops Hate Poetry on consignment for a few issues. Overall, Tower Records was extremely open-minded when it came to the plethora of fanzines on the market, both great and small, and dared to carry them, long before giant retail stores would have ever considered carrying them.

On Memorial Day weekend of this year, local CD/vinyl music shop Hi-Fi Records in Evanston on Central Street closed its doors forever, sadly due to its poor sales figures purportedly noted by the shop’s owner, who has a shop in Chicago. Most items in there were reasonably priced, plus they had a freebie box, always overstuffed with magazines, vinyl, posters, CDs, promo items and other cool stuff.

It’s sad when you think about how decent record shops with good knowledgeable staff, great selections reasonably priced are going the way of the dinosaur, closing up little by little, just like good jobs that are shipped out overseas for cheap labor.

Pretty soon there will be nothing left, but giant corporate mega-world music shops, where all the prices will be the same and everyplace will carry the same thing.

Hmm, funny sort of thing, it’s already being done as we speak. It’s called progress.