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Vinyl Lives
But this is the sentiment and deep conviction of Judy Negley, part-owner of Independent Records, a seven store Colorado chain. Judy describes herself as "an eternal optimist," someone who doesn't conform to what gets passed off as conventional wisdom--she doesn't subscribe to the sentiment that the sky is falling. There's been a leveling out of the power game when it comes to the consumer versus the distributor or record label or whatever. That's awesome. You can hear anybody. Everybody has pretty much an equal chance of being listened to. You can go out and buy that music over the Internet or in a store or whatever.
It's out there, it's available.
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Anybody can make a CD. It's cheap, it's easy. Anybody can put an MP3 on MySpace. That just has made everything much more in the fan's favor. That's really exciting. I think people are hearing more interesting things than they ever have before; they certainly have a voice in it, more than they ever have before. For six of Independent's seven store locations, the buildings are owned by the company. Only one store is rented, which helps the business financially. Independent is always looking for other places in Colorado to open new stores.
Negley mentions that Colorado Springs, where their main store is located, has grown tremendously in the last twenty years. With the increase in population comes the other side of the question about being centrally located. Now there are larger areas of town to cover, more market area to serve.
Courtesy of Independent Records.
For Negley, there is more opportunity--even taking into account the state of the music business, the costs of doing business, and the declines in CD sales. I should couch that in terms that I've never been able to afford to open locations, but we've done it anyway. The Colorado Springs area has long been her home. The family moved frequently. When she was very young, her father built a vacation house in Colorado where she spent vacations and summers. When she was ten, her dad retired, moving the family west.
In the mid to late s--her college years--she managed Misty Mountain Music in Salida, Colorado, then returned to Colorado Springs in , three years after Independent first opened. Taking a part-time job there, she was contemplating going to law school when she realized: "I just couldn't give it up. Since there are more than one or two stores in the Independent chain, the company takes a bit of slagging from consumers--those who want their retail as music industry-free as possible.
But Negley doesn't hold with the idea that small chains can't be vital to consumers.
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Anyway, retailers aren't agents of the industry. For her, the music industry has always been mired in its own problems. At Independent, the approach to that dilemma means that they try very hard to overcome industry policies and tactics that effectively ruin music for consumers. That's more pronounced now than it ever has been, but it certainly has always been a huge issue.
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The adversarial relationship that the industry has with consumers is unprecedented. It's so bizarre. If Toyota blamed their buyers for everything that went wrong with their cars, or because somebody bought some other car, it would be ridiculous. At Independent, "We really try to appeal to a broad spectrum. Our foundation is in urban music and heavy metal, but particularly urban. Unlike the music industry, predisposed as they are to force-feed consumers with the next platinum selling wish-it-could-be, Negley says, "We don't just choose the flavor of the month for our customers--we let the customers choose.
If they couldn't sell music anymore, there's plenty of other types of merchandise that draws people in. But we've always considered ourselves a lifestyle store, so we've always carried a lot of things besides music. CDs are actually an expensive product for retailers to buy and sell, Judy explains.
These 28 Vinyl Records Are Worth a Combined $1.9 Million
Vinyl in the bins at the Independent Annex, Colorado Springs. So we have other things besides music. We've kind of gone against that downward music industry trend. Overall, our CD sales--as a percentage of sales--are holding pretty strong. It was such a positive event. We had so many people coming in just telling us how wonderful it was.
Louisiana Music Factory
We got this sense of…positive energy. People want to hear something positive. Why the record industry continues to get pulled out, selected as the failure of the decade, is beyond me because many things are threatened by many potential foes--not just the music industry. It's just like payola. I mean, you walk into any doctor's office and everything they have in there is given to them by someone, whether they're sending them on some junket or whatever--it's never about the drug companies.
That just means that the art form is more important--that people expect a certain threshold to be raised. Independent's Platte Avenue store in Colorado Springs. The threat to brick-and-mortar stores posed by the Internet isn't one that gets a tremendous amount of her attention.
Negley feels quite certain that people will always need actual places to shop. I don't know about you, but I do look on the Internet--shop for things, research things--but I don't wanna be just sitting in my house all the time. I love to go out and look at stuff and get it in my hands--the whole instant gratification thing. There's something just not as fulfilling about that [sitting in front of the computer]. I definitely feel that resurgence--I hear a lot of people talking about that, a lot of our customers.
Younger generations--those Negley feels the music industry chose to overlook in favor of marketing almost exclusively to the baby boomers-- may not have the same feelings for physical stores that the boomers do. But I think that it has always taken a tremendous amount of gumption to depend on a record store for your music--whether you own one or whether you work in one--it's always taken a certain degree of courage because it's never easy.
I'm sure that maybe some people have done it better, and it's been easier for them, but for us, every day has been a little dicey. That's part of what I love about it. The record store business is always kind of edgy. Edgy or not, owning their own buildings has proven to be an essential piece of their business plan.