In my defense, Massachusetts is an hour away and has a sales tax and Pennsylvania is at least six hours away.

Maybe if they had a better attitude and moved closer to me, I'd patronize them more often!

Oh, that's hilarious!!

Unfortunately the low markups have been going on the entire time I've done retail since 1980. In the old days, the Tower Records of the world got by strictly on volume; + they had 4 months dating & unlimited returns.

It has obviously gotten worse for retailers (& better for consumers) with the bargains offered on the internet; though I blame Jay & Marie of 1 cent cd's for alot of the damage. Their insane business model caught on & drove what I considered reasonable & fair internet pricing in 1999 down to pennies on the dollar by the mid 00's.

With the possible exception of the Stones, most folks on the internet today would not pay the prices I listed in the original post at retail, much less any mark up on them. And I don't blame them, I wouldn't pay those prices either!

On the subject of net vs B&M: as a collector & music fan I like both. The internet is the best thing that ever happened to my music collection & my wallet (or the worst for my wallet, depending on one's pov!), but I also used to really enjoy going to stores. We do have a few SMALL indies left where I live, but SMALL & EXPENSIVE (even on most used) are the keywords. My fav import store went under 5 or 6 years ago. I think his last straw was getting busted for the small quantity of boots he was selling to keep his bottom line high enough to stay in business. Even the twice yearly Seattle Record shows have become a joke.

From a business pov, I used to have a daily route of physical stores to go to looking for cd's & dvd's for my internet business. Most of those stores are gone (our local FYE clearance store went under in December) & many other's (especially Pawn Shops) aren't even carrying cd's anymore.

I have to admit -- I read it as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania too!

Another person here who read that as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania...and what I miss most from the brick & mortar chains was the occasional huge cut-out bin of pricey imports going for $1.99 each. Virgin, HMV, and Tower would all throw those out about twice a year. Of course, those chains would still be around if people like myself had shopped anywhere besides their cut-out bins. Now I mostly marvel at how the remaining FYE's stay in business with their ludicrously high prices on used merch. I figure it's just a market segment that's never heard of Amazon.

I wonder if the attitudes of some record store employees have also contributed to their demise? Remember that scene in High Fidelity where the Jack Black character runs a guy out of the store for requesting a copy of "I Just Called To Say I Love You"? I've never seen anything that drastic play out, but I've seen instances of snobby, elitist behavior. (Just a few weeks ago a clerk all but sneared at me for buying a used Monkees compilation. Didn't ruin my day -- I was too excited about snagging it for $2.00). I've also been in stores where they seem to go out of their way to play music that will appeal to the least amount of people. I learned to tune it out but not all customers may be able to do that.

I don't know if it's true but I've read that a lot of females were early adapters to buying on the internet because that way they could avoid the whole "boys club" mentality that some stores have. Not saying this applies to you, Linda, as you obviously have several good arguments for shopping on line. But it's an interesting theory.

Don't get me wrong. I have mostly had very positive interactions with record store employees over the years, and developed quite a rapport with some of them. But I've met a few who couldn't possibly have been helping the cause.

Before they went under, our local Fye mostly played hip-hop. Another local used record stores plays the Grey's Anatomy dvd box set over & over rather then music. That's almost as irritating as rap!

I think the internet has been both a blessing and a curse... here, import-only titles were very hard to find and RIDICULOUSLY expensive; so being able to easily and (relatively) cheaply order them online is great; but I really miss looking around the b&m stores here for domestically released titles (all the record stores where I live - bar one faceless chain store - have closed, and even the department stores that used to carry quite a good selection of music now have maybe 10% as many titles as they used to).

Nothing annoys me more than this. I'm not looking to listen to Top 40 by any stretch when I go in but why put on the most objectionable crap imaginable? I cringe for the casual buyer who is just looking to buy something current and then get bombarded with f-bombs over the store speakers. Maybe I'm just getting old but there was a time when I would actually pay attention to what was being played and consider a purchase if I liked it but now it all seems like noise so I do all my shopping on the Internet. Selection is also a huge attraction. A number of years ago a Best Buy opened in my area. They opened with a huge CD inventory with a wide selection. Naturally they had good prices for their Grand Opening. I grabbed a lot of stuff. A store clerk asked me what I thought of their music section. I said it was great as long as they maintained the variety. Well, we all know what happened. As the stock decreased it just gets replaced with a gazillion copies of whatever the newest release is. Of course it doesn't move as they would expect, they decrease the floor space and before you know it [ 5 or 6 years later] there is no reason to go back except to look in the cheap bins for the discontinued SACDs for a couple of bucks - stuff they couldn't sell @$30 a pop is now going for $2.99.

You're finding SACD cutouts at BB for $2.99?????! i need to look at the budget section, I usually ignore it cause I thought it was all crap!

My most recent 'find' was Alice in Chains Greatest Hits [SACD]. Most of them don't carry the High-Res stuff anymore [at least here in Canada]. They must have pooled them all into 'selected' stores. I also found Stephen Stills Stills, the dts version. But there is a lot of crap there too.

The cheap SACD phenomenon seems to be a Best Buy Canada exclusive.
And I believe you are correct when you speculate that the discs were pooled to selected stores in Ontario.

Nothing out here in BC, but I know one person who has scored some impressive discs at certain GTA Best Buys.

It's a commonwealth thing. Pretty soon he'll be talking about Virginia and Kentucky stores.

What I miss about shopping in record stores is knowledgeable clerks. One's that would answer questions or even offer advice that if you like Artist A, you should look at Artist B. On-line can mimic a lot of this, but the physical interaction is lost. Of course, I also mourn the demise of rock radio and journalism, which is a different subject. At least slightly.

I think the capitalization of what should have been Ma & Pa made it look more like states than it should have.

It's still possible for a B&M store to survive. If the owner/employees are knowledgeable, dedicated to service, aware of what the competition carry, and willing to carry items in the niches that the competition don't. (It also helps if they are friendly and non-judgmental/ elitist toward their customers.)

In Milwaukee, we are lucky enough to have Rush-Mor records, where the owners are all the above. They manage to find stuff that is difficult to find, even at Amazon. And while the prices are not giveaway, they are competitive with Best-Buy etc. on the common back stock, and they can usually fill a special order in 2 to 4 days. Nobody can compete with the buying power of the big boys on new releases, but if that's the only stuff you buy you probably never go into, or need the independent stores anyway.

If the independent stores disappear, you can forget about being able to find new obscurities like the Residents, Anekdoten, Klaus Schulze, the Legendary Pink Dots and hundreds of others at retail. And yes you will be able to go to their websites and purchase their stuff, but how many NEW fans do you think they are likely to generate that way?

Actually, the proper and more common term is "Mom & Pop."

My bad!!

Well, Geff, it did making for some amusing misunderstandings, so no biggie.

PeterJ kind of summed it up for me as to what I miss about Ma&Pa shops. Or at least one of 'em I really liked going to.

I used to go to a Ma & Pa CD store (it was literally Ma & Pa as it was a married couple) at least once a week - usually on Friday night after work on my way home. A bunch of people would kind of congregate Friday night and pick the owner's brains about music, what was coming out new etc. I even remember some of this was back in the day when Twin Peaks was the rage on TV. Someone would bring in donuts and we'd drink black coffee in honor of the show.

The owner knew what I liked and turned me onto a lot of stuff, even made recommendations with "if you don't like it just bring it back" and would give me a full refund (I think I only took him up on that once, everything else worked for me). It was worth paying a couple extra bucks for that personal touch. It was fun going there. Almost like hangin' out at the local watering hole. And they always put "good" music on (not rap) in the background - not nec. something I personally liked but it had some kind of "quality" about it. Music was appreciated as music there, they weren't some big store selling toilet paper or something. I miss that, also just discovering stuff on my own in the racks, not knowing what might be there.

But I like the internet too. I used to have to make a pilgrimage twice a year up to VintageVinyl in NJ (like 2 hours away) to find import stuff, and I could spend HOURS in that store trying to look through all the racks, and end up buying tons of stuff. It is a great store in theory but....I remember one time I had a huge pile of discs I was going to buy that I already found, but still hours worth of shopping to do so I took the pile up to the counter and asked the guy to put it aside since I had a lot more to look through and it was a pain to carry around like 20+ discs under my arm. Then when I finished I went back to the counter with more stuff only to learn that another clerk put everything I had picked out BACK in the racks!!! Stuff I couldn't even remember what it all was. I was pissed and we had to go back and try to remember/find the CDs I already found.

And their prices are wayyy overpriced (for imports) as compared to what you can get via the 'net, but what really is bad and why I don't back there very often anymore, is the absolutely godawful "music" they usually blast out at ear splitting volumes that gives me a freakin' headache. Last two times I was there I think it was death metal followed by rappish punk followed by something else godawful and I couldn't take it and left after like 30 minutes....so yeah, I like shopping from home - don't have to drive 2 hours each way to get to the store that carries the stuff I'm looking for, don't have to be subjected to 100db level horrible "music" giving me a headache. I think I wore earplugs in there last time I went, and I only went in because I was in the area. I no longer make any special trips just to go there. Still I do think it is a "good" store and hope they don't go under. I just won't be patronizing them very often because of the distance + high prices + horribly annoying music torture which makes for a very bad shopping "experience" for me.

I really miss Soundwaves in Burien Wa. The owner & several of the clerks were friends & they always had the latest & coolest imports. Even though I already had my own cd business during the time they were open, I still bought alot for them as they got some stuff I couldn't, & the staff & I had a pretty similar taste in music. It was usually Wed night for me, when I had a weekly commitment near them. I'd go to the store first.

I think because of the movies and whatnot, there's this romanticized notion of how much Mom and Pop record store proprietors CARE about the music. I'm sure they do love music, but I think it's possible to overstate the purity of their intentions. Madison, WI actually still has several local independentally owned record shops, but there's only one that I could fairly describe as a labor of love. It's also my least favorite store to go into (because it's a friggin' mess), the store I'm least likely to spend money in (because of the way the owner treats his inventory - ie. leaving racks of CDs and records out on the sidewalk all day), and the one most likely to go under before the year is out, despite being one of the area's oldest music retailers.

The indie stores that I frequent are starting to treat the CD format the way they treated cassettes in the 90s. Meanwhile, they've become pretty much boutique stores for vinyl enthusiasts. Smart on their part, I think. I collect a lot of CDs - mostly remasters and deluxe editions - and I pretty much always buy CDs on line these days. Most of the time, the reissues I want aren't carried by B&M stores anyway, but the prices on-line are far more competitive.

I love to buy vinyl as well, and that's the format I prefer for newer studio releases - because I'm actually a more active listener when I play records, and, especially now with the increasingly skimpy packaging of CDs, the LP is a far superior "object". But unless I'm ordering direct from a label (which I rarely do), I never buy used LPs on-line, and I certainly wouldn't buy a used LP on-line. Too many variables - what's the condition, how will it be packed for shipping, etc. I know what I'm getting when I pick up an LP from a store.

But new release LPs are generally pretty expensive, so I've gotten selective about the albums I purchase, and I do a lot more picking and choosing of single songs from albums, so I'm grateful for Amazon's download store as well.

I guess I'm an equal format opportunity shopper.

-Paul