Read all about it here:
I'd like to say it was a shock but despite this being a great place to shop it was always going to happen. Who to blame? Honestly? Nobody. It's evolution... Or devolution as it were. You can point the fingers at all sorts of people or events but the reality is that the disposable income of the youth of today goes on things other than cassettes, CDs and records. On the whole that 12-24 age group don't invest in Hi-fi equipment either.
Their money is spent on phones and computer games and when they do listen to music it's likely to be illegally downloaded and played through the single speaker of a Blackberry on a crowded bus. It's just the way it is: There is no inherent value to the racks of CDs you might possess, vinyl albums are now sold at Urban Outfitters so you can colour match the sleeves with your new deep v-neck t-shirt.
My question is, what happens to the staff? Where do they end up? There isn't even the option of 'selling out' and working for 'the man' in the shape of HMV. They are closing door after door in constantly reviewed streamlining programs, continually switching direction in an attempt to appease share-holders: Is it computer games today or are you the 'real home' of vinyl?
So where do they all go?
Maybe there's a secret army of ex-record store employees out there arming itself with sonic weapons, waiting and watching ready to take back the high street by force...
As much as a war of music being waged in a post apocalyptic landscape by way of turntables and speakers sounds like a lot of fun (and a lot like the video to Pat Benetar's 'Love is a Battlefield') the reality would be that nobody was listening. In 2012 music is shitter than ever: a potato-headed fuck-tard and his back-stabbing wife, the talentless ex-girlfriend of some fist-happy rapper, x-factor leftovers and elevated buskers in uniforms stolen from that Bruce Dern sci-fi film.
The consumer doesn't need any more than a stolen four minute clip to understand what music has become, unless it's the same song being played thirteen times in a row at some gig in Paris by way of some embarrassing misunderstanding of the culture of the encore in which it takes close to two hours.
Truthfully records and record shops would be wasted on them. Let them find something else to do with their Saturdays.
Goodbye Rounder and thanks for the Spacemen 3 records.
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