Hello,
I have my birthday coming up soon and as always I get a very generous gift from my brother and sister-in-law. So this and Christmas are typically the only time I can buy new music. So I went to the local, independent music store yesterday. The best one is Graywhale. Graywhale is my preferred place of choice for physical copies of CD's. Unfortunately my experience yesterday was mediocre.
I walked into the store with a list of 15 CD's. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to buy them all, I just like to have options. They didn't have 7 of the CD's that were on my list. (Now granted two or three of the CD's they didn't have are obscure, so I will give them a pass on those.) However they didn't have the new Def Leppard, Cult, the new remastered version of "Let It Be" by the Replacements or "Live After Death" by Iron Maiden. Independent stores should at least have plenty of Cult and Replacements CD's. (They did have plenty of copies of CD's by Judas Priest though. Why are they having a Judas Priest promotion? Maybe next week they can have a promotion for Spinal Tap.)
Then three of the CD's I didn't want to buy there as they were too expensive. The Raconteurs, B52's, and the Foxboro Hot Tubs new CD's were all at least $13.99. Frankly that is too much in this era when Wal-Mart is in the process of forcing CD companies to lower prices on all CD's across the board. Also you can get the MP3 copies of these CD's usually for at least $3 or $4 less than at the store. I don't have to go anywhere to buy these MP3 copies. Right now I can go to amazon.com and buy the MP3 of the Foxboro Hot Tubs CD for $7.99.
I have a Graywhale card which saves me $1 on all new CD's and $2 on video games. However I only saved $1 on all 4 CD's for various reasons. I ended up buying the following CD's 1) "Spirit" by Leona Lewis for $13.99 2) "Rockferry"- Duffy $8.99 3) "Pretty. Odd."- Panic at the Disco $9.99 and 4) "Good to Be Bad (with bonus CD)- Whitesnake $14.99. Also my son was able to get a PS2 game for only $1 with my Graywhale card saving us $2 on that game. He was very happy about that.
So that part was disappointing however the people there were very nice and helped me as much as they could. I only had one frustration there. I asked someone about the new Erykah Badu CD and they guy didn't know anything about her at all. He asked me what kind of music she sang and I explained. He had never heard of her. Badu is a fairly obsccure artist so I was willing to give him a pass on that as well. So after making my purchase my son and I walked out to our van. I looked at the advertising posters at the front of their store. One of the posters was for Erykah Badu's new CD. So it seems all the employees should know at least the artists they are advertising.
Especially if that artist had been in concert the night before, people usually come in looking for music from an artist after they see them in concert. I know I do at least, unless I have all that artists music first. I think independent record stores should set up a wall of all the music of upcoming and recent concerts. That will both increase sales and also can cross promote the fact that Graywhale sells concert tickets as well. In order to survive independent record stores need to play up the local angle as much as possible. That is one thing that iTunes or amazon.com can't touch. I prefer to have the physical copies of CD's. Graywhale didn't do well on selection or price yesterday though.
Don't get me wrong I would prefer to buy all my music from Graywhale going forward but they have some serious issues they need to address. I think they need to get much closer in price to online music retailers. They need to hire music geeks as well who live and die music and have a wide taste of all kinds of music. (For instance the kind of person who would blog about music.) Again they need to do better on pricing as they will probably never be able to match either amazon.com or iTunes in price or conveinance. Two examples of that quickly, yesterday I bought the new Black Keys CD, "Attack and Release" for only $2.99 at amazon.com. Today I bought the new Marie Digby CD for only $1.99. Now I have never heard of Digby. I previewed all the tracks on the CD it is definitely worth $1.99. Also for those who buy the CD at amazon.com, you get an exclusive amazon.com only track. (Again I could do that from the comfort of my home, didn't have to go anywhere and don't have to pay additional for gas. Also online music stores are open 24/7.) Graywhale there is still hope but you need to act quickly.
Upcoming: Reviews of the new Duffy, Leona Lewis, Black Keys, Marie Digby, Erykah Badu, Whitesnake, Panic At The Disco CD's. I was able to buy the Badu CD for only $9.99 at amazon.com. It is hard to run out of digital copies. Also I will be reviewing those three Wolf Parade songs as well. Also the "American Idol" 7th place finishers. One of these people is having a spectacular career, think "Dreamgirls" and "Sex and the City".
Have a great day, themusicaddict
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