Speed City, or, Fighting the Good Fight: Thoughts on the music industry, part II
I’ve spent a lot of time and energy yelling about the atrocities that the music industry at large has been committing against its own customers–the RIAA suing people for illegally sharing music files, the fact that the artists get paid next to nothing (so long as the money the label spent on them recoups), etc. It’s my largest (and to my friends, most annoying) soapbox. As a musician myself, it bothers me to no end what artists are put through to line the pockets of record label executives worldwide.
An experience I had last Friday switched anger to sadness and changed the focus of my concern.I set out on a sunny, relatively warm London afternoon on a mission–to obtain a copy of Nine Inch Nails’ recent album “Year Zero”. I had already downloaded the album (illegally! How dare I? Not having hundreds of dollars to spend on music, I do this as a try-before-buy thing) and liked it enough to want my very own copy of it. I always look for vinyl first, and I knew such a beast existed.
My first stop in London is always Speed City Records. I’ve known the owner, Mike, for well over a decade. I met him while he was working for a small shop called In Yer Ear on Dundas Street. I was impressed–the man could order me just about anything if he didn’t have it in stock, but he normally carried at least one copy, and he had more of the selection of weird, obscure alternative music that I like than I had seen since The Disc Shop had gone out of business years before. Over time, he picked up on my broader tastes and began to suggest things to me. This all took place in a time before broadband Internet connections and mp3s were a matter of existance.I don’t know the details of what happened to In Yer Ear, but I imagine maintaining such an eclectic collection of music didn’t sell enough for its owners to stay in business, especially in the middle of a university city where dance, hip hop and top 40 are the overwhelming sounds of choice. Mike appeared to wish to soldier on and started Speed City Records (the name coming from an old nickname of London’s when speed was the drug of choice). Existing for 10 years with a middle finger (their motto is “In Shitty Downtown London”), the store continued to cater almost exclusively to alternative, punk, metal and obscure material in both CD and vinyl format, new and used. I was in heaven. I could still order just about anything, I could always walk in and find something I’d been searching for for ages, and if I couldn’t, Mike could probably walk over to the vinyl section and pull something out that he guessed I’d like. He’s rarely wrong–he introduced me to, among other bands, godspeed you! black emperor, which continues to be one of my most favourite bands of all time. Mike has been there when I’ve had money to spend, and bought stuff off of me even when he wasn’t sure he could sell it, knowing I needed the money. Amazing. In one do-it-yourself store, I can find both the music I love and the human-based customer service that is almost non-existent everywhere else on the planet.
Until recently, I didn’t have the money to spend even on a single record, and having offloaded a bunch of records to him over the last year to pay for things, I felt completely guilty and stayed away. No sense looking in your favourite store when you can’t spend the money–it only allows for bad feelings, and I didn’t want to provide more assurances that I’d be back in two weeks with a fistful of cash to spend.
What I saw when I walked in last Friday was confusing. The racks that used to contain CDs galore from all of the above mentioned genres were filled with used CDs–not a shiny new disc to be found anywhere. I asked Mike how he’d been doing, and he said, “Lousy.” Right then, I started worrying. Mike had talked for a few years about breaking even with such an eclectic collection, but he always seemed to be in a better mood in spite of the fact.
“What’s going on?” I asked solicitously.
“I’m losing money. Did you see? I don’t carry new CDs anymore, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Downloads. Not just illegal downloading, but the legal stuff too. Who wants to buy a CD for 20 dollars when they can go online and pay 10 for the music?”
I used to be skeptical about the actual effect of illegal downloading, feeling optimistic that there had to be plenty more people like me, who maybe download as a try-before-buy thing, or prefer to support the artists in some meager fashion by purchasing the physical product, or maybe just dip into downloading when there’s only one song you like, and the rest of the album is crap or filler. Besides, there’s plenty of ways to indulge an mp3 fantasy legally, with the artists hopefully making some money off of that, too.
As much as I can go on for hours about artists getting screwed by record labels, I failed to notice what was going on around me. Downloads have been blamed for the failure of Sam The Record Man, once an icon in the Canadian retail scene, so much so that some in Toronto wanted it declared a heritage site. Even for a chain store, their support of independent artists and alternative music was unwavering, and (at least in Toronto) decently priced. The Sam’s stores in London had disappeared in previous years, but that was a shock. In London, mom-and-pop operations like Dr. Disc (which I found overpriced, but oh well) died, and while downloading can’t be blamed for The Disc Shop going under, the non-chain store retail music scene has almost disappeared. Out of the ashes of Dr. Disc came Grooves, but they also carry enough of a stock of more popular music that I’m sure they will be able to go on for some time for the vinyl enthusiasts looking for 70’s reissues and the like.
I asked Mike how much longer he figured he’d be able to stay in business, and he said “A few months, maybe. I’m probably going to be looking for another line of work.”
I left Speed City holding the special vinyl edition of “Year Zero” and a copy of Vic Chesnutt’s latest album “North Star Deserter” on CD with a promise that I’d be back in two weeks with cash in hand to get a couple other items I’d seen. The usual sense of excitement that I was eagerly waiting to unwrap and put on the turntable when I got home was replaced with shock and sadness. Mike has been fighting the good fight for over 10 years, trying to supply good music to those of us who can’t stand most of the crap that hangs around on the London airwaves, and he’s about to lose that fight. I told him before closing the door behind me that if I ever won the lottery, I’d show up with a big cheque for him.
I was standing across from the target of my mission, talking to Mike. I was honest in telling him that I can’t understand the ultra-consumptive nature of society when there exists works of art like the Year Zero record. Double-album, 180 gram vinyl (good quality, thick records), three sides with an etching on the fourth, full-size booklet. It was a thing of beauty. Part of the pleasure of buying music for me has always been the packaging–the booklets, the goodies inside, the overall artwork that I could just as soon hang on my wall as put on the record player. When I did my brief foray into legal downloading, I came away with….files on my hard drive. The only artwork supplied with the records is the tiny, low quality image of the front cover that appears inside the Windows Vista folder on my computer screen. Never mind sound quality–just because I’m trained as a recording engineer doesn’t mean I expect the rest of the planet to have the same attention to aural detail as I do–it was just a file. Sure, I enjoyed the music, but where was the rest of it?
I suppose at 34 years of age, I’m just old-fashioned. I read so much about how the legal downloading industry is changing the face of how music gets distributed, how it helps the artists out, how you no longer have to spring the full price for a CD when you have the abillity to pay for just one song off the album. Gone are the days when you had to sit and pay attention for 45 minutes to an entire album while sitting, reading the lyrics or gazing at the cover artwork, and it was a fair guess that the whole album would be good–or even (in my opinon) the smaller size of the CD artwork, offset by special packaging and limited editions that made it more worthwile for me. Hell, I could set up a web site and have people pay for my own music, without the intervention of a record label that I’d probably wind up bankrupting myself in debt to!
Unfortunately, the day is coming when the idea of walking into a record store is also going to be considered old-fashioned. I hope not. I’m already disturbed to think that in a few months or more, I’m going to lose a store that I like shopping at where music is still treated as an object of pleasure rather than something to be consumed and disposed of like a chocolate bar, where I’m made to feel welcome, and where I know that the music I don’t know about out there will be pointed out to me, with none of the lack of human contact that iTunes and other legal downloading sites give. And, if I do see the “going out of business” sign in Speed City’s storefront, I’m going to take a fistful of cash in one hand, a case of beer in the other. I want to pay full price and not sale price for the music I want, sit down with Mike, talk and listen to some good music, if he’s willing.
He deserves it. And, after all, that’s what music should be about.
very interesting.
i’m adding in RSS Reader
Update: Mike’s still in business, thankfully. New location, and almost completely gone to vinyl, which appears to be more lucrative than CDs. More on that later, though….