Jazz CD sales down by 80% since 2001!

[A Lark Ascending]

OK, speaking of silence -- has anyone been to a place where there is actually no, zero, nada, no man-made noise at all? I mean nothing. No hum of electrical wires, or drone of a distant highway? No planes flying overhead, or train whistles. Nothing. Getting to such a place is not that easy. I don't believe such a place exists within a day's drive from where I live. Perhaps taking a boat straight out into the gulf for 30 - 40 miles might do the trick. But I would not be surprised if such a place were impossible to find east of the Mississippi in the lower 48.

I can't say I'm a great fan of silence - I tend to fill it with music. Don't like words though...I can't be doing with a radio babbling unless it's something I specifically want to hear.

Where I live is pretty quiet - I can hear the buzz of a ring road if I consciously listen for it. Bird noises outside, the grumbling of the central heating system (it's wet and cold!). I'm never disturbed by the sound of voices outside, kids playing, the very rare plane (light only) passing by.

More intrusive are lawnmowers but they rarely last long and are part of life. The jingle of ice cream vans in the afternoon (there seems to be an ice cream war going on here at present) fall into the same category.

The only thing that really drives me nuts is when neighbours decide to turn up their stereos (it's always something with an inflexible beat!). Fortunately this doesn't happen too often...and most seem to have so little interest in music that it stops after 30 minutes.

[sidewinder]

Sensory deprivation tank?

Now there must be a market for one of those with a built-in deck, amp and wall speakers. Double insulated reinforced wiring with 32ms RCDs required though...

[A Lark Ascending]

Sensory deprivation tank?

Now there must be a market for one of those with a built-in deck, amp and wall speakers. Double insulated reinforced wiring with 32ms RCDs required though...

Are you referring to the tank or the woman?

[Jazzmoose]

Don't be silly; where would you mount the amp on the tank?

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Part of the reason why CD sales have dropped so much was right in front of my eyes last night. I was shopping in the mall with the wife and stuck my head into the FYE. Big signs all over saying. "All single CDs $9.99". I checked the racks, yup, every CD had a $9.99 sticker on it. The old price sticker? Try $19.99!!!

And then they wonder why music fans go download a single from iTunes for $.99?

Kevin

[PHILLYQ]

OK, speaking of silence -- has anyone been to a place where there is actually no, zero, nada, no man-made noise at all? I mean nothing. No hum of electrical wires, or drone of a distant highway? No planes flying overhead, or train whistles. Nothing. Getting to such a place is not that easy. I don't believe such a place exists within a day's drive from where I live. Perhaps taking a boat straight out into the gulf for 30 - 40 miles might do the trick. But I would not be surprised if such a place were impossible to find east of the Mississippi in the lower 48.

I actually experienced that this past weekend- I was visiting my sister in Virginia and we went to Oatlands Plantation(http://www.oatlands.org/) on Saturday. For awhile the only sounds were birds chirping and it was wonderful!

[BillF]

Inspired (if that's the word!) by this thread, I walked into Manchester's largest HMV store this afternoon for the first time for many months. I found a shrunken jazz section with many items at £13-£18! Forget it!

[sidewinder]

Inspired (if that's the word!) by this thread, I walked into Manchester's largest HMV store this afternoon for the first time for many months. I found a shrunken jazz section with many items at £13-£18! Forget it!

No suprise there. Now an almost jazz-free zone. And - as you say - a damn expensive one at that.

[papsrus]

As the postman refuses to deliver the past 5 - 6 orders I have in the pipeline, I'm going to shoot up to Tampa to visit this place today. I talked to a guy on the phone there the other day who said they have a decent jazz section. They pay between 50 cents and $5 for CDs that are brought in for exchange, so I think I'll skip that part of the experience.

It's in a pretty seedy part of town.

[ghost of miles]

Well yeah a serious point there, and not just regarding the technology which is only a matter of time, I should have thought, but more to the point - in these days of multi-channel multi-media multi-platform entertainment avalanche am I really alone in just wanting to SHUT EVERYTHING OUT? Why would I want MORE? What is MORE than EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME?

This is a good point. I, myself, feel overwhelmed by all the media I have in my daily life, cell-phone, computer, incessant noise everywhere, it really is getting to be too much. I find that I'm going more and more for quietness, of not wanting to add any more noise to my life. Because of this feeling, outside of Grateful Dead releases, I have not bought any other music for two years, and now that I have XM radio, I don't even have that Grateful Dead urge in me. It's a major issue for me right now, how much media do I really want in my life?

Matthew, can you imagine what Merton's take on all this would have been?

MikeWeil, I worked at the Borders here in B-town from 1996 to 2001 and was the manager of the music department for the last three years of my time there. We had an incredible staff--five fulltime employees and a couple of part-timers, and for every big section one of us was extremely knowledgeable...and many of us were pretty good in other areas as well. We had at least one really good person for jazz, classical, pop, country, folk, blues, and easy listening. Around 2001 Borders underwent a restructuring and began to cut back severely on payroll...that kind of staff became a thing of the past. However, I don't know that such expertise would be enough in the face of the several strong forces at work behind the decline of CD sales--or that keeping such a staff would have staved off much of the sales atrophy.

Papsrus, if you can ever go there, I highly recommend the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota. I went on long trips there several times as a teenager, and it is the one place I've found where you really do get away from it all... after the first two days we rarely encountered any other human beings (but watch out for the occasional black bear!).

[Dan Gould]

As the postman refuses to deliver the past 5 - 6 orders I have in the pipeline, I'm going to shoot up to Tampa to visit this place today. I talked to a guy on the phone there the other day who said they have a decent jazz section. They pay between 50 cents and $5 for CDs that are brought in for exchange, so I think I'll skip that part of the experience.

It's in a pretty seedy part of town.

I'd appreciate a report, James. I have friends in Tampa and I'm sure I'll be visiting sooner or later so I'd be interested to know if this is one I should keep in mind. You might also try Vinyl Fever. When I was there last the new jazz section was decently stocked, used CDs was OK, used vinyl was pretty skimpy. But the new CD section was worth a look for sure, and if you are in Tampa already ....

[papsrus]

As the postman refuses to deliver the past 5 - 6 orders I have in the pipeline, I'm going to shoot up to Tampa to visit this place today. I talked to a guy on the phone there the other day who said they have a decent jazz section. They pay between 50 cents and $5 for CDs that are brought in for exchange, so I think I'll skip that part of the experience.

It's in a pretty seedy part of town.

I'd appreciate a report, James. I have friends in Tampa and I'm sure I'll be visiting sooner or later so I'd be interested to know if this is one I should keep in mind. You might also try Vinyl Fever. When I was there last the new jazz section was decently stocked, used CDs was OK, used vinyl was pretty skimpy. But the new CD section was worth a look for sure, and if you are in Tampa already ....

Thanks for the heads-up Dan. I think I'll stop by Vinyl Fever first and back-track to Sound Exchange. I'll let you know what I find.

[TedR]

Must have been the mid 90's when I found the Cecil Taylor/Beull Neidlinger Mosaic brand new at Sound Exchange for $40. I'm glad Vinyl Fever and SE are still in business.

[ghost of miles]

Although the experience of discovery can certainly happen online (and who here hasn't come across an interesting title courtesy of other posters, a blog post, or some other form of Internet communication?), there's still something viscerally pleasing about it happening in-store. I make nearly all of my brick-and-mortar purchases at two stores--primarily Landlocked Music here in Bloomington, and the Luna Music store on Massachusetts Avenue in downtown Indianapolis. A week ago I was up in Indy to meet with sheldonm and went to Luna afterwards to make my customary single-jazz-CD purchase. Years ago I worked on the Avenue and always longed for a cool record shop to be there...so now that there IS one, I feel happily obligated to throw it a bit of business whenever I'm in town. The jazz section, like Landlocked's, is small but stocked almost entirely with good and interesting titles. I was in search of Tina Brooks' TRUE BLUE on RVG, and lo and behold, they had it...but they also had the 2-CD Brew Moore anthology THE KEROUAC CONNECTION, which I had not seen, either in-store or online, anywhere. So I ended up buying that as well. This past Saturday I was in Indy again, and returned to Luna to buy a Red Garland RVG; while there, I noticed that one of the manager's picks on the wall was an Enja reissue of Archie Shepp's STEAM, and I ended up going for that as well. Not only that, but the manager and I then spent 15-20 minutes talking about Brooks, Shepp, Moore, and music in general. It was the kind of experience I love having--y'know, a kind of retail analog warmth to it. And I got a couple of CDs out of it that I wasn't expecting to find.

Not to downplay the immense value of something like the Organissimo board, which has increased my knowledge and appreciation of jazz in amazing ways. Hard, in fact, to imagine being a music lover now without something like this forum...but I'd surely hate to see stores like Landlocked and Luna ever go the way of the dodo (unless it's Marmarosa...thanks, folks, I'm here all week...). And it may be that they hang on while the behemoths like Borders become all but extinct. It's a tricky biz, though, to pull off a little indie record shop that makes enough $$ to keep food and housing for its owner and employees. Landlocked and Luna, to date, are pulling it off--and partly because they still offer "the sound of surprise" to some extent, as well as direct and personal connections with their customers. That's what keeps drawing me back to them, more so than any abstract & noble principle of supporting the little guy.

[Ron S]

abstract & noble

Is that anything like Barnes & Noble?

[Jazzmoose]

Vaguely...

[jeffcrom]

I haven't piped in on this subject yet - I'll just say that if CD sales are down, it ain't my fault. I've been buying more CDs and vinyl than I can listen to. After yet another record/CD store visit today, I decided that I'm going to try to stay out of record stores and off of Ebay for the month of August, just to give myself a chance to catch up on all the music I've bought this summer. We'll see if I'm actually able to do it.

That being said, there's nothing like browsing through records or CDs in an actual store, especially if it is run by a sympathetic, music-loving proprietor who knows you and knows your tastes. I have to give thumbs up to ghost of miles' post - a good CD store can present you with wonderful surprises that you didn't even realize you had to have. I'm lucky enough to live only a couple of miles from Decatur CD (Decatur is a suburb of Atlanta), which has a jazz section that is just astonishing for its size. I can't begin to recount the amazing CDs I discovered by thumbing through their racks - not from the interweb, not even from this wonderful forum.

Today I drove to Athens, about 60 miles east of my home in Atlanta, and walked out of a great store with recordings by Kidd Jordan, Steve Lehman, Freddie Roach, Wayne Shorter, Booker Ervin, John Patton, and Freddie Hubbard. Some of these I could have ordered online, but some are out of print and would cost an arm and a leg online if I was able to find them.

I've downloaded music, but like others here, I like having an object in my hands that "is" the music. I'll keep buying CDs and LPs. Hell, I've probably bought 30 or so 78s in the past two weeks. I've got to catch up on those, too.

[papsrus]

Didn't make it to Vinyl Fever yesterday. Hope to get back up to Tampa next week. Sound Exchange had an OK selection of jazz CDs -- comparable in size to what my local B&N used to stock, but not as good a selection of stuff, which I guess you'd have to expect in a store that carries mostly used CDs.

Didn't get to look through the vinyl, which there seemed to be a similar quantity of, because I was pressed for time (and I don't have a turntable). I did manage to snag a couple of rvg's for a pretty good price -- Johnny Coles' "Little Johnny C" and Johnny Griffin's "A Blowin' Session" with Mobley and Coltrane, plus Monk's "Misterioso" (More Griffin). Got out of there for around $17.

All in all, probably worth checking out if you have a 45 minutes to kill, but I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to stop by. The store was reasonably busy though.

[A Lark Ascending]

I think there might be a big difference in the jazz CD shopping experience between the US and UK (I'd be interested to know what has happened in mainland Europe). I get the impression there are still CD stores worth visiting from comments here.

In the UK the dedicated CD store is all but gone - and jazz is very poorly represented. I was reading over at AAJ some cooments about the Rays franchise in Foyles in London - it seemed to suggest the experienced staff had been let go. Don't know how true that is. But it would fit with the general pattern.

The fact over here is that browsing like in the old days is ceasing to be an option. We're forced onto the internet whether we like it or not if we want to continue exploring recordings.

[king ubu]

I can only talk for a small non-european (or partly european) island here

Specialised music stores are closing down or sizing down, the few large ones (not exactly chain stores, there are two, both go back to old families also selling pianos and other instruments - the worse of them bought the better a couple of years ago, but they both remain with their own names so far) are still ok-ish. The jazz selection gets smaller and smaller, but they keep having special offers, usually by label, meaning: Blue Note/Capitol, Sony/BMG... some Warner stuff turns up here and there, too, sometimes they have these odd inventory sales with old stock from distributors (last time I found a huge number of Steeplechase, Storyville, some Soul Note, and various small labels stuff). A great recent sale was of Universal-printed reissues of OJCs, which didn't just include the usual stock of Ellington, Basie, Rollins etc, but also some rather surprising choices, such as "When Farmer Met Gryce", the Mingus Period and Debut single discs, some of those Fantasy compilations (such as the San Francisco one w/Mariano, Dodgion, Guaraldi etc)

Plus, there are always good offers in the rock/pop area as well...

So, there's still enough opportunity to browse through these sales and pick some things up every other week (usually the sales go on for two or three months, then they change).

As for regular inventory... it's weird. I think only one of these larger shops has a person in charge of jazz that is pretty knowledgeable. But there are still plenty of odd things that they keep in stock, while some stuff I'd want to be there, they just never have. Also they have plenty of new releases, but usually for such ridiculous prizes that I only pick those up if I happen to find them in a clean-up sale a couple of years later.

So it's all a bit hit and miss, but in the end there's still plenty of good stuff around!

[Hot Ptah]

I think there might be a big difference in the jazz CD shopping experience between the US and UK (I'd be interested to know what has happened in mainland Europe). I get the impression there are still CD stores worth visiting from comments here.

In the UK the dedicated CD store is all but gone - and jazz is very poorly represented. I was reading over at AAJ some cooments about the Rays franchise in Foyles in London - it seemed to suggest the experienced staff had been let go. Don't know how true that is. But it would fit with the general pattern.

The fact over here is that browsing like in the old days is ceasing to be an option. We're forced onto the internet whether we like it or not if we want to continue exploring recordings.

I find in Kansas City that there seems to be a certain level of activity in used music stores which carry jazz, which stays pretty constant, even now. When one store closes, another comes popping out to take its place. There are never 20 used stores now as there were in the late 1980s, but there always seem to be at least five pretty good ones.

There is much less opportunity to buy new jazz CDs at retail full price in Kansas City now. There is really no place that has a close to comprehensive jazz selection any more, and there used to be several.

[Aggie87]

I find in Kansas City that there seems to be a certain level of activity in used music stores which carry jazz, which stays pretty constant, even now. When one store closes, another comes popping out to take its place. There are never 20 used stores now as there were in the late 1980s, but there always seem to be at least five pretty good ones.

Man, I'd kill for 5 decent used music stores. My town has 2 used stores total, one of which is Half Price Bks. Neither are very good, but worth an occasional look.

For new music there is nothing here - Best Buy, Target, and Wal Mart. None have good selections of anything.

I miss browsing through the racks, the "discovery" of new things and impulse buys, that Ghost referred to previously in this thread. That doesn't happen for me anymore, unless I'm in a store like Waterloo up in Austin. I hope they're around for a long, long time.

[medjuck]

In LA there's always Amoeba but I've found a couple of interesting stores in the Valley. One actually carries a lot of new jazz cds.

(I don't know their names, I just know where they are-- one's near Woodman and ones in Encino (I think).

[Niko]

here in bonn (300000 inhabitants) amazingly all the stores that were there in 2001 are still there (with the exception of one used cd store, maybe) despite the fact that only one of them deserves to be called decent (a medium-sized one which sells more tickets then cds it seems, they have many rvgs at ok prices and behind the scenes there must be someone reasonably knowledgeable of jazz who organizes small sales of stuff that's available cheaply from the distributors apparently, like a black saint/soul note sale, an esp sale... i don't buy much from them but they do deserve support...) , then there's zweitausendeins since last year so actually, the situation has improved...

in cologne there are still three stores plus zweitausendeins that i visit regularly (two used cd stores and the huge saturn, they still claim they have the largest selection of cds in the world, don't know if that's true but they have definitely reduced the size of their selection in the last few years), guess there are two or three more places for vinyl... guess the situation is still ok (and much better than what i saw in the uk, these hmvs are real depressing) but some of my favorite stores went away in the last few years....

[AndrewHill]

For new music there is nothing here - Best Buy, Target, and Wal Mart. None have good selections of anything.

Tell me about it. I had a $20 Best Buy gift card, essentially burning a hole in my pocket and begging to be spent today and I couldn't find one, not one cd to buy. Man, that's sad. So I ended up using it to extend the warranty on my electric shaver instead.