Today is National Record Store day. For those of you under 25, a record store was where you went to buy music in the form of vinyl albums and tapes--both cassettes and 8-Track tapes. After 1982, you could also buy Compact Discs). But there was more to the record store than that--you could get all sorts of neat stuff--concert posters, T-shirts, buttons, guitar picks, drumsticks, headphones (those clunky ones with the plastic ear cups), stereo patch cords, and phonograph styluses.
The store I remember as a kid in Ft. Lauderdale is Peaches Records and Tapes next to Holiday Park on Sunrise Boulevard. Not only was the place packed with all sorts of musical recordings, but various recording artists used to make it a stop whenever they were in the area. There used to be a sort of "Walk of Fame" out front, where these musicians would sign their names and add their handprints to wet concrete. Hollywood Boulevard it was not, but to see the signatures and handprints of The Sex Pistols outside your local record store was kind of cool.
It also seemed that the smaller the stores were, the more neat stuff they'd carry. All of these stores were truly Mom-and-Pops, no large chains for the most part--although Camelot Music seemed to be a decent place (there was one in Daytona Beach in the Volusia Mall, and they made several dollars off of me over the six years I was there).
By the time I graduated from college, the music industry had changed a bit. 8-Track tapes were history (the last one I saw in a store was about 1983), albums were looked down upon because of their "dirty" sound quality, and cassettes were reaching obsolescence. Digital music was stealing the show in the form of CD's, and a lot of the acts from the '60s and '70s were compiling the now-familiar Box Set--they'd take their catalog, pick out their seminal efforts, and wrap them up in a new, shiny package for you to buy. There were some available in vinyl and tape, but I believe that the record companies were betting on the CD versions--you'd buy the compilations, and then you'd have to buy (or re-buy) the rest of the catalog. Purists, by the way, weren't too fond of digitalized music--it was cold, too clean, and in some cases you could hear background noises (coughs, chairs falling over) in the re-mastered works. I'm no audiophile, believe me--I like what I like, but the "distractions" don't really bother me.
After a while, more an more stores started to carry more music than they had previously. The discount stores carried a small selection, as did the department stores. There was also mail order in the form of Columbia House and RCA Record Service, where you bought an introductory offer ("Buy 10 records or tapes for a Quarter*". The asterisk led you to the rest of the story--you needed to buy so many at the regular price after that before you could cancel). But the bookstores like Barnes and Noble began carrying a good deal of music. The electronics stores carried a large selection. All of this served to take business away from the locals.
Before too long, someone figured out how to take digital recordings and package them into data files. Then they figured out that they could be shared, swapped, or sold. These days, a lot of "albums" aren't available in stores--you purchase them on the Interwebs and download them. And you can only imagine what that's done to the local record store--if you can find one.
Alas, music, too, was a niche market.
Thanks for reading. Be good to one another, and I bid you Peace.
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