In what has become Christmas Day for independent record shops – Record Store Day, a five-year-old promotion designed to give them a new lifeline in the age of the download, has exploded into a huge vinyl festival.
In Seattle, Washington, it’s grown into a behemoth sales extravaganza, pushing the deluxe limited-edition releases and live in-store performances – all held in boutique stores, shaking off the old crusty image of vinyl emporiums.
Amongst the 900 US independent stores participating this year — four in Seattle which major in new releases — have also tuned in to the growing profit centre of used records, accessories, books, clothing and building a creative community akin to a indie coffee shop.
Seattle’s Sonic Boom and Silver Platters indie store chains have both closed branches and almost all retailers report a steady decline. But the vinyl LP is making a comeback and it’s a boutique business.
Back in 2007, things looked more promising for Silver Platters, which had four stores. The company took a bold step by moving into a 42,000-square-foot warehouse on Lower Queen Anne (breathing new life into the recently liquidated Tower Records).
Within months, the manager told the owners that the business would be bankrupt by the end of the year. By 2008, that manager and the store’s majority investors had abandoned ship.
Mike Batt, who started as a buyer in 1987, is now the president and sole owner of the company and he’s had a tough job with the turnaround. Silver Platters has gone from 55 to 38 employees since 2007 and overall sales have declined every year.
So how has Silver Platters survived? The secret of their success is that the markup for used records is 100 per cent and 20 per cent of Silver Platters’ business is now in used CDs.
Mike said: “I can safely say that there would be no record store today if it weren’t for used business.”
Other stores confirm this trend. Easy Street, with outlets in West Seattle, does 40 per cent of its business in used records.
Sonic Boom puts the used records mark up figure at 20 per cent with Everyday Music selling two-thirds used.
Another reason Silver Platters has survived adds Mike Batt is that he has ‘a higher pain threshold for not making money than most business people.’
General thinking is that rumours of the CD’s demise are premature, with the rise of streaming and ‘the cloud’ — accessing music online from a digital pool — the format looks doomed. What will happen to record stores then?
Mike says: “There’s enough used product out there that a store can make it on used for the next five to 10 years.”
Some owners are betting on the return of vinyl, which had sales increases of 36 per cent from 2010 to 2011.
Still, with sales of 3.9 million albums, it’s less than 1 percent of the market. Batt thinks it’s a passing fad.
“Every 15 years or so, everything in popular culture gets recycled,” he said. “It’s now 15-20 years since vinyl died.”
The notion of vinyl as something warm and fuzzy and old — like black-and-white film — is being heavily marketed by Record Store Day.
Whether nostalgia can keep record stores alive remains to be seen. But in the meantime, the attitude out there seems to be, “Let’s enjoy them while they last.”