Features
Is There A Future For Music Retail? Pt 2
By Matt Shea
Has the ongoing Rocking Horse saga sent nervy ripples through Australia’s music retail industry? In the final installment of a two-part series, MATT SHEA talks to retailers in Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle and Adelaide. Part one here. Main photo by LEAH ROBERTSON.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Polyester Records (Nate)
CBD and Fitzroy, Melbourne
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] I guess I wasn’t necessarily surprised when I first heard the news that Rocking Horse was closing. With all they had to deal with up there including three JB Hi-Fis opening within two blocks of them and then add things like the floods on top of that. But the fact that they’re staying open is great for them and the music in community. I really hope the support continues.
For independent record stores there’s always the feeling that you’re operating on the knife’s edge. But we’re going pretty well. It’s been a terrible year in general for retail in Australia and we’re not immune to that trend, but we feel that if we just stay focussed on what we’re doing then we’ll be OK. If there are good albums out we’ll find we are really busy and when there’s not, we’ve just got to look harder to find them.
As far as our CBD store goes, there’s no denying that rents are pretty high, but on the flipside we really like our position in the city. Lots of people walk by every day and there is a good little cluster of shops around us.
I think the indies still hold quite a few advantages over the major retailers. For starters our stock is determined by what we hear to be good music and not a response to what’s charting that particular week. Also, you’re bound to find a genuine music fan behind the counter in our stores. We’ve always really valued the tips and opinions of our customers and feel like we have a fair amount of knowledge to share back with them. And then, most importantly, there’s the local music scene: we’re able to have in-stores and really support many local artists which is something the chain stores have never shown any interest in doing.
For independent record stores there’s always the feeling that you’re operating on the knife’s edge.
The good news about Rocking Horse and Missing Link does in some ways make us hopeful for the future, but more than anything sends us the message not to take anything for granted. We’re all fairly fragile little entities and you can’t take your finger off for a second. The thing for Polyester is that we don’t feel like people owe us something out of some kind of sentimental nostalgia of being an independent record store. It’s up to the people working in record stores to stay relevant and provide music lovers with what they are after and something new as well.
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Polyester Records is located at 288 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, and 387 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy.
Repressed Records (Chris)
Newtown, Sydney
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] That’s good news for Rocking Horse – we’re glad everybody still has a job and people in Brisbane have somewhere cool to shop for music. And their troubles don’t really give me second thoughts about being in the independent market. As Craig Bellamy of the Melbourne Storm would say: “We’re just focusing on one match at a time.”
Things for us are going OK: could be better, could be worse. Changes have to be made to this type of retail, obviously, but we’ll work it out as needed. I don’t have deep pockets. It’s just two casuals, a credit card and me, but I still have a house, my family and my health.
These days we move a lot more vinyl and T-shirts than CDs. We have really run down the CD side of things now. They’re too expensive, way cheaper from overseas, and you need bigger margins to be a niche as your turnover is a lot slower than they would be at a chain store. Plus, you need that constant influx of new stock that we can’t afford. But compared to the big chains hopefully our store offers people somewhere to talk to about music, get something new and exciting and treat music as something to relate to other than a shitty $10 thing to buy because you’re bored.
I’m sure general retail conditions do cross over into our market. You just have to do your best to stay at the forefront of people’s minds and know what your regulars want to buy. If times are tight, people will download something and give buying a record a miss for a few weeks. But I’m sure it’s the same for other retailers too.
We move a lot more vinyl and T-shirts than CDs.
The most important thing for an independent record store is to stay relevant to a younger market. If there is no energy or urgency about a record store, you ain’t got much – just people my age dawdling around pointing at stuff they used to listen to. I’m not sure if the Rocking Horse and Missing Link stories help bring into focus the plight and importance of independent record stores. I think businesses are all in different predicaments. You can’t really judge from two stores in different states. It’s up to us to stay relevant and know what people want from us, if anything.
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Repressed Records is located at 356 King Street, Newtown.
Pure Pop (Dave)
St Kilda, Melbourne
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Well, it’s good news about Rocking Horse, no doubt. But hopefully this scare can inspire the people of Brisbane to support the store – because they’ve probably been shown how easy it is for them to disappear – and other people around the country will do the same thing for their local indie stores.
As a record store owner, what Rocking Horse has been through always plays on your doubts. It’s hard. We’ve been around for six years and definitely started it 30 years too late! But we really saved ourselves by renovating the courtyard and getting a liquor licence to have a bar out there. We’re mainly doing gigs all weekend – doing in-stores and stuff. It could be better but we’re selling more records than we normally would just because we’ve got the traffic through the store.
In terms of what we sell, I guess it’s about three CDs to one vinyl. We’re definitely selling more vinyl now – as a percentage – but that’s also maybe because CDs have gone down. We’ve made more space for the vinyl, but the store’s always had a fairly good selection of vinyl.
The big chains can’t compete with the personal service, knowledge and passion available in an indie store. For us, it’s not about knowing everything about one thing; it’s about knowing a little bit about everything. So generally when a customer comes in and asks for something you’ve got an idea of what they’re talking about. People definitely respond to that.
We can’t beat the chains for chart product and stuff like that, so why try? Just specialise and get really interesting stuff that’s not even released here in Australia. It doesn’t have to be really obscure or inaccessible music – there’s a lot of really good indie stuff out there that international small labels are putting out themselves and bands are selling at gigs. So we’ll contact them through PayPal and say, “Send us five copies.” We push it out through mailing list and make it clear that people won’t be able to get that particular item at JB Hi-Fi.
We can’t beat the chains for chart product and stuff like that, so why try?
I guess the news about both Rocking Horse and Missing Link does give you hope in a way, but Rocking Horse wasn’t saved because there’s been a massive [long-term] turnaround in custom. To have a sustained future it has to be through the support of the music public, or else once whatever helps keep the doors open disappears you’re still stuck in the same spot. We’re not trying to be greedy. If, say, the people on M+N or whatever bought one record a month from an independent record store, problem solved. That would keep us all open.
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Pure Pop is located at 221 Barkly Street, St Kilda.
Vox Cyclops (Nick)
Newcastle
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] I was and wasn’t surprised by the earlier news that Rocking Horse would have to close. It was a shock to the system because it’s been a much-loved constant for Aussie music fanatics for a long time. The fact it’s staying open is a good thing, and I also think it’s a sensible thing, because there’s still money in doing it. But I also think that if we all take stock of our surrounds it’s obvious that the way we as listeners relate with music is in flux, and will continue to be for quite awhile.
Owning and running a record store is a labour of love for us; for me personally it’s all that I know. We would have given up many years earlier if we focused too much on the bottom line. We are more concerned with keeping faithful to our vision. And we're still here! The gallery side of the space is generating more interest, both from artists wishing to exhibit here and from people coming in to look at the art on the walls. We’re very lucky to have a small community here in Newcastle that supports what we do and helps us do it.
In terms of rent, Newcastle obviously would on the whole be considerably cheaper than Brisbane, but I think that rent prices are inflated everywhere at this time. We are lucky enough to have struck up a deal with our landlord, with the help of [not for profit tenant-landlord intermediary] Renew Newcastle, that we would fix the structural issues in our building in exchange for cheaper rent. As a result, our rent is very reasonable.
Shopping online is fucking boring.
But I think the news about Rocking Horse and Missing Link is encouraging for people who are into music, because shopping online is fucking boring. As for us, it's a balancing act. You have a vision and you do your best to stay faithful to it, while listening to others and trying to include them also. Everything is a matter of niche nowadays in regards to the idea of a record store: if you attempt to please everyone, then you will inevitably fail, because it simply cannot be done. But at the same time you have to be inclusive and willing to bend. Customers need to know what to expect, but to still be surprised. You have to take chances.
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Vox Cyclops is located at 515 Hunter Street, Newcastle.
Thornbury Records (Megan)
Thornbury, Melbourne
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Fantastic news to hear that Rocking Horse will remain open. The last five years have seen a lot of independent record stores close their doors around the world. It's a shame that it took the news that Rocking Horse was going to close for people to think about what they were about to lose, but hopefully this support is enough to keep them going and will give Rocking Horse some time to think about the music retail market of the future and how they can make their store sustainable.
We’ve only been around since February of this year. Our reasons for entering the market were many: to support local artists, push the move towards vinyl with digital downloads as a preferable format for releases, to create a music store in a grungier suburb where a huge number of musicians actually live, and to create a nice environment for people to listen to and discover new music. We set the store up with a fairly flexible business model: we embrace technological change and wholeheartedly encourage the discovery of music online and in digital forms.
I’d say new vinyl is our specialty; we don't stock CDs other than local releases that we stock on consignment. We also sell zines, turntables, skateboards, t-shirts, et cetera, but our main avenue of sales is definitely new vinyl.
Our advantage over the big chains is that we care about music – that’s really the bottom line. We care what releases we have in-store, how much they are selling for, how you feel when you are in the shop, what services and products customers want etc. We always respond to people's requests for different records – in fact, our special orders often shape the range that we keep in the store. Most importantly, I think, is that as an independent retailer we can change and adapt to moving markets and trends. This means that punters will always find something new.
We embrace technological change and wholeheartedly encourage the discovery of music online.
The fact that both Rocking Horse and Missing Link will be sticking around gives us reason to believe that what we do is important and appreciated, and as long as people value the service of an independent record store we have reason to be hopeful for the future. Particularly for stores that are in the vinyl market, production and sales figures are looking up, along with huge increases in the sales of digital music. I think that currently the biggest challenge for independent record stores is to do away with a perceived dichotomy of music into physical and digital. That's not the way that music-lovers perceive it, so neither should we.
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Thornbury Records is located at 591 High Street, Thornbury.
Beatdisc Records (Pete)
Parramatta, Sydney
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Wow. That’s strange! Did they [Rocking Horse] do that just they could turnover some new stock? That is a weird situation. Seriously, though, we’re definitely happy to hear they won’t be closing down. Hopefully people will see that if it came that close to shutting down that they were going to lose such a good thing – it looks like a lot of people came out of the woodwork to support those guys. To me Rocking Horse is one of those pinnacle stores and something I always check out when I’m in Brisbane.
As far as Beatdisc goes, things are quite good for us at the moment, and a definite improvement on last year. CDs are still our biggest seller – moving double of what LPs do – but we are noticing an increase on vinyl sales every year. It helps when there are really good releases coming out. Retail conditions generally don’t really apply to us, I don’t think, except for Christmas when everybody is busy. It’s also hard to say, because when we get really good second-hand stock, it increases sales and you can’t really predict when the next collection will be bought in.
Simply not being part of a big chain is an advantage in itself. Indie retail is all about the personal service and not having a sterile work environment. I’m still trying to figure that out what the most important part of running an independent record store is, but getting the right stock – whether it be new or used – is definitely up there. And having great staff is absolutely essential.
CDs are still our biggest seller.
It’s still scary to think a store like Rocking Horse could just close up. I say it to a lot of people: anything that I buy, whether it be new or used, is a risk. We don’t have a million dollars behind us to get us out of trouble. But in saying that, I love doing this and I’ll struggle to the very end if I have to. August 27 will mark our 16th year in business, and it’s a nice little fillip to have [Melbourne band] Harmony playing two weeks before that, so we’re definitely excited about the future.
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Beatdisc Records is located at Shop 11, Queensland Arcade, 181 Church Street, Parramatta.
Clarity Records (Matt)
CBD, Adelaide
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] It is good news about Rocking Horse staying open. It’s never great when you hear of a record store closing down, especially one that has been open for as long as Rocking Horse. But it would never give me second thoughts about being in this business. I wouldn't have it any other way. I love being able to do what I love full time, working for myself and being surrounded by music. We also have great customers and friends who always pop past, which is something that I wouldn't get at any other job.
Things for us are excellent. We’ve been really busy and constantly getting lots of new stuff in. Vinyl is our main seller. I don't know exact percentages, but it’s vinyl by a long shot, followed by CDs, merch and then books. As an independent retailer, you really get to know your customers better on a personal basis and you can focus more on the particular areas that you specialise in. For a punter, you get a service that is particular to your needs and one you don't get at a chain shop.
I don’t think we’re really affected by the overall slowdown in retail that is reported in the news. It was a little slow when the colder weather was here, but we have been steady throughout the whole year, so far. I think the retail statistics are based on bigger retail chains selling crap. Unless we are just super lucky, I don't think these supposed sluggish retail statistics really represent what’s going on in small business.
The good news about Rocking Horse and Missing Link does lift your chin to an extent, but we’re more excited about the opening of new and different niche record shops around the country. There are small ones popping up here and there and it is nice to see that other people share a similar passion to our own.
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