"David Looser" wrote in message
...
"Iain Churches" wrote

I was amazed when David L said that he had no local record shop.
I have a dozen within 20 minutes of here,

Well let me see. 10 mins in one direction there's a small co-op, a post
office, a newsagents and a teashop. The post office does sell a few cheap
DVDs, but no audio. 10 minutes in the opposite direction there's a
post-office cum general store. 20 minutes away in yet another direction
there's a nice little town with a decent-sized co-op, a very good
bookshop,
several charity shops, several banks, even two funeral directors, but no
record shops. Or 30 minutes away there's a bigger town, with expensive
parking. It's got a Maplins, several video-game shops and a whole street
full of mobile phone shops. It *did* have a very nice specialist classical
record shop, but that lost business to the on-line retailers and had to
close. There was also a Virgin Megastore (though I hardly ever went in, I
couldn't stand the place), I don't know what's happened to that. They may
be
other record shops in back streets, I don't claim to know the town that
intimately, but certainly nothing in the town centre. Of course the big
out-of town supermarkets sell CDs now, there are a couple of those within
30
mins of me, but they only sell "chart" titles and I certainly don't regard
them as "record shops".

and CDON the online
supplier delivers in 24hrs,

It's years since I've bought any CDs other than from on-line retailers,
except for a few "small-label" CDs bought from stalls at shows.

There are already signs that the trend
will be towards specialised shops, selling only jazz. or classical
music. People seem to attach considerable importance
to "record shop browsing" Both Helsinki and Stockholm have
vinyl only shops, which seem to be doing well.

Both Helsinki and Stockholm are, so I'm lead to understand, quite large
cities. What may work in such places need not necessarily work in less
intensely populated areas.

David.

That's pretty much my experience too. London has several specialist record
(both CD and LP) shops, but once you get into the provinces, that's much
less frequent.

20 years ago, my local town in rural Suffolk had one specialist record shop,
one shop selling used LPs and a few CDs, and two stalls on the midweek and
Saturday markets selling a wide range of CDs. In addition there was a
monthly Record Fair in one of the small halls. This is in addition to Boots
and W H Smiths that had reasonable CD racks, mostly chart stuff but also
some jazz and classical, and the out-of-town supermarkets.

Now we have only Boots and Smiths with chart-only CDs, one music shop that
has a rack of Naxos CDs, a brand new HMV that has chart only CDs in a dark
corner, everything else is games or DVDs and several charity shops that have
endless copies of Leo Sayer and David Essex LPs, although occasionally I
find an LP worth buying.

Cambridge is 35 miles away, but they too have lost two decent record shops
in recent years, and anyway, parking there is a nightmare so I rarely go
into the town. Consequently I buy virtually every CD now on-line.

S.