Record Shops

I found myself in the local record shop recently, Faye’s brother wanted to browse. I was loitering around, glancing at the shelves and having a flick here and there. And I just thought to myself, I don’t enjoy being here at all.

The other week when I opened iTunes, it took me straight to the store, I’m not sure why it did that, but on the front page I caught a glimpse of Hugh Laurie’s new album. Within ten minutes I had sampled the tracks, bought it, and sync’d it to my iPhone.

When I go food shopping, I have a list. I know I want tomato sauce and I know Faye likes Heinz, when I come to the sauce aisle, I don’t have to sift through Asda Ketchup, Bransdon Ketchup, other brands alphabetically sorted, then find Heinz. I just look and there it is, one Heinz bottle behind another Heinz bottle… If I go to the book shop, more often than not I see books with their spine facing me, or if a book if front facing and has other books behind it, they are the same book. Why then do record shops feel the need to display different albums behind each other, indeed different artists, and on occasion different genres? It makes no sense!

Most recently I’ve bought music from iTunes. Previously I’ve bought music on CD via Amazon. Both of these services let me sample all/some of the tracks, and offer me more music that I might like.

There are obviously people who do like browsing through music, but I can see why record shops across the country are shutting down, they just can’t compete with online/electronic services when it comes to ease of use…


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