The storefront at 1415 W. 39th St. has a new face. Posters promoting the classic Miles Davis album “Kind of Blue” fill two large windows. A hand-lettered sign with a telephone number and store hours fills another.
Sunday afternoon, a passer-by could peer through the windows and see stacks of boxes strewn around the showroom floor amid rows of racks stocked with used vinyl records. At the back of the room, workers framed the walls of what will become the store’s office.
Dan Phillips now owns two Vinyl Renaissance and Audio stores. His second, on 39th Street in Kansas City, will open this week. Photo by Jum Barcus/The Star
This week, Vinyl Renaissance and Audio will officially open in the building once occupied by Boomerang, a vintage-clothing store – a transition that bears some nice symmetry. For this will be a business that relies on a vintage fashion that’s in the midst of a revival but is well beyond its hey-day.
These remain difficult times for record stores, once the foundation of retail music but now just a niche in that ever- and rapidly changing world. In 2010, sales of CDs dropped 20 percent to 326 million units. At their peak in 2000, CD sales exceeded 940 million units -– a 68 percent drop in 10 years.
Even more foreboding: Overall music sales, which include all digital forms (albums, singles, music videos), dropped nearly 2.5 percent in 2010, the first decline in the so-called digital era.
Yet in the face of those numbers, Dan Phillips is moving into the old Boomerang space and opening a second record/audio store, a sibling to his flagship store in Shawnee. He has reasons for feeling optimistic about its chances.
For one, it will open in Midtown less than three months after the closing of Streetside Records, a Westport mainstay since the late 1980s (when it took over the Pennylane record store).
“Streetside moved a lot of material,” Phillips said. “There was a market to be served.”
Second: There was a glint of good news in those end-of-year numbers. Sales of vinyl records rose 14 percent in 2010. No one is expecting vinyl to be the lifeboat for a business in decline; it constitutes about 4 percent of sales (or 2.8 million units). But for stores that survive on thin margins, the rise of something that brings traffic and more dollars into stores is a reason to feel buoyed.
“There is a continuing and increasing demand for vinyl that will continue to exist,” he said. “At the Consumer Electronics Show this year, the hi-fi rooms used vinyl for their demonstrations, not CDs. That’s a major shift.”
DESTINATION ROW
Phillips has been selling vinyl since 2000, when he started his mail-order business, also called Vinyl Renaissance. In April 2005, he opened his store at 10922 Shawnee Mission Parkway, and it became a place to sell and repair audio equipment and store and stock vinyl for both the store’s customers and his on-line business.
He had no intentions of opening another store until word came out in early January that the Streetside store in Westport was going to close. Phillips considered moving into the same building in the 4100 block of Broadway.
Ultimately he chose a smaller building in a different neighborhood, one populated with more bars and restaurants and with another record store close by: Zebedees RPM Music, 1208 W. 39th. Both owners said their proximity to each other should be good for business.
“Now 39th Street has become a destination for vinyl shoppers, the way Westport was when you had the Music Exchange and Recycled Sounds,” said Myles Hyken, manager of Zebedee’s. “I imagine there will be times when we send each other customers.”
Phillips said by the time all the inventory is in place, the new store will offer close to 25,000 piece of new and used vinyl and about 7,000 CDs. It will sell audio equipment; it will also take in equipment for repairs, which will be administered at the Shawnee store.
Because of his diverse on-line clientele, he said, his inventory will be wide-ranging. “Most stores focus on rock and soul,” he said. “Because our stores also serve as storage for on-line, we’ll carry other genres, like classical, opera, country, some ‘50s and ‘60s male and female vocalists.
“Ultimately, what we buy and sell becomes a function of the employees and their instincts and tastes, and ours have a broad variety of tastes."
And Streetside customers will recognize a few of them. Phillips has rehired three long-time Streetside employees at the new store: Mark Davis, Laura Rice and Christian LaBeau.
Davis said he has no qualms about getting back into a business from which he’d been laid off three months ago. “I have a lot of confidence in Dan,” he said. “This isn’t a corporate operation. He has more passion for making it work. It’s going to be a lot more keyed-in to midtown and its clientele.”
'IT'S NOT LIKE IT USED TO BE'
Phillips hopes to open his store Wednesday (or Thursday), but its grand opening will be Saturday, which is also Record Store Day –- an annual national event that celebrates the culture and legacy of independent record stores, once the hubs of a city’s music community.
The RSD web site includes testimonials from dozens of musicians and rock stars, like this one from Tom Waits: “Folks who work here are professors. Don't replace all the knowers with guessors. Keep 'em open. They're the ears of the town.”
The music industry, including the major labels, participates by releasing exclusive or limited-edition recordings, much of it on vinyl, that are available first (or only) at participating independent record stores. The Kansas City band the Republic Tigers, for example, will release the three-track CD “No Land’s Man” as its Record Store Day exclusive. (For a full list, visit recordstoreday.com).
Store owners agree the annual celebration generates lots of traffic and awareness of their outlets, but they are less certain on whether music stores will have a long-term place in our culture, or whether there’s a bona-fide community out there to coalesce around a hub.
“I want to say yes, but I have to concede that it will be a changed role,” said Steve Wilson of Kief’s Music in Lawrence (and an occasional contributing reviewer to “The Star”). “It is a new world. It won’t be like 1970 or 1986 or even 2001 again, ever.”
Gary Wilkerson, who opened Earwaxx Records in Gladstone three years ago, said his store has sustained a loyal clientele that comes in regularly to browse and chat about music, the way people talk sports at their favorite taverns.
“We get a lot of customers who come in to browse and talk about music,” he said. “It’s not like it used to be, and for some it can be six or eight months between visits, but we have a lot of regulars.”
“Stores will continue to have a place, but they must understand that they play to a niche market,” said Kelly Corcoran, owner of Love Garden Sounds in Lawrence.
That niche can include offering things like used audio/stereo equipment and concert or band T-shirts and scheduling in-store events.
And now it means stocking vinyl and being savvy and aggressive about it. Demand for vinyl is up, and so are prices, but not all vinyl is lucrative.
“Prices for what’s in demand have increased two to three times,” Corcoran said, “but for the ‘so-so’ titles, prices have dropped. Four years ago, you could sell a vinyl copy of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Between the Buttons’ for $10 to $12. Now a pristine copy goes for $18 to $20. But stuff from the Stones’ early ‘80s catalog is way down in value.”
Even the growing new-vinyl market is discerning and driven by trends, he said.
“What we’ve noticed more than ever before is that more people are wanting to buy the same records,” he said. “By that I mean the same Dylan record or the same Arcade Fire record or the same Strokes record – their first one, but not the second or third. The new interest in vinyl is from people mostly interested in the same 500 records. There’s a lot of nostalgia among people in their 30s to get things on vinyl.”
Wilson said customers who come in looking for vinyl tend to “gravitate toward the vibe and intelligence of specialty retailing.” In other words, they want human-to-human interaction and feedback. Many of them are younger customers, some of whom, he said, represent a “rebellion against the …absolutism of a digital world.”
Hyken, who says his store now sells 12 vinyl albums for every CD, said his clientle is younger than it used to be, and they are part of the rise in demand for vinyl, both new and used. Some of that new vinyl comes from their friends and peers in local bands, who are issuing new album in all three formats.
“We issued our our debut EP ‘Safe House’ on both vinyl and CD,” said Lauren Krum, singer for the Grisly Hand. “We chose vinyl, in a way, for selfish reasons. We love vinyl and collect it ourselves. There's something about owning the record of a beloved band that feels more complete than a CD or a download.”
Chris Meck of the Atlantic Fadeout, which released its "Better Run of Bad Luck" album on vinyl: "We elected to go vinyl for a couple of reasons, nt least of which is that nobody really buys CDs anymore. We pressed those, too, because you need CDs sometimes for promotional purposes and not everyone has made the switch or returned to (vinyl). However, the vinyl is what we're excited about, and what I expect we'll move more of. The people coming to shows are true music lovers, and they've got serious record collections."
There is also optimism to be drawn from the ever-shrinking retail landscape. The seismic transition from brick-and-mortar retail to digital sales and on-line retail has killed or wounded the big record store chains, most of which have declared bankruptcy. Other national retailers that sell recorded music have drastically shrunk their inventories.
“That is one promising prospect,” said Wilson. “As big-box retailers get out of the record business, indie-music retailers will be the place to go. And that’s significant.”
Phillips said that’s another reason he likes the midtown neighborhood: There are no Best Buys, Targets or WalMarts nearby.
Ultimately, he invested in another store, he said, because of what he sees is a growing weariness for compressed digital music and an appetite for better sound. He sees it in how much sales of turntables have risen. He notes that at Acoustic Sounds, a distributor of audiophile reissues based in Salina, Kansas, owner Chad Kassem is going to start pressing his own vinyl because his suppliers can’t keep up with his demand.
“You never know for sure because things can change real quickly these days,” he said, “but there’s a lot of good, hard evidence that this trend is strong and is going to hold up.”
More than a renaissance, a recalibration or correction in behavior; a revival in reliable fashion. And for the surviving record stores who have been living with dread and doom for so many years, it’s sweet of music to all ears.
RECORD STORE DAY
For information on the special/exclusive Record Store Day releases, go here. We will post events at local stores on Thursday here at B2R.
| TImothy Finn, The Star
What are records?
Posted by: Green | April 12, 2011 at 10:08 AM
This makes me happy...
Posted by: Josh | April 12, 2011 at 10:24 AM
Wonderful article Tim. Music to my ears is correct.
Posted by: KevRocket | April 12, 2011 at 10:27 AM
here's to hoping that vinyl renaissance, at least in this incarnation, will have the good sense to cater to the one demographic that has consistently shown it will buy vinyl over the past 20 years - the electronic music crowd.
sadly, the lack of understanding and knowledge of these genres will probably mean it goes under-represented if present at all.
that is, of course, unless dan phillips would like to shoot me an email and work something out :)
Posted by: ben | April 12, 2011 at 11:35 AM
Thought it was interesting to see records at Best Buy.
Posted by: Green | April 12, 2011 at 01:05 PM
It cost so much to see any show and they are rolling out the discounts for many shows now.
http://www.robedesoireefr.com/robes-de-demoiselle-dhonneur-c-7.html
Posted by: robe du soir | August 14, 2011 at 09:15 PM