The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Positive spin for record stores
Pandemic shutdown hasn’t been all bad for Southern California vinyl sellers
When the coronavirus pandemic took hold last year, record stores were among the businesses hit hard, with some closing for good and others turning to services such as GoFundMe as they faced an unsure future.
Record stores are still facing plenty of challenges more than a year after the pandemic began, but many are finding ways to keep business going, from ramping up their online sales to creating custom music bundles to offering a livestream akin to the Home Shopping Network. Some say that this year hasn’t been all that bad for them as they welcome music lovers who are stuck at home and filling the void of canceled concerts and festivals by purchasing vinyl.
Bill Plaster, owner of punk rock record store Dr. Strange Records, says it’s never been so busy at his store — and he thinks he knows why.
“People have all the time in the world; they have nothing else to do; they’re bored and they actually have extra money,” he said. “They’re just coming out of the woodwork, so for me it’s been super, super busy.” Plaster added that sales have almost doubled.
Plaster said he’s not only seen more people coming into his store, he’s seen an increase in his mail orders.
William Evans, owner of Black Hole Records — which specializes in punk rock, Britpop and classic rock — said he’s also had a good year, with lots of people coming through the door. He partly attributes that to a crowd of younger customers who would normally be at concerts and music festivals.
Other record stores might not proclaim this the best year ever but are hanging on despite pandemic challenges.
Amoeba Records, which in April launched a GoFundMe to support its businesses, plans to open its replacement location soon, and while no opening date has been announced, Amoeba has been teasing fans with photos of the new store.
Chuck Oken Jr., who was forced to shutter his Mad Platter in October in part because of the pandemic, said things are going OK at his other store, Rhino Records, which sells an eclectic mix of music.
Oken said the restoration of outdoor restaurant dining has helped bring business back to the neighborhood, but things are still far from normal.
“Customers have been great about supporting us and local businesses in general,” he said. “There’s a real movement around that I can hear and touch and feel, and that’s beautiful, but it’s going to take the world coming back.”
Freakbeat Records which sells new and used vinyl, has seen business stay steady, but the reminders of the pandemic are still there, according to owner Bob Say.
The store can only accommodate five people in at a time and can’t host big sales events, and older customers haven’t been in as much. However, like Black Hole Records, the store has seen a lot of younger customers.
PM Sounds, which specializes in jazz, found itself dealing with the pandemic not long after leaving its 22year home. Owner Erving Johnson said the store has seen some decline in business but it’s finding new ways to make sales.
Challenges, supply difficulties linger
For some record stores, one of the biggest challenges during the pandemic is keeping shelves stocked.
For Oken, who sells albums in a variety of genres, supply chain issues recently kept him from getting copies of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” and there was a sixweek stretch over the holidays where he couldn’t get Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” both among the bestselling albums of all time.
Oken attributes at least part of the trouble to a fire last year at a Banning factory that was a major supplier of the lacquer used to coat master discs that press vinyl records, but he also thinks record labels are trying to drive up demand for certain albums by providing
fewer of them.
“It could be so much better if the labels behind were giving people what they wanted,” he said.
It’s not just the new stuff that’s hard to get, but the old stuff, too.
For Evans, many of the conferences and conventions that he would attend to scoop up rare used records to bring back to his store are no longer happening because of the pandemic. He’s been selling a lot of new indie stuff as well as remasters of classic rock albums.
Plaster said it has become more difficult to find rare records. It was already tough because people are more into vinyl now than in the past and that means that they want to hold onto their items and not sell them. That’s been exacerbated by the fact that various record meets where independent sellers show off their wares just aren’t happening.
New avenues for selling
With the pandemic still a concern and some vinyl collectors reluctant to shop in stores, record store owners have found ways to pivot how they sell their product.
“You adjust; you do what you have to do,” Johnson said.
For him, that’s meant compiling custom record bundles. It’s something he did at the request of one of his customers. Soon, word spread and it became a service PM Sounds offered, with Johnson mailing bundles out to customers or having them picked up at the store.
Johnson has also shifted a lot of sales to eBay. He said he’s been selling online for 20 years, but he’s really amplified his efforts during the pandemic and has seen
an increase.
Meanwhile, at Dr. Strange Records, Plaster has increased the frequency of his Live Strange livestreams on Facebook, which he describes as “QVC for punk rock.”
Originally the livestreams, which started long before the pandemic, took place only on Fridays, but he has added Wednesdays. During the streams, Plaster keeps things light, cracking jokes as punk rock blares through the store as he shows off items from an imported German box set from The Exploited to albums by The Cramps and Misfits. People comment on which records they want as they watch the stream.
He said viewership is up for the livestreams and that he even has an international audience looking to buy records.
“It’s people from around the world just saying, ‘I want that record,’ “he said.
Plaster said the livestreams have also been a chance to bring on some of those merchants from the record meets who haven’t had a platform to sell their items. He said it’s not uncommon for those people to take home $2,000 or more in a night of selling records.
The road ahead
Plaster said that while he considers himself an optimistic person, he doesn’t think things will continue to be as good as they are when people go back to school and work, and life returns to normal.
“It cannot maintain like this, no way,” he said. “How could it?”
Evans thinks concerts will return to huge audiences when the pandemic ends. Some will be by classic rock bands from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, and some of those young people that came into his shop to buy records from those bands will be among the legions of screaming fans.
But, as the pandemic starts to go away, people should keep visiting independent record stores and businesses, Oken said.
“It’s very important as the world returns that people
“There’s a real movement around that I can hear and touch and feel, and that’s beautiful, but it’s going to take the world coming back.” — Chuck Oken Jr.
remember to support them or it gets to be a very boring world,” Oken said.