"Is the Music Store Over?"
No, but we are reaching the end of the music store as we know it. Bankruptcy and store closings seem like a final crashing chord, but radical new models of retail may keep the music coming.

Marketing guru Paco Underhill actually sees a bright future for the music store, although only after an extreme makeover. In a recent article in Business 2.0, Paul Keegan describes the state of retail, and lays out Underhill's vision.

"You can forgive the chaotic, run-down atmosphere when you walk into Tower Records on Broadway and West Fourth Street in Manhattan," he begins. "You don't even mind all those Sponge Bob action figures and Beatles lunch boxes - hey, the music industry's in a slump, and these guys are just trying to pay the rent.

"But when you pick up The Essential Bruce Springsteen, your temperature starts to rise. You should be ecstatic at the discovery of 12 new releases by the Boss, but instead you're furious: You can't buy them unless you shell out $25.99 for the entire three-CD set that includes 30 'career-spanning classics' that you already own from his other hit records. Why should you have to pay for all those songs twice?

"You shove Bruce back into his display case and pick up The Ragpicker's Dream by Mark Knopfler. It has one funny, tender tune that you love, called "Devil Baby" - but what about those other 16 songs? It's cost you $23.99 to find out. How about the new Cypress Hill record? Norah Jones' second album? The latest from Pink, the Strokes, or Blink 182? Suddenly, everything seems like a crapshoot. Why do they keep insisting hat you buy an entire CD when you can just go online and get only the tunes you really want from iTunes or Musicmatch for 99 cents each - or through Kazaa or Grokster for free?

"Fed up, you walk away without buying anything. No wonder Tower Records and the other music-store chains are in a dizzying tailspin."

Keegan's article describes the damaging hits that the chains have taken - Chapter 11 filings for Wherehouse and Tower Records, store closings by Musicland, the extinction of National Record Mart - and lays out the fundamental questions that retail must answer: How can they persuade people to shut off their computers and go shopping in their stores?

His answer: "Give the people what they want." And recognize that what they want has changed.

"When the LP was introduced almost 50 years ago, most people had a record player in their living room and maybe another in the kids' bedroom. Today, the typical American household has multiple sound reproduction devices, from Walkmans and boom boxes to car stereos, computers and MP3 players. Why shouldn't people be able to buy music in a form that suits their modern lives - single songs delivered instantly and easily copied from one device to another?"

Retailers are "scrambling to move into the 21st century almost overnight," with new in-store kiosk technologies and portable Wi-Fi music browsers. Steps in the right direction, but how can the big chains "combine the customer service of the small indie stores, the latest digital technology, and a comfortable environment that will make music lovers want to hang out there?" That requires an integrating vision.

The big picture is laid out by retail maven Paco Underhill, who likens music stores to churches. They're not just places to transact, they're places to interact - to worship. "Buying a CD is a way people show they care. They're buying it out of reverence rather than economic self-interest."

Inspired by Japan's comic-book clubs, Underhill's vision of an interfaith "cathedral to music" would have memberships, "chill lounges," individual workstations, dispensers of music-related decal art (for tattoos, cell phones, headphones, clothing), displays of the latest gadgets, expert staffers, live DJs touting their mixes and live artists playing their tunes, a production center for burning disks or downloading files, and of course, food & drink.

Read the Business 2.0 article [non-subscriber access limited]

Read a related article in the Washington Post

Browse Paco Underhill’s “Call of the Mall: the Geography of Shopping”