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Clive's Record Shop


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I've spent shed loads of cash in Clive's, going right back to the days when he sold second hand stuff from that tiny wee shop opposite the Lodberrie. And Davie's right, his prices were at one point really competitive. Coupled with the tasteful selections of obscurities and the sheer breadth of music on offer, Clive's was one THE great UK record shops.

 

But the sad fact is that Clive's is now one of the last independent record shops. They've disappeared. If you're committed to music, if you're a serious fan, and especially if you live remotely, you now have Spotify Premium, you have iTunes, you have Bleep, Bandcamp and - for the brief interim period when we're actually still buying hard copies of digital information - Amazon and Indigo and Play.com. And that takes in DVDs and games, too.

 

For the majority of consumers, music is a whisker away from being a completely online, mobile, almost free phenomenon. Once the fibreoptics are up and running here we won't need Blu-Ray or DVDs. Everything will be coming down that digital pipe. Or to our phones/tablets. And, Davie, I think you'd admit that musicians who depend on CDs are drinking in the last chance saloon, most now accepting that their money in the future will come from live shows and associated merchandise sales.

 

But. Fans will always want a souvenir. Committed fans will always want the best. They will want cover art and lyric sheets and other goodies. And so there will forever be a market for high-quality, luxurious sonic souvenirs of the band you love. For that, there's nothing better than vinyl. One of my sons is thinking of buying the £33 luxury vinyl package of the new Radiohead album. Even though he doesn't have a record player.

 

On the other hand, technophobes, late adopters and the elderly are going to want a sound format they can understand. Which is why Tesco is full of all those Sinatra compilations, and £1.99 Kinks/Stranglers/Sinatra/Buzzcocks/Val Doonican Greatest Hits.

 

I've had this conversation with Clive. I told him I thought there were fantastic online niches available for someone selling rare vinyl, souvenir, limited edition box sets, curated, recommended downloads, and merchandise of every sort. But that, sadly, the days of the record shops we loved and once lived for are over.

 

Google 'Lefsetz Letter' for the cutting edge music industry thinking on this.

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Clive has hung on for many years against the onslaught of the online market.

90% of the time Clive has been extremely competitive on price, and 100% of the time he has been absolutely amazing with the broad spectrum of musical interests he has catered for.

If the roumor is true that the shop is closing, I can only feel sad for what Shetland is losing. One of the last independent music retailers in the UK.

 

If Clive is retiring from the business I'm sure there are many contributors to this forum who would join me in thanking him for the millions of hours of listening pleasure which we have collectively had from the items bought in his shop.

 

Good on de Clive, do's been a star. :D

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Of course Clives and every other seller of music, DVDs and games faces an even bigger challenge than the likes of Amazon and Tesco. I mean, of course, the vast quantity of copyright material that is available for download from the internet illegally but for free. Or in the case of file sharing websites like Rapidshare not exactly for free as people like that are making money from both the people who upload the material and some of those who download.

 

I am a bit ambivalent about downloading things. Certainly it is wrong to download something that I could go to Clives, Tesco, Amazon or so on to buy legally but how about the old album I had many years ago on vinyl and which was never released on CD but I would love to hear again?. Is downloading that morally wrong?.

 

Seems to me that the entire entertainment industry needs to get together to find an answer to piracy and that really needs to hit the file hosting sites and the various blogs that post lists of illegal downloads.....sometimes including DVDs that have yet to be released in the UK.

 

Meanwhile I have not yet made that visit to Clives but I will.

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.... But with MP3 fast aproaching a bigger market than CD's could clive not diverse into a MP3 online shop where he could still provide an outlet for local bands probably easier than he is at the moment? He could also still specialise in all the great music he is known for sourcing for anyone and the latest charts for those who enjoy cheeseI can see him now sitting in the back room stroking a white cat ;)

 

But i do admit I have no idea how much work would be involved in setting up such a website. that catered for all that he does now but it coudlnt be anyworse than myspace im sure.

I looked into the possibility of such a website a few years back, had verbal agreements with some local groups and built a working prototype website - unfortunately the project was crippled by extortionate licensing fees (at one point, the MCPS appeared to be threatening to sue me on my own behalf). To cut a long story short, unless you're shifting many thousands of units it isn't really a viable commercial model.

 

iTunes et al aren't interested in working with smaller groups or record companies, but there are many 3rd party companies who, for a fee, will act as go-betweens and get smaller groups onto the big download and streaming services (such as Glasgow based EmuBands and ReverbNation ). But, again, unless you're shifting thousands of units or achieving hundreds of thousands of 'streams', it's might not be worth the fees and paperwork.

 

The diagram on this webpage gives an indication on how much artists can expect to earn from the various distribution methods - http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/

 

Free on-demand streaming services such as Spotify were to some degree expected to level the playing field for smaller groups by giving the public free access to niche acts, genres and back catalogues via the same medium as the 'big name' singles - however, according to the regularly published statistics in the trade press the reality is that folk, given the choice and access to pretty much anything they want, still choose the current big names with multi-million pound marketing budgets that they're hearing on radio and TV daily.

 

Which in a round about kind of way gets me back on topic!

 

I know from working in record shops that the big selling top 10 albums pay the rent, but to offer the public some choice you have to take a gamble on what other stock to carry - tricky in Shetland as if you buy a more 'esoteric' CD from the distributors and none of your regulars buy it, it can sit on the shelves for years. Tescos don't bother about offering people choice - they just stock what they know is going to shift quickly and use their buying power to undercut the indie retailers and squeeze the artists further down the chain. Does that equate to customer choice? Unfortunately, if the consumer chooses not to have a choice, I suppose it does

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He is not alone....and it is SAD !!!

" On 5 January 2011 HMV announced that profits would be at the lower end of analyst's forcasts due to falling sales, resulting in the share price falling by 20%[20] and an announcement of the groups intention to close 40 HMV stores, as well as 20 Waterstone's stores, mainly in towns where the company operates at multiple locations. The first of the Store Closures began at the end of January 2011.".....

...I'm old enough to want a CD that I can hold, read the lyrics inside and so on....I guess that I'm old.....

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That makes for sad reading PB, I think a few ( well myself anyway ) were hoping that MP3's would be the key of releasing the small time artists free from the epic mamoths of over established music distributers ( yes i agree i have delusional moments in my life :? )

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...I'm old enough to want a CD that I can hold, read the lyrics inside and so on....I guess that I'm old.....

 

I've got to an age (57) where I've decided that life is too short to buy cds that I'll listen to a couple of times then then set away (that's if the whole cd is actually worth listening too - too often there are just couple of tracks I like).

 

I got into Spotify a couple of years ago. I have a paid subscription so some of my money is trickling back to the musicians. I've listened to a few new albums that at one time I might have bought and I've listened to few things that I never would have bought.

 

I've also stopped buying a daily newspaper as I can get get as much content as I need from the internet. This is just the way the world is moving. The big corporations need to figure out how to get money from the punters by other means.

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As I have said to the staff in Clive's even though I work at TESCO when it comes to games and music they have a much better selection and I prefer to go there first and see if they have got what I need if not and TESCO does I buy it from there or if don't mind waiting amazon.

 

I make a trip in there once a month to see if anything takes my fancy and most of the time it does if he does go and I seriously hope he doesn't it would be a blow to the entire street.

 

when it comes to his prices I have found him to be in the same region as amazon and TESCO sometimes even cheaper than them so that is why I check him out first and not TESCO or amazon.

 

Then there is the convenience factor if there is something that I can get from Clive's or TESCO I don't want to wait a few days for it to come through my door I only buy stuff from amazon if i can't get it anywhere else in Lerwick.

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I can't really add much if anything here, especially to what Peeriebryan and Etterscab have said which I totally agree with.

 

Sadly with the massively reduced buying of 'hard product' re national and international CD's, let alone 'local' ones (apart from a few occasional successes) and the literally hundreds of existing options to download or stream music from just about anywhere, usually for free, there's no real financially viable option for a small local operator in this market - especially given all the legal, rights and associated cost issues Peeriebryan has quite correctly mentioned in this thread.

 

Equally there's no real download interest (in viable quantities at least) for more niche things such as folk, jazz or country music. Those markets are still pretty much hard product orientated but still not large enough in themselves to sustain high street or even small independant record stores.

 

Equally as I said given all the options for free download, streaming or ripping music, the fee paying download market has never ever come anywhere near replacing CD sales and never will. See Peeriebryan's statistic chart for what this is worth to the artist. Not a lot I'm afraid

 

One of the relatively large bands I manage has never-the-less moved a fair quantity of their new CD from both shops and direct website / live gig sales in the past 18 months, but only gained around £50 from actual paying downloads during this time. Not much return there to make it worthwhile doing.

 

No, sadly there's no real financially viable place for a 'middle man' in this particular market nowadays if you take all this into account. That's a real loss, most especially for the likes of local artists getting their product in a focused way onto Commercial St and into the hands of all sorts of punters, including the casual browser, tourists etc - but given everything said above the local musicians too will just have to find other ways of doing this. Never-the-less, whatever happens, they too will see potential sales and returns nose-dive as a result of this.

 

Lets face it local shops such as Clives and High Level are also good marketing 'tools' too, re continually highlighting and promoting available local CD's. You lose that positive factor too - especially say re online sales for instance where punters more or less have to actively be looking for something before you choose to buy.

 

They, like everyone else, will just have to sell CD's or downloads online - probably from their own websites - at any gigs they do and perhaps informally through other local shops rather than the primary outlet of someone like Clives - and of course lets not forget High Level Music too who also do a great job keeping the local sales option open at present, thankfully supported by other income streams such as instrument and equip sales. So there is hope!!!

 

Thankfully it's never been easier or perhaps cheaper to record CD's nowadays so perhaps this factor has, in turn, helped a bit re keeping them semi financially viable items in the short term. However you still have to license them, manufacture them, produce the art-work, market them etc etc so how long this will remain the case anyway is open to debate.

 

Anyway as everyone says "the times they are a-changing" - again!! Sadly this time around it's almost the complete loss of a product market rather than a new format simply replacing an old i.e. CD's replacing vinyl. There probably will always be some kind of market for the likes of CD's or even vinyl (as mentioned in this threat) but whether that's viable enough to support producing them in the first place, let alone retailing them, is open to question.

 

Meanwhile Clive intends to soldier on for as long as he can which is great news in the short term at least.

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How unsigned bands make money online

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12382785

 

A growing number of musicians are establishing their careers on YouTube, with little or no financial outlay. Last year, an unsigned band from New York even entered the Billboard charts courtesy of their online fanbase.
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I think that only a few minor exceptions, (DavieG for example) really have a clue what is going on. None of you seem to have any idea! Whoever started this, I think you need to get your facts right. I have seen a few comments about this subject on certain social networking sites, and some of the rumours that circulate around Shetland are ridiculous!

 

If you all cared so much about this subject, you would go and find out the truth. Although living in Edinburgh now, I will continue to buy my CD's in Clives every holiday I am home. There is nothing better than flicking through the pile of CD's and finding that Creedence album you listened to years ago.

 

This is one of the things I truley dislike about Shetlink. This is NOT "Shetland News". It is "Shetland Rumours".

 

For anyone interested read; "Last Shop Standing"- Graham Jones, a book I bought from Clives a year ago. A very good insight into the Record/CD industry today.

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