In a digital age, there is still romance in music stores

Here's an interesting look at the music culture down under:

Defying international trends, Australians are buying albums in shops - especially when retailers make an effort, writes Bernard Zuel.

"We are social creatures, we are tactile creatures. People love to see, hear, feel, taste, listen to and they like a place that gives all that to them. A computer doesn't do that.”

Steve Kulak, the owner of a small chain of independent music retailers called Title Music Film Books, is a businessman and self-styled, if mockingly so, visionary guru. Ask him if we're witnessing the end of the music retailer as the digital world expands and, after laughing at the absurdity of the question, he gets a little mystical.

“Most people don't come in here for anything specific; it's the beauty of the journey," he says. "It's like travelling; you don't necessarily know what you're going to get but you leave yourself open to the idea. That's what music is all about."

Chances are Kulak is right. Defying the international trends and confident predictions that they would be gone within a matter of years, many Australian music stores are alive and even thriving.

Title is about to open a North Coast store to add to its Crows Nest, Surry Hills, Fitzroy and Adelaide set. Meanwhile, Gavin Ward, executive director of the Leading Edge Group, which owns or represents 170 independent stores in Australia, estimates that while his group has lost about 10 stores in the past two years, that figure is "not significantly higher" than the average closure of stores historically.

Some stores are in trouble, but most are doing well and others are making up to $3 million a year as independent traders.

One reason is that, going against international trends, Australians are still buying music. According to statistics released by the peak industry body ARIA, while the Australian music industry has continued to leak away sales of recorded music in the first six months of this year, the 8 per cent drop in physical sales (of CDs, DVDs and vinyl) was more than made up for by the surge in sales of downloads.

Even the drop in physical sales is small compared with overseas markets, which continue to show double-digit declines. Or, as in the case of Spain, a fall of 30 per cent last year.

ARIA is even predicting a greater increase in the second half of the year with albums from big names such as Robbie Williams, Powderfinger, Pearl Jam and Madonna.

When Australians buy music, they overwhelmingly prefer to buy their albums in bricks-and-mortar stores rather than by downloading. Digital downloads of single tracks – what used to be called singles – have all but obliterated the physical market (90 per cent of individual track sales now are digital).

But when it comes to albums, the situation is reversed. Australians buy more than 90 per cent of their albums by paying money over the counter to a human being and walking away with a plastic/cardboard package holding a silver compact disc. Old school!

Why? Kulak is right, according to Stephen Peach, ARIA's chief executive. "It does seem that when you make a decision to buy an album, when you like something enough to buy the whole album's worth of music, people still like the concept of the physical thing in the ownership," he says.

But this is hardly a blank cheque for retailers. Earlier this decade the big department stores were moving to widespread music retailing, taking up to 15 per cent of the market – but now they have been steadily cutting back the space for CDs and watching their share of CD sales drop to nearer 5 per cent.

Many suburban shopping centre stores have been squeezed by the bulk, variety and discount prices of the market leader JB Hi-Fi. It has 40 per cent of the $360 million Australian market and uses its size to extract better deals from the record companies than smaller traders can manage.

Those stores in trouble or dead haven't adapted to the modern reality, says Geoff Bonouvrie, owner of Mall Music in Brookvale and the chairman of the Australian Music Retailers Association. He has seen a 50 per cent turnaround in his CD sales in the past 2 years from the low point of early this decade.

It's not enough to just "rack it and hope that people walk in and buy it", as Stephen Peach put it. The stores doing well, whether large generalist ones like Mall Music, tiny specialists such as Mojo Music in the CBD or those in between including So Music in Newtown, are offering extra value – whether it is larger and more varied stock, the willingness to order in albums not in the store (something Herald readers have consistently reported is not a given), knowledgeable staff or other music products. What the marketers call multiple entry points.

"It takes work; you just can't offer CDs. I call it event retailing,” Bonouvrie explains, pointing to his large classical section, a department selling musical instruments, frequent in-store performances and a close eye on newspaper reviews and features to predict the albums people will come in asking for.

And it's not just the fortysomethings and older who can't let go of their old buying ways. "I see it across the board, from the hard-core kids to Beethoven's piano sonatas,” says Bonouvrie. "The type of person coming into our store is the avid music fans who love music and identify with it and go to see it, whether it's Andre Rieu or Beyonce or a band playing in an inner-city pub somewhere. Music is very much part of their life."

Which is where Kulak came in, standing in his store selling books, DVDs, T-shirts and anything related to the experience of culture, particularly music.

"The traditional monoculture business model in the arts is dead, finished. But that's good, it's gone back to what it should be – an experience,” he says. "People still love to buy music. People haven't forgotten what gave them a thrill, what gave them a real sense of being alive . . . and it was a bookshop, a record store, going to a midnight movie. All that kind of romance.

"The iPod spinners tell you the world is engaged with it and everyone's doing it – but it's like marriage, it's all coming back again: commitment, passion, love.”

SOURCE: http://www.smh.com.au