HMV, an established feature of most high streets is set to disappear from many of them imminently, announcing the impending closure of 66 stores, with 990 jobs set to be lost. This comes after huge changes in consumer preferences and habits in the music industry. I spoke to to Lawrence Montgomery, owner of independent record shop Rise, on Queen’s Road, close to the university. He outlines the key issue for record stores as reacting to ‘diversification in the way people consume music’. He points out that the size of the CD market has shrunk by 50% in the last 5 years. ‘It’s a perfect storm. You’ve got people that illegally download, people who choose iTunes, people who choose Spotify and other streaming and you’ve got people that buy off Amazon.’ A storm HMV have failed to successfully weather.
What then can independent record stores aim to do in order to remain robust in the face of a volatile market? ‘What a shop has to do is easier said than done; you’ve got to be relevant to the customer.’Lawrence diagnoses one of the issues endemic to HMV’s failure; ‘HMV chased the middle-market, they needed to retain more individuality.’ Though a massive amount of sales will come from Adele CDs, X Factor singles and the like, the inevitable fact remains that on pricing ‘Amazon will always undercut you.’ This wasn’t entirely ignored by HMV chiefs, they did diversify their product range and ‘seemed to chase this digital thing really aggressively; headphones and accessories’. But perhaps this approach wasn’t quite in line with consumer preferences, and seemingly not with Rise’s target demographic, ‘I think a record shop should almost be about antiquity. People will take their leisure time outside of the whole digital norm which is how everyone lives their lives now.’
Independent record stores occupy that space, integrated with but usually separate from the all-encompassing digital realm, but the disappearance of HMV from many high streets isn’t a sign that independent stores will crop up to replace them. ‘I’d be careful about saying you’re going to have a boom of independent record shops.’ Financing a record shop in this climate is difficult, first of all is the issue of obtaining stock, ‘we have to fight with our suppliers everyday to give us enough credit.’ Supplying to a record store is a risk on behalf the suppliers, something evident in the case of HMV, where suppliers were handed 5% equity and vastly increased the amount of stock provided on consignment terms, they stand to lose out greatly if HMV ultimately fails. No one will be in a rush to put a record store on many high streets set to be deprived of HMV in the current climate, given that ‘the capital needed to open a record shop is quite large’.
How then can stores like Rise look to succeed in such a volatile market? Lawrence attributes their robustness to how they’ve approached the issue of changing consumer preferences. ‘Getting people through the door is the biggest challenge. When we didn’t have the café or the clothing it was a lot more difficult because people walk past a record shop now and think “I don’t buy records”’. Rise Bristol have introduced a café space run by Friska, a range of vintage clothing, reducing the floor space solely dedicated to records as a reaction to the changes in consumer preferences, but this doesn’t detract from the ethos of the store. ‘The key thing about the shop is passion about the product. The staff know what they’re talking about and they’re passionate about it.’
The focus for independent record stores moves away from hard selling (if ever that was the focus) and onto engendering a sense of community, ‘if you get them to stay in the store for long enough – the rest will come’. The focus at Rise is precisely this, encouraging active participation in the culture that surrounds a record store, at Rise Bristol you won’t find just records, food and clothes – but film nights, pub quizzes and in-store performances too, curated by staff and others alike. ‘This is a place that could be a hub for creativity. We’re lucky because it’s a great space. We want to get as many outside organisations and promoters to come in and use it.’
The lesson to learn for record stores following on from HMV’s demise is a simple one; don’t lose sight of the customer. Though it is a difficult one to put correctly into practice, but at Rise, along with the likes of Rough Trade, Piccadilly and Resident the customer hasn’t been lost sight of just yet and they provide a blueprint for what the future of record stores could and perhaps should be like. ‘If I was a customer, I would absolutely love this shop, that’s what I try to base it on.’
Rishi Modha 