The Plan 9 in Albemarle Square isn’t the greatest record store in the world; it might not even be the best record store in Charlottesville. But it boldly persists in being the kind of business you’d have to be a fool to run in this day and age: a record store. On a recent visit, it looked like the management was seeking creative uses for its display shelves. What was once a vast sea of shrink-wrapped discs is now a particle board chute that guides customers across the room to the next sparsely stocked section.
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Desperate times haven’t hit Cal Glattfelder, owner of Sidetracks Music, who says he continues to sell a lot of CDs despite an industry-wide trend towards downloading music. Even so, a new interest in vinyl—especially new vinyl—has helped keep the lights on in the Water Street shop. |
But store manager Ruth Wilson, who has been in the business of selling records for 25 years, says the Plan 9 location is hedging its bets on selling used records, especially vinyl. The location lost its vinyl buyer (he’s the guy who sorts through the boxes of records people try to pass off) in 2007, and during that time the store lost a significant amount of records, says Wilson. “The old head buyer from Richmond for vinyl has been coming to our place, so he’s working on that since about November, he’s trying to get the vinyl back to where we were.”
The chain closed locations in Roanoke, Williamsburg and on the Corner in the last three years alone, and is rallying behind used goods because of a worsening nationwide trend that has affected stores everywhere. The downward trend continues despite drastic measures from record companies. Universal Music Group announced a pilot program in March that would price many new CD releases in the $6-10 dollar range. Meanwhile, big box stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart that sell music in physical formats were surpassed in sales this year by the nontraditional commercial sector—that is, iTunes is selling more music, so stores have begun to reduce the the shelving space.
But you can’t download the musty smell of used records. Wilson says that the store “was always more new-product oriented than used-product oriented. That wasn’t the tone of Plan 9.”
“People are more conservative here when it comes to that. They want new products.” This is in stark contrast to the store’s flagship location on Cary Street in Richmond, Wilson says. That store does most of its business through used sales.
Back near Downtown, everything seemed peachy one afternoon last week at Sidetracks Music, Cal Glattfelder’s independent music store on Water Street. A sandwich board was decorated with a positive message: “Every day is Record Store Day,” riffing on the annual day where independent record stores welcome in-store performances and special releases. (This year’s was April 17.) Glattfelder was unpacking a few boxes of brand new, shrink-wrapped CDs. Standing at one of the listening stations was Sam Bush, songwriter for the Hill and Wood who runs the Garage art space, who walked out with three CDs—new releases from the National and Phosphorescent, and a used one by Belle and Sebastian. Unlike at Plan 9, the shelves at Sidetracks glimmer with plastic wrapped new releases.
“New vinyl sales are way up,” says Glattfelder, compared to when he bought the store seven years ago. He pointed to one of the LPs he had pasted in the window, a new vinyl release from local screenprinter extraordinaire Thomas Dean’s band Order. (The vinyl LP was released last month on the local upstart called Creature Features.) As so much changes, so much stays the same. Mp3s, iPods, says Glattfelder—“People are getting tired of that stuff.”
For this writer’s money—and, granted, there’s not much of it—there is little that can get in the way of you and enjoying your favorite record on vinyl. Hold it, smell it, watch it spin. A future where nobody gets their music without having to go through anyone else sounds dystopian, almost Wall-Eesque. That said, who doesn’t look forward to passing down a dusty and water damaged iTunes playlist to his children?
