http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/194147.html
It is in many ways the perfect storm. Recent events locally show how it’s playing out. Home of the Hits, a longtime favorite, closed its doors for good last year. New World Record, a fixture on Elmwood Avenue for 17 years, opted for a larger, lower-rent store at the edge of the city in a strip mall at Delaware and Hertel.
A top-heavy industry edifice is wobbling in the wind, and clearly headed toward the unforgiving pavement 100 stories below.
Consumers grown weary from years of exploitation at the hands of the music industry are finding a crack in the foundation and beginning to take advantage of it, quite successfully. Artisans responsible for creating and providing the goods that industry has always depended on begin to explore avenues that no longer include that industry.
These elements have combined to create a maelstrom. The record business is going under. What does the dissolution of the industry mean for the long-suffering bastion of popular-music integrity, the independent record store?
“It feels like we’re the last men standing,” says Scott Rankie, assistant manager at Record Theatre’s University Plaza location. “By now, we can see the tangible effects of the whole filesharing thing, and obviously, business has suffered as a result. I still believe that there are people who want to use the whole ‘free music on the Internet’ thing as a research tool, and that people still want the whole album experience, with packaging, and liner notes and the whole deal.
“But it’s probably a minority that is really still interested.”