The Record, the Biz and the District

(Som Records' interior. Image from somrecordsdc.com)

Before you bemoan the oft-heralded demise of music retailers in the internet age, take a walk along the 2300 block of 18th Street NW in Adam’s Morgan until you hear gritty rock and roll playing outside a storefront.
Turn and look up. Manikin legs clad in brightly-colored stockings dangle over a ledge beside a neon sign belonging to Smash, a music and lifestyle store that’s also a wildly successful District staple.
Look down. Crooked Beat Records, specializing in vinyl, sits in a lower adjacent space and fares just as well. Down 18th street, before the incline, Red Onion Records and Books, yet another steady music distribution business, stands tucked next to a drycleaner. Further south, DJ Hut and Melody Record Shop serve Dupont Circle. Over on 14th Street, Som Records stocks only vinyl LPs and faces no serious financial trouble to speak of.
So is this city some sort of anomaly, housing a formidable number of successful music enterprises at a time when others around the country are closing in droves?
It might have something to do with what products the District stores choose to emphasize.
“It’s an accepted theory that the CD industry will not survive,” says Red Onion owner Josh Harkavy, explaining that what sets thriving independent businesses like his apart from failing chains like Virgin and Tower is the small places’ focus on vinyl. He argues that the business model embraced by mega-stores, being CD-based, precipitated their own doom. In the meantime, he adds, vinyl “isn’t going anywhere.”
Matt Goyner, a Crooked Beat cashier with noticeably highlighted hair that seems to explode in a mushroom cloud above his head, agrees. CDs, he says, are more disposable and not as “aesthetically pleasing.” While he admits that LPs will never again achieve the popularity they enjoyed in their heyday, he has noticed an increased interest in the medium that Crooked Beat relies on – though its stock includes all sorts of music products, revenue comes primarily from vinyl. (A seemingly antiquated sign in the window reads, “We sell turntables!”)
“They [LPs] are probably hipper these days,” Goyner says.
National statistics appear to back up these assertions. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, the organization behind the manufacture and distribution of 85 percent of the country’s recorded music, LPs are the only physical sources of music that saw a spike in sales last year. It was a considerable jump – 147.7 percent. Digital sales, by comparison, were up only 16.5 percent. CD sales fell 26.6 percent, and revenue from music videos and DVDs was cut down by more than half from 2007 to 2008.
Total sales for all physical music are down about as much as those of CDs, accounting for the horror stories usually associated with running a modern music business. But for longtime District establishments that never embraced the shiny round phenomena of the 90s, times aren’t so harrowing.
“We’re up and down, but we’re alright,” says Alec Budd, a part-time cashier working sometimes at Smash, sometimes at Som Records, with mutton chops that extend at least and inch and a half from his cheeks. Som deals exclusively with vinyl – large dark LPs decorate its interior like wallpaper – and Budd says that the store puts new products on the stands every week. Like Goyner, he finds the vinyl aesthetic of a higher quality than their smaller, silvery counterparts, citing the superior sound and packaging.
“CDs,” he says, “didn’t even last a generation.”
Over at Red Onion, Harkavy says that in addition to being a better product, vinyl enjoys popularity because it represents a “backlash against the digitalization of music…a return to something real” – something a music fan can hold in his or her hands, a visible piece of culture to add to a collection.
In fact, collectors are the reason independent record stores continue to survive into the twenty-first century. Goyner explains that all the stores in the area “are targeting niche markets” – vinyl collectors, almost without exception – to establish themselves as “destination shops” for the subculture.
Budd expands on this idea, saying that the availability of multiple record stores within walking distance from one another has secured the city’s Northwest quadrant as a place where collectors want to be – music enthusiasts from the suburbs can drive in and make an event out of expanding their collections.
Budd concedes that sometimes changing media can bring about a low period – claiming to have worked in District record shops since the mid-90s, he can recollect a handful popular local stores no longer in existence – Phantasmagoria, Orpheus and Vinyl, Inc. are among the many. Although they tanked, the community they served – the same one now frequenting Som, Red Onion, et al. – stuck around.
“I sure spent a lot of money there,” says Budd.
A report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry in 72 countries, shows that digital music now makes up 20 percent of the music market worldwide. The U.S. is responsible for half that market, but the most pernicious menace to retailers seems to be music downloaded illegally – 40 billion files around the world were obtained without payment in 2008 alone. For every five albums purchased, 95 are pirated.
But these startling numbers don’t phase local record shops. They are fully aware of the juggernaut that online downloading and person-to-person (P2P) file sharing has become. It bears little consequences on their intended clientele.
“No one will buy a CD for $10-$15 when they can download it [the album] for free,” says Harvaky, but “vinyl never went anywhere.” The collectors he caters to don’t want intangible albums. They want real products for their stashes at home.
The District’s music community also does what it can to keep its record stores – and in some cases, its lifeblood – open and bustling. Local bands play occasional in-store performances at Crooked Beat and Som, and the publicity they offer is rewarding in turn – all the stores mentioned here stock albums from local acts, opening the bands up to a market they need. The retailers do what they can to embrace the community, hoping to maintain their images as hallmarks.
“We’re going to keep going with what we are doing,” says Goyner as another two young, bearded customers descend the steps to enter Crooked Beat. “People aren’t going to stop listening to music, and they probably won’t stop buying it.”