ROAD RECORDS (2 Viewers)

[Flux]

I still spend way too much of my income on music, and always shop in Tower or Road, but one thing I love about downloading is that I don't buy any shite albums any more. When I buy something, I know I won't have that sinking feeling when I get home and stick it on.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

Small music and other retail has been dying out for years anyway. The combination of digitalisation, with both the download market and illegal sharing, and increased competition from supermarkets and the like are putting the final nails in the coffin of small independent record shops and bookshops.
Perhaps some will continue to exist, subsidised by governments as cultural centres or something like that but it's only a matter of time before the digital disruption hits books as much as it has hit music.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

I hope this isn't going to turn into another "is paying for music dead" thread based on the posters' gut feelings and not on actual REALITY

Paying for music isn't dead but it is becoming a less popular activity with a potentially irredeemable adverse effect on major and independent labels.

 

[Moods For Mallards]

I totally disagree with your inclusion of books, Scientician. The physical book is a better and handier technology than any digital equivalent.

 

[Moods For Mallards]

Sorry, don't mean to divert the thread.
Again, I'll redouble my efforts to buy stuff from Road. I think I'll buy the Script's album in there at the weekend.

 

[Goodbye]

THATS IT!!!

I'm playing another in-store gig there. That oughta do it.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

I totally disagree with your inclusion of books, Scientician. The physical book is a better and handier technology than any digital equivalent.

I was specifically talking about small book retailers wherein it only takes a small enough percentage of consumers to transfer to digital means, e-readers and all that stuff, before their business stops being viable. They can either adapt by offering stuff that isn't downloadable and become something other than a bookshop or if they're lucky they can find a lucrative niche area, such as rarities, antiquarian books and the like.


Although I agree with you that right now the book is a better technology, people are neophiliac by nature it seems, and a shiny electronic book will seduce millions of people who would otherwise buy books. Once the price of the ereader is down to something along the lines of a generic mp3 player is now then paper books will start becoming less common. I know there will always be people who value books, like there are always people who value vinyl records et al but there aren't vinyl record stores in every sizeable town in Ireland or anywhere else anymore.

 

[lemonbravo]

if you've got the time, there's some interesting points in this discussion regarding current listening trends and vinyl/cd's etc etc:

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It may be a bit too technical and boring for some people, but I quite enjoyed it.*

You can also watch it here and save it:
http://www.philoctetes.org/Past_Programs/Deep_Listening_Why_Audio_Quality_Matters




*I am technical and boring.

 

[egg_]

Small music and other retail has been dying out for years anyway. The combination of digitalisation, with both the download market and illegal sharing, and increased competition from supermarkets and the like are putting the final nails in the coffin of small independent record shops and bookshops.

Not every small record shop/bookstore is a shining beacon like Road. There's a load of bookshops in Drogheda filled with discount titles, bestsellers and nothing else, and most country record shops are similar - they stock the top 60, some country'n'irish and a few Dubliners compilations. The internet is a fucking godsend for provincial book- and music-lovers, and the crappy shops deserve to die

 

[Bold Lump]

One of my favourite albums of the year that i doscovered in Road and as of yesterday they still had a copy.

Aidan Baker & Tim Hecker - Fantasma Parastasie

http://blog.favorite10.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/9039-cover.jpg

Fantasma Parastasie sees the union of two leading figures in Canada's experimental music scene: electronic musician Tim Hecker and ambient doom monger Aidan Baker, of the band Nadja. Anyone with even a passing interest in the two artists will know there's a clear common ground between them: fewer musicians have made more of a compositional feature of distortion. While Hecker has moved from the refined, Fennesz-like structures of Radio Amor to the murky grandeur of Harmony In Ultraviolet, Baker has expanded the vocabulary of the sludge metal genre with his glow-in-the-dark phosphorescent tones. Consequently, Fantasma Parastasie is an album built on pure sonic texture. It's all too easy for records of this ilk to be consumed by noise outright, but each piece here always somehow ends up with a very tangible and captivating grasp on melody.

Wanted to post what the Road website had to say about it but the site is still getting upgraded/updated.

 

[Jerry Twig]

I do think that less people read books nowadays though. Not because they prefer to read them on screens, but because they spend their book time farting around on the likes of Thumped.

 

[Unicron]

I'd be much the same although i'd be more likely to buy a title i haven't already downloaded.

Problem is though that I was already spending whatever spare cash i had on albums before i had access to, or even heard of MP3s. Teenagers growing up now have better access to illegal downloads than they do good record shops. They may never get into the habit of buying the artifact. i probably wouldn't off. Why scrape together the money for one of the dozen albums you want when you could have them on your computer within the next hour.

I'm buying a comparable amount of music these days as opposed to before I was downloading stuff. But I find that if I download an album I wait until the band comes through Ireland and try to buy it direct from them at the gig whereas before if I wanted the album I'd buy it as soon as it got to the shop.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

Not every small record shop/bookstore is a shining beacon like Road. There's a load of bookshops in Drogheda filled with discount titles, bestsellers and nothing else, and most country record shops are similar - they stock the top 60, some country'n'irish and a few Dubliners compilations. The internet is a fucking godsend for provincial book- and music-lovers, and the crappy shops deserve to die

But those country record stores stock top 60, country'n'irish and a few Dubliners compilations because they sell. If you tried opening a Road Recs in Tullow you might run into problems with turn over. I know all small independent stores are not created equally but I prefer to have them, even the crap ones, over Mega Tesco bullshit any day. That's my preference though.

My family shops' stock in trade is schoolbooks. Otherwise we could never have opened them. I try to stock decent titles but between a Jordan biography and any musical biography her piece of shit will sell 10x more.

I'm not anti-internet, nor anti-technology, I just lament this type of store's passing. As I said in my above post it's equally if not more a consequence of the mallisation of Ireland and encroachment of Tesco and other stores into the markets for music and books and all else they can make room for.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Yeah but I'm poorer than them and although I'm not a business (not yet ladies), i paid for it and therefore i'd like to spend the rest of it.

why would you buy yourself a voucher?

 

[Unclealo]

This is terrible news. I've always seen Road as the heart of decent music in Dublin. Dave and Julie, thanks a million for all the hard work and great music over the many years.

 

[La La]

i agree with gstereo, some kind of gig for Road would be fitting