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07/01/2005 Entry: "Demise of the local indie record stores"

I've written before about how the internet has ruined record shopping for me. Using search engines to find rare stuff is no longer interesting. Music consumption is now disposable: you can pretty much get whatever you want. And (finally) the music is again more important than the packaging. Digital media has made "special packaging" irrelavant.

Our Minneapolis/St. Paul weekly freebie, Pulse of the Twin Cities, has a great article about the local record store scene. One of the best in the cities, Let It Be Records, is now closed (and I was just there three weeks ago).

It's interesting the article slams big box retailers such as Target and Best Buy (and the evil empire from AR), online retailers such as amazon.com, and the changing tide of the music buying population. There are people do not have CDs (in fact my wife's collection is all on her iPod). Some of the younger buyers probably don't remember what live without an iPod or CD burner is like.

I miss record shopping. On the other hand, there's not too much rare stuff left for me to get. And if I do want it, I'm pretty sure I can find it online too.