Tipping points

Travelling back to South Wales later today to visit family. Doubtless while I'm there I will pop into Spillers Records, which, when I was a youth, was the only oasis of alternative music in a sea of Our Price and HMV mass-market medicocrity (my first purchase at the shop: Bummed by Happy Mondays on cassette). Sadly, Spillers (incidentally, the oldest record shop in the world), is now threatened with closure as the latest round of redevelopment of the city centre into a shopping, drinking and dining 'destination', will see the shop's rent jacked up to an unaffordable level. I will be putting my name to the petition to save the shop, although, with the rise of download culture and MySpace, the future of traditional record stores everywhere must be in some doubt. This article from Adam Webb highlights how the role of the indie record store as a source of recommendations of little-known and unheard music to the hip and wannabe hip has been usurped by online social networking sites. But, the stores are fighting back, as the comments from Rough Trade's Stephen Godfrey illustrate.
Of course Rough Trade, unlike Spillers, is also a record label and one of its new tactics is to offer limited edition downloads (a contradiction in terms, but something that at least brings a frisson of mystery back to the hunt for cool music). Still, there is something rather magical about walking into a record shop and chatting to the shop assistants about the latest releases, a feeling that an online store, no matter how good, cannot replicate. Good luck Spillers!