InterviewEach month, look for new Vinyl Lives Interviews on this page. To view our previously featured interviews, please go to the Archive page. Here, you will be introduced to different independent record store owners --and gain valuable insights into the world of music retailing. With few exceptions, each store segment (or chapter, if you like) will cover existing --currently open-- stores. Several closed stores will also be included. Each particular store is (or was) located in one specific city or locale within the United States. Independent Records and Video: Colorado Springs, Colorado Courtesy of Independent Records “I think it’s a great time to be in the music business and to distribute music and do all kinds of things like that because there’s a model that’s yet to be created.” Not the kind of thing one commonly hears in the music business these days. But this is the sentiment and deep conviction of Judy Negley, part-owner of Independent Records, a seven store Colorado chain. Judy describes herself as “an eternal optimist,” someone who doesn’t conform to what gets passed off as conventional wisdom--she doesn’t subscribe to the sentiment that the sky is falling. “As long as we remain culturally relevant to our communities, then we’re gonna be fine. There’s been a leveling out of the power game when it comes to the consumer versus the distributor or record label or whatever. That’s awesome. You can hear anybody. Everybody has pretty much an equal chance of being listened to. You can go out and buy that music over the Internet or in a store or whatever. It’s out there, it’s available. Anybody can make a CD. It’s cheap, it’s easy. Anybody can put an MP3 on MySpace. That just has made everything much more in the fan’s favor. That’s really exciting. I think people are hearing more interesting things than they ever have before; they certainly have a voice in it, more than they ever have before.” For six of Independent’s seven store locations, the buildings are owned by the company. Only one store is rented, which helps the business financially. Independent is always looking for other places in Colorado to open new stores. Negley mentions that Colorado Springs, where their main store is located, has grown tremendously in the last twenty years. With the increase in population comes the other side of the question about being centrally located. Now there are larger areas of town to cover, more market area to serve.  Independent Records on West Colorado Avenue in Colorado For Negley, there is more opportunity--even taking into account the state of the music business, the costs of doing business, and the declines in CD sales. “We’re actually looking for locations now and looking at opening other stores, if we can afford it. I should couch that in terms that I’ve never been able to afford to open locations, but we’ve done it anyway.” The Colorado Springs area has long been her home. Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1956, Negley was the daughter of an Air Force serviceman. The family moved frequently. When she was very young, her father built a vacation house in Colorado where she spent vacations and summers. When she was ten, her dad retired, moving the family west. In the mid to late 1970s--her college years--she managed Misty Mountain Music in Salida, Colorado, then returned to Colorado Springs in 1981, three years after Independent first opened. Taking a part-time job there, she was contemplating going to law school when she realized: “I just couldn’t give it up.” After becoming manager, Negley says, “I just decided to make it my calling.” Within a year and a half she became a partner, with one-third interest in the company. Since there are more than one or two stores in the Independent chain, the company takes a bit of slagging from consumers--those who want their retail as music industry-free as possible. But Negley doesn’t hold with the idea that small chains can’t be vital to consumers. “This is an indie store,” she says.  Independent Records on Colfax in Denver. Anyway, retailers aren’t agents of the industry. For her, the music industry has always been mired in its own problems. At Independent, the approach to that dilemma means that they try very hard to overcome industry policies and tactics that effectively ruin music for consumers. “I think the biggest danger to the music industry has always been the industry itself. That’s more pronounced now than it ever has been, but it certainly has always been a huge issue. The adversarial relationship that the industry has with consumers is unprecedented. It’s so bizarre. If Toyota blamed their buyers for everything that went wrong with their cars, or because somebody bought some other car, it would be ridiculous.” At Independent, “We really try to appeal to a broad spectrum. Our foundation is in urban music and heavy metal, but particularly urban.” The stores’ demographics skew younger--meaning under 30. Unlike the music industry, predisposed as they are to force-feed consumers with the next platinum selling wish-it-could-be, Negley says, “We don’t just choose the flavor of the month for our customers--we let the customers choose.” If they couldn’t sell music anymore, there’s plenty of other types of merchandise that draws people in. “If music was off the face of the earth tomorrow, that’d be a huge bummer for everyone involved. But we’ve always considered ourselves a lifestyle store, so we’ve always carried a lot of things besides music.” CDs are actually an expensive product for retailers to buy and sell, Judy explains. “So many new releases are selling at cost or below cost.” Trying to compete and hoping that customers purchase quantity is a long shot, so other goods in the store offer better chances for profits.  Vinyl in the bins at the Independent “Smoking accessories, our boutique section, t-shirts”--these are good sellers with good profits. “We sell adult video, which the margins are astounding on. So we have other things besides music.” If music were ever to be out of the equation, she says, “I don’t think it would be nearly as much fun, but we would be able to keep going. “At this store currently, new music is a little over 50% of our sales; used music, right around 30%; and smoking accessories and boutique lifestyle items would be about 20%. We’ve kind of gone against that downward music industry trend. Overall, our CD sales--as a percentage of sales--are holding pretty strong. We’ve dropped some percentage points there, but not phenomenally, so we’re still running, overall, throughout the chain, about 55% new CDs.  CD product at Independent's Colorado Springs (Platte Avenue) store. “We just went through Record Store Day [April 19, 2008]. It was such a positive event. We had so many people coming in just telling us how wonderful it was. We had stores that were up 78% on that day. We got this sense of…positive energy. People want to hear something positive. Why the record industry continues to get pulled out, selected as the failure of the decade, is beyond me because many things are threatened by many potential foes--not just the music industry. It’s just like payola. I mean, you walk into any doctor’s office and everything they have in there is given to them by someone, whether they’re sending them on some junket or whatever--it’s never about the drug companies. “But we always have been on the leading edge of being responsible. That just means that the art form is more important--that people expect a certain threshold to be raised.”  Independent's Platte Avenue store in Colorado Springs. The threat to brick-and-mortar stores posed by the Internet isn’t one that gets a tremendous amount of her attention. Negley feels quite certain that people will always need actual places to shop. “I look out my window and there’s thousands of cars going by on the street. I don’t know about you, but I do look on the Internet--shop for things, research things--but I don’t wanna be just sitting in my house all the time. I love to go out and look at stuff and get it in my hands--the whole instant gratification thing. There’s something just not as fulfilling about that [sitting in front of the computer]. I definitely feel that resurgence--I hear a lot of people talking about that, a lot of our customers.” Younger generations--those Negley feels the music industry chose to overlook in favor of marketing almost exclusively to the baby boomers-- may not have the same feelings for physical stores that the boomers do. “There is a feeling of ‘Oh, my God, this segment has totally dropped out.’ There’s no question that that’s a part of it. But I think that it has always taken a tremendous amount of gumption to depend on a record store for your music--whether you own one or whether you work in one--it’s always taken a certain degree of courage because it’s never easy. I’m sure that maybe some people have done it better, and it’s been easier for them, but for us, every day has been a little dicey. That’s part of what I love about it. The record store business is always kind of edgy.”  Brian Viglione and Amanda Palmer Edgy or not, owning their own buildings has proven to be an essential piece of their business plan. “The smartest thing we did was get into the real estate aspect of it.” The costs of renting, along with numerous other expenses, easily make the idea of operating a music store frightening--with good reason. “If I were signing a lease and it’s twenty five dollars [or more] a square foot--that would have me freaked out a little.” The associated costs of doing business in this day and age is “just enormous,” Negley says. There’s “a lot of overhead, tremendous inventories--it’s very cash intensive, it’s very labor intensive. There’s a lot of things like that. I think there’s so many things, yeah, that scare the living crap out of you.” Being a woman in a male-dominated field isn’t one of those scary things. “I think most industry is male dominated. It’s changed somewhat over the years, but not a lot. There’s still a huge disparity between women in the workplace and men; and I feel it’s more pronounced than possibly anything else, whether it be race, creed, color--whatever. I think the gender thing is a bigger thing. I wasn’t raised that way, with those parameters, so I was never really intimidated by it. “But there were certain things back in the old days that were much more obvious. Sony, for example, as a distribution company--they were blatantly sexist. It was always a good old boys club--lots of sexual innuendo and that kind of stuff. It doesn’t bother me. I think it’s ridiculous. I think we have a lot bigger concerns than somebody making an off-color joke. I’m anything but politically correct. There’s a lot more hideous things happening than that. “My partners and myself, we like young people. If I had to go to work somewhere where everybody was my age, I don’t know, I think I would just slash my wrists. I like working around a youthful environment. It’s fun and it’s creative and it’s innovative--they generally have more open minds.”   Butch Walker (l) and Sick Puppies (r) at Independent Records on Colfax in Denver. Negley sees more positive steps for Independent in the upcoming years. “We don’t know how to do anything else. So, one way or another, we have to keep it going.”  Courtesy of Independent Records. © James P. Goss, 2009. All rights reserved. Design: Mel Goss. |
