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These guys are rock stars at this year’s convention. It’s a marked difference from their seeming irrelevance at the confab some 10 years ago.

MUSIC BIZ 2013: RECORD PLAYERS

Our Retail Guru Hails Record Store Day. Wanna Buy a Gently Used Nielsen/Pearson LP?
The incredible success of this year’s Record Store Day has prompted NARM’s Music Biz 2013 convention to hold not one, but two town hall sessions to discuss how to keep improving on their national and international brand. Both days were full to capacity with retailers, wholesalers, distributors and labels in attendance.

Over the two days, the biggest concern—of the many that were addressed—was the allocation of titles to individual stores. Retailers were complaining (though maybe that’s too harsh a term) that they in many cases didn’t know what they were going to have on their shelves until the shipments actually arrived.

Seeing as there are now almost 1,000 participating U.S. stores, and many of the suppliers were only manufacturing 500 to 1,000 on many titles, it’s easy to see how many retailers can get left out in the cold when it comes to getting some of the more coveted units of the specialty vinyl releases. Many said it was like playing the lottery, and they discussed how to get somewhere close to a "build to order" model. That’s a tricky proposition unless the lead time is increased significantly because of a shortage of vinyl manufacturers in the states.

There was also a lot of talk of how to better inform their retail base about "the RSD pledge" that has to be signed and verified before any product can get shipped to the stores, especially stores that are being serviced by one-stops who are told (sometimes at the last minute) that they can’t ship to certain customers.

The pledge consists of some basic rules that in their minds protects the integrity of the brand, such as what time stores can open for operation (no midnight sales, etc.), a promise that they won’t be gouging their customers for extra margin or sell for more than 20% over mark up on eBay or Amazon after the fact. They absolutely forbid using eBay for "auction" purposes, permitting only a "buy now" option.

The subject of turntables was also a hot topic. Not a big deal? It is to them. Many had a problem with the fact that budget turntable maker Crosley made, in many retailers’ opinion, such a lousy product. Crosley is a huge sponsor and a big financial contributor to the event, although stores are not required to stock the product, they certainly are encouraged to do so. It’s an amazing fact that some 50% of customers buying vinyl on RSD do NOT own a turntable.

Sponsorships came up and some complained about the Beck’s beer ad in Rolling Stone that featured a thirtysomething male reminiscing about his childhood memories of going to buy music at Media Play. Of course, Media Play was a national, mall-based retailer owned by Musicland. Not exactly the messaging that many of these indies were looking for. Newbury Comics founder Mike Dreese was very outspoken (I know, I was shocked too), saying that 80% of America still didn’t know what RSD was and that if they had any chance to get use of a megaphone that big, they shouldn’t be quibbling over the small stuff.

There was some bitter complaining about the fact that most believe Soundscan is under-reporting the RSD vinyl sales. And some took it a step further to wonder about vinyl sales getting under-reported all year long, not just on that one day. An SS insider told me he disagreed about the problem being as widespread as these retailers believe, noting many of the stores selling vinyl on RSD are not SS reporters, such as used-vinyl shops that only sell "new" product on that day.

They also addressed this year’s Black Friday RSD. When BFRSD was first proposed some three years ago, the argument was over whether to allow 5 or 10 titles to participate, thinking that any more than that would be an over-reach. Last year there were some 70 titles in the program for BF, and there now seems to be general agreement that the number can stretch to 100.

The April 2013 event boasted just under 500 titles, and just goes to show how freaking big this thing has become. These guys are rock stars at this year’s convention. It’s a marked difference from their seeming irrelevance at the confab some 10 years ago.



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