How Will They Survive?:
Record Store Owners on the Threat of New Technology
By Art Howard
Published circa April 22, 2005

The name Shawn Fanning is not as well-known as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but in the annals of Internet folklore it possibly looms larger. In 1999 Fanning was an 18-year old employee at his uncle's struggling online gaming company. Legend has it that in one 60-hour sprint he wrote the code for what became Napster, a file-sharing computer network that spawned lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America, metal band Metallica and hip hopper Dr. Dre. It also ignited a new media revolution.

The idea was that instead of downloading files, primarily mp3 music files, from a single server, Internet chat pager technology could be used to find out when two users were online, allow them to search each other's hard drives and download content from each other for free. Copyrighted recordings began flying dorm room-to-dorm room faster than you could say DSL and Napster was quickly in legal hot water.

The legal wrangles brought down the original Napster but there are legions of imitators opening and closing all the time. And as late as February the RIAA announced new lawsuits against 753 file sharers.

If file sharing threatens the music industry at large surely it means death for that small, independent record retailer around the corner, right? Well, maybe not says Eric Levin, owner of Little Five Points' Criminal Records, "When I was a kid I would go over to my friend's house and trade and tape each other's records. That's the Internet. It's just easier."

Harry DeMille, proprietor of Wax n' Facts, also in Little Five Points, says the record industry may be ruing a loss it has never suffered, "It probably cut into the sales of newer, trendier stuff somewhat. But you can't just presume those sales would be happening, anyway. Maybe the industry is selling fewer units because the music is not as good? Has anyone ever posited that notion?"

One person positing that notion is Douglas Rushkoff, documentarian, lecturer and author of several books on new media and cyber culture. Says Rushkoff, "Mega media companies bought music companies because of the spike in CD sales shortly after they were invented. They didn't look at the components of the spike, however, and realize it was just baby boomers buying CD versions of their favorite records. By the time the industry was owned by the conglomerates the spike was over, and new business practices were in place that didn't allow for the development of new artists or the distribution of smaller ones. Meanwhile, people started getting files by (sharing) because they hated an industry that charged more for CDs which cost less to make than records."

"I don't care if I look in a kid's car and he's got 10 burned CDs floating around, because he's also got two or three things he bought," Criminal Records' Levin says, "and maybe he's got the vinyl album or a magazine." At the same time he tsk-tsks what he considers theft. "I just can't imagine that you could be a fan of something and a thief at the same time."

Criminal Records has embraced the Internet insofar as it has a Web site, which Levin says he considers as necessary as a business card. Wax n' Facts does not have a site, however, Harry DeMille says because, "I feel like I owe Atlanta a lot and certainly I owe my regular customers. Putting stuff online without giving them first dibs on it just seems discourteous." Though a proponent of cyber culture Rushkoff believes small stores are here to stay, "I don't believe that live interaction is a thing of the past. I think that the disappearance of such institutions has made music buying less fun. If people want a culture around music collecting they'll need places to do this. The mom-and-pop store has been replaced by the DJ store - a kind of record store where people go and listen to music and talk to one another. These stores are thriving, indeed."

"Ever since the advent of the Internet and downloading free music people have been saying it's the end of the music industry. Well we're still here and in fact we're doing better than ever," Levin says.

"If you can't have a successful operation in a city closing in on 5 million people maybe you're doing something wrong," DeMille opines.