Jacksonville Beach music store calling it quits (from the Times Union today)

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CD Connection could not survive online downloading

Sad, but true story out at the beach....good read though and sales for those who still give CDs, instead of Apple Itunes cards:

The posters of Frank Sinatra, Bob Marley and Jack Johnson will be coming down along with the album covers that line the walls. The CDs and albums that don’t get sold in the next two weeks will be boxed up and shipped off.

CD Connection, owned by Terry Dixon, has been a fixture in Jacksonville Beach for 10 years and even spent a couple of years as the highest-grossing independent record store in the Southeast. But it’s closing. Sales are down, his rent is going up, so he’s packing it in, everything must go.

Part of the problem is the same economic problems affecting retail everywhere. But there are more forces at work here, and record stores across the country are disappearing. According to Billboard magazine, there were about 9,500 chain music stores in the U.S. in 1991. By 2006, that had dropped to 2,000 and has continued to decline.

The big chains such as Tower Records and Wherehouse are now just Web sites, with no walk-in stores. The last Virgin Megastores in the U.S. closed earlier this year, including the one in New York’s Times Square that had been the largest music retailer in the country with more than $50 million in annual sales. CD Warehouse, a national chain selling new and used CDs, had several stores in Jacksonville. But all have closed.

Independent stores such as CD Connection have also been hit hard, but no figures are available for those.

The way Dixon sees it, he was hit by a perfect storm: The recession, online buying of CDs, online downloading and simple piracy.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimates that more than 40 billion music files were illegally downloaded last year, accounting for 95 percent of all music downloads.

“I don’t believe we should throw them in jail,” Dixon said. “I don’t think it means they aren’t going to heaven. But stealing is one of the 10 Commandments. Thank God he didn’t give us more than 10, because we seem confused about the ones we have.”

With so much music acquisition bypassing cash registers, all areas of the music industry have been slammed. Last year, 428 million albums were sold in the U.S., 357 million less than in 2000.

Dixon said he saw it coming a couple of years ago, when he had a band play in his store in front of hundreds of fans. Everyone loved them, he said, but he sold only 32 CDs.

Dixon started the store 10 years ago. He’d owned a record store back when he was a student at the University of Kentucky. “The best time of my life,” he said.

But he left it behind when he went into the corporate world. He spent more than 20 years with Philip Morris, ending as a sales manager who spent much of his life on the road.

All that changed when he moved from Gainesville to Jacksonville in 1994.

“We had an infant son,” Dixon said, “and I wanted to sleep in my bed and watch Morgan grow up. One of the first things I noticed when we moved here was where is the great music store in Jacksonville? We had chain stores, but when I’d go there to buy music, I’d come home empty-handed.”

So one afternoon about a decade ago, Dixon was sitting on a barstool at the Monkey’s Uncle Tavern and saw Hoyt’s Stereo moving out of a storefront just a few doors down. Eight weeks later, CD Connection opened.

It’s a classic-looking record store with racks and racks of CDs, and a few albums. A couple of years ago, he had about 35,000 CDs and albums and employed 11 people. Now he’s down to six employees, and selling everything at cost before his lease runs out at the end of the month.

“Sales haven’t been catastrophically bad,” Dixon said. “But I just don’t see how we can continue.”

He’s seen it throughout the industry. A few years, each of the major labels had sales reps based in Florida. Lately, he’s been dealing with people in Dallas and Nashville, Tenn.

There are exceptions. Jerry West opened his record store at 34th and Moncrief back in 1968. In 1974, he moved it to the corner of Edison and McDuff. And DJ’s Record Shop is still in business there.

Sales have dropped off a lot in the past couple of years, he said. The construction on McDuff hasn’t helped him any.

It’s old-school soul and blues that most of his customers are looking for, the classic stuff from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. And they still come by for CDs, vinyl and cassettes, a bit of everything.

“We’ve still got 45s,” West said.

For Dixon, something will be lost when the record store is gone and customers simply order from Amazon or download from iTunes rather than walk in to browse through rack after rack, box after box for something that’s not at the top of the charts.

“I saw a study that said that when you spend $1 in a local store, 70 cents stays here,” Dixon said. “When you spend it in a national chain, 40 cents stays here.

“But when you spend $1 online, it’s gone.

“Digital service is going to monopolize the market,” Dixon said. “I’ve never seen that monopolies sit well with the American people, and I have a feeling that they won’t like what they end up with.”