Observation

Now that your brought it up:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/elev8or-2-ascension-the-feldfanfam-fundraiser#/

The box stores, in my neck of the woods, (Hasting's) selection is disappearing slowly but surely as well.
The two closest ones, Billings & Great Falls are over 100 miles away. So I still do most of my music purchases online for the most part.

I have bought a few discs online from gohastings in the past. Are they like a Target store or more like BB?

I've never been in a Hastings store cuz don't have any locations in my area but I use their online GoHastings site for used CDs all the time. I've probably ordered at least fifty or sixty discs from them over the past couple of years.

Haven't been to a Hastings since around 1998 but I remember they had a huge selection of new and used CD's... I seem to remember it being like a video/book/music store. Nothing like Best Buy or Target and was kind of run down so I didn't even put them in the same group as a department store.

I am from Amarillo originally..The headquarters of Hastings...Hastings is like Barnes and Noble except they sell tons and tons of cd's and now vinyl as well as being a video rental store... They rent movies, sell movies, sell cd's, sell vinyl, magazines, books and various collectables..

I'm only familiar with Hastings as an Amazon seller account (at least, I'm assuming that's what "GoHastings" is about). Not bad to do business with, but I try to buy new when I'm in the market as often as is practical, so they don't often have the prices I'm after.

It does seem a weird mix now, doesn't it? I mean, go on Amazon and especially third party sellers and they're just throwing CDs around left, right, and center. I've gotten a ton of really awesome box sets where the discs were less than $10 each that cover a band's entire discography (those are the best and my drug of choice). The stuff is everywhere... except for the brick and mortar stores. Those places are giving up on physical media sales like nobody's business. Seems weird because, with the prices going down, it shouldn't be hard to have a humble markup and turn a profit just by being the only game in town with a meaningful selection.

Thanks for the info guys. That actually looks pretty cool, and I wish we had some on the east coast.

When virgin opened its first store here around 2002, it had a huge collection of cds and a large section of metal.
Today, virgin has become more of a ticketing office and a place to buy technology, toys and gadgets, and the cds, of all genres, are piled up in 3 or 4 stands. Too bad. They didn't even get the new iron maiden yet.

Just an example, the new Soul Asylum album is on sale for $13.88 at Newbury Comics. That sale price won't last. When it's no longer on sale, it'll cost you $18.99. Just a standard album. No DVD, no bonus tracks, no special packaging. Just a single, normal CD...for $18.99.

Eyesore wrote:

Just an example, the new Soul Asylum album is on sale for $13.88 at Newbury Comics. That sale price won't last. When it's no longer on sale, it'll cost you $18.99. Just a standard album. No DVD, no bonus tracks, no special packaging. Just a single, normal CD...for $18.99.

Sounds like FYE pricing. They have CD's priced so high, I never buy anything but I look around. They have the best selection around but even they have moved more toward t-shirts and other things. The vinyl section has been expanded and moved from the back of the store to the front and they have a nice selection but a bit overpriced unless something is on sale. I saw the new WASP on vinyl, on sale for 22.99. Some of the used stuff is hit or miss, anything remotely "classic" is 19.99. I saw "The Wall" for 19.99, almost got it because it was the latest pressing on 180 gram vinyl. Should've grabbed it because FYE sells it new for 69.99.

The last FYE near me closed a month or so back. While picking through their fire sale (completed my Megadeth collection, for one), couldn't help but notice regular CDs in crap digipacks or cardboard sleeves selling for $20 because it was the "deluxe edition" with one track over the regular one. Talk about absurd.

While I felt bad for the people who worked there, it's not a surprise they weren't able to keep the business rolling.

The FYE in the mall near my office closed up about five years ago. I made out like a frickin' bandit during their month-long going-out-of-business sale. I was running up there on my lunch break two or three times a week for their entire final month. I'm probably lucky I didn't get fired cuz I kept coming back late from lunch - it was very easy to lose track of time while pawing thru the stacks.

I had missed out on Tower Records' and Sam Goody's fire sales when they went down the tubes, so when FYE hit the wall, I sez "Finally, I can profit from someone else's corporate misery!"

FYE is a joke. I posted this on Facebook a few months ago to illustrate this fact.

It's a shame that those budget lines like The Nice Price, Best Value, Super Saver Series, Geffen Goldline, etc are no more.

Addy wrote:

Most laptops now dont even come with cd/dvd roms anymore I just saw a new laptop that didnt even have an ethernet port (cuz more and more are using wireless)

I bought an external cd/dvd player for my laptop. The great thing about this, is that you only plug it in when you need it, and if the player dies, you don't have to rip apart the laptop to fix it! Good for ripping and backing up the cd collection.

Many laptop manufacturers have dropped ethernet ports to make their machines slimmer and lighter. A USB/ethernet adapter is one inexpensive solution. Ironically, I occasionally need an ethernet connection to tackle wireless issues!

Eyesore wrote:

FYE is a joke. I posted this on Facebook a few months ago to illustrate this fact.

I don't know that the CD is highly sought after or anything, but it is out of print and that price is the same as third party sellers on Amazon and Discogs, so it's not really that crazy, I'd say.

It is always a bummer when people working in used CD stores know albums are out of print because they mark them accordingly. Conversely, I've gotten some excellent OOP CDs for $5 or $6 at used CD stores.

A buddy of mine works at an indie record store out my way and he's made the point that you HAVE to pepper in some cool rarities from time to time with the normal used stuff because it keeps people browsing and engaged with your stock. He's gone with me to some *ahem* more rarified establishments that upcharged for all kind of special distinctions, import status and the like without actually being DIFFERENT CDs.

And yeah, if you've got clientele who have cash to burn and care about that sort of thing, you'll probably do ok business. However, to keep most people browsing, you've got to give some kind of impression that any given browser may find treasure at a reasonable price in the racks.

Runicen wrote:

A buddy of mine works at an indie record store out my way and he's made the point that you HAVE to pepper in some cool rarities from time to time with the normal used stuff because it keeps people browsing and engaged with your stock.  He's gone with me to some *ahem* more rarified establishments that upcharged for all kind of special distinctions, import status and the like without actually being DIFFERENT CDs.  

And yeah, if you've got clientele who have cash to burn and care about that sort of thing, you'll probably do ok business.  However, to keep most people browsing, you've got to give some kind of impression that any given browser may find treasure at a reasonable price in the racks.

That's a good point. I never really thought of that.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

It is always a bummer when people working in used CD stores know albums are out of print because they mark them accordingly. Conversely, I've gotten some excellent OOP CDs for $5 or $6 at used CD stores.

I noticed that about my local FYE. I used to find good cheapies all the time, but they finally got wise and started price-checking. They still have a copy of Queen of the Stone Age's debut album (which as since been re-issued) in their racks for $36.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

ZombieHavoc wrote:

It is always a bummer when people working in used CD stores know albums are out of print because they mark them accordingly. Conversely, I've gotten some excellent OOP CDs for $5 or $6 at used CD stores.

I noticed that about my local FYE. I used to find good cheapies all the time, but they finally got wise and started price-checking. They still have a copy of Queen of the Stone Age's debut album (which as since been re-issued) in their racks for $36.

The problem is, they're basing their prices on what stupid Amazon and eBay sellers are pricing things at. Just because one dummy puts a CD online for $50 doesn't mean charging $49 is sensible. Both are still likely way overpriced.

What makes this worse is, many sellers use outside companies to monitor other sellers' prices and automatically raise or lower prices accordingly. This is why you occasionally see multiple sellers on Amazon selling a CD for thousands of dollars. No one is at the wheel, you know, so if one dope mistakenly lists a CD for $1099 instead of $10.99, the other sellers follow suit. Then you've got places like FYE and Newbury Comics joining in and...well, you get the mess that we have out there now and people stop buying music because it's overpriced.

The only perk is that you can periodically make out like a bandit over a clerical error. I scored a Magnum box set for under $15 new because Amazon got weird with their pricing. No complaints from me!

Runicen wrote:

The only perk is that you can periodically make out like a bandit over a clerical error.  I scored a Magnum box set for under $15 new because Amazon got weird with their pricing.  No complaints from me!

When Bon Jovi put out that box set years ago, my local Walmart mistakenly priced them at $19.99. I bought all of them, kept one, sold the rest.

You can also work the system a bit on Amazon. For ages there were two sellers selling the first EP by The Coral, both for about $50. So I decided to try something. I uploaded my own copy for sale (which of course didn't exist), priced it at $12, and within a day one of the sellers priced their copy at $11.99, or something like that. I immediately bought it, then removed my copy. =)

Even this was a sweet deal for me, it just makes me hate FYE even more. This makes NO sense.



Both came out in February! WTF?

All but 1 FYE are closed in my state (RI). There used to be about a half dozen. There was one that was a mile from where I lived and I purposefully would not go there. I would actually drive 30 miles out of the way to Newbury Comics. The selection was terrible, the prices absurd, and the elitist and clueless teens that worked there put me over the edge. And what's with the constant pushing of magazine subscriptions in addition to reserving copies of things that will be for sale everywhere? I know they want to guarantee a sale (and take one away from their competition) but it's not like these are exclusive editions or anything. Target or Walmart will have Star Wars or Lady Gaga for sale too, and usually much cheaper. I have come to realize that FYE is good for the music of the masses. The currently hip and trendy is usually cheap there. But, the Metal is not.