Last week Shoptalk reported Random Play (1587 Barrington Street, 445-1056), the last place to buy music on Barrington, was offering a 20 percent sale through February. Now we’ve heard more news about the business that is bound to disappoint music fans.
“We’ll be closing no later than the end of March,” says owner Steve Brown. “It may be sooner, we’ll see how it goes.”
Beginning March 1 there’ll be a 50 percent off sale on all stock (except consignment). “Basically there’s been a decline in business over time,” says Brown, who admits Random Play has been a money-losing proposition for the past two years. “We tried to shift things up, offering more DVDs and games, and that helped to a mitigating degree.” But, unfortunately it wasn’t enough. “We had a good 11-year run and I’d like to thank all our customers.”
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2011.
The staff at this store always were a friendly/ish bunch, and I enjoyed the atmosphere in there. But like the record labels and the studios, and the Music Worlds and Sam the Record Mans (Sam the Record Men?) of first-run retail, the Random Plays and CD Pluses and other second-hand music stores also fell victim to their own refusal to adjust their profit margins in order to make retailing viable in a broadband world. The prices at Random Play have made me stay away for a few years now, being way too high for used product that ‘s already been ripped and uploaded to share with anyone who wants to listen to or watch it for free. I don’t know if they just kept paying people too much for their merchandise for too long, or what, but with prices like theirs it was only a matter of time.
People pay for music? When paying 20+ bucks for old catalog tapes and records at various record stores (Scotia Square, Sams, that place downstairs in Bayers Road) I always knew there was something wrong and that one day those people who came up with those prices (the whole industry) would someday get their comeuppance. The writing was on the wall with Napster….and then came grooveshark. Fuck you guy from Metallica!
Maybe HRM can come up with a subsidy similar to that offered to Mr Ramia before we see more empty space on barrington.
I disagree. The prices were fair and the quality was great. The staff were a pleasure to talk to. This is very sad.
People still pay for music? It’s been free for years!
It’s not free for everyone to produce it.
Someone somewhere is being overpaid, then.
Hey Brenda K, just like the pack of gum in the corner shop, music is only free if you steal it.
@bitchinlocal, their secondhand prices were as ‘fair’ as the retail prices set by the labels and studios are ‘fair’. The word ‘fair’ represents an idea that by definition is relative, and you throw it out there abstractly.
‘Fair’ does not exist in this dojo.
The fact is that technology has introduced the means to rebel against the exploitation that consumers have had no choice but submit to for too long. Unfortunately it’s the moguls who gained from the profit-gouging in entertainment, the high unit prices for retailers meant that you had to buy and sell in volume to make money. Now, it’s the retailers who are most feeling the pain.
Instead of working out their markup based on the price they pay for goods balanced by the market ( the free market, now the ‘free’ market) like a retailer must, secondhand music and DVD stores like Random Play used retail prices to base their markup on, so they paid, say, 20% of the retail value, and put the same item out to sell, marked at 70% of the retail (or more, I’ve seen bargain bin titles that go for 5 bucks at Walmart, stickered at 8 on their shelves). Their prices were too high, or they wouldn’t be closing up shop.