I don't believe it's the end of brick and mortar stores but it's the end of huge mega-chain music stores. A lot of it has to do with the price of cds and lack of variety/quality material out there. Likewise, mp3 downloads have been huge in bringing down sales. Walmart and other big box stores selling cds at lower prices plus giving you the benefit of buying other budget crap really undercuts those stores.
Brick and mortars still should survive if they tailor themselves to niches, either to serve as accessory stores where you can buy posters, t-shirts or portable media player stuff, or to serve a different audience which still likes vinyl records, best-of, boxed sets, rare albums etc. Dunno how profitable or if it is still profitable to sell a medium such as cds which are slowly being overtaken by digital media and coming soon flash memory. Either diversify more or fall it seems to be the case.
|