Wednesday, June 25, 2008

G, N, or B?

Puttering around Greenbelt 3, I popped into Music One, shocked! Shocked I tell you! First, they've cut off half the space, and the entire store looks dreary and grey. I was probably only 1 of 4 customers wandering the shelves. Has downloadable music and movies caused this or simply the malaise of running a brick and mortar store in the city these days?

Perhaps the reason for people staying away has to do with the lack of expert sales knowledge. I asked for three cd titles, they eventually found one of them, but the other two were just too much for the saleslady. She went up and down the racks looking for the name of the group. A true lost soul, she first thought the group's name, Gnarls Barkley, was a person's name. Started by checking the B's, then with a bit of prodding that it wouldn't be sorted by "last name", she went off to the N's. Oh dear. I figured Yael Naim would not be any easier to find. When she asked another salesclerk, he gave her a look that said "why are you asking me?" No, these are not the right people to ask for alternative music titles. Off to Amazon.

2 comments:

Katrina said...

There are NO more decent music stores in the country. We had just a few short years of Tower and Music1 finally providing us with non-Top40 CDs and sales clerks who actually knew something about what they were selling, then PFFFT! Tower downsized, then shut down. M1 is now following suit. Then all we'll have left, just like in the dark ages, is Odyssey (the name change to O and the internet marketing they've been doing doesn't mean crap). And Odyssey may soon stop selling music, too, judging by their store in Rockwell getting smaller, and most of the shelf space being taken over by DVDs.

And yes, I do believe pirated CDs and downloads are at least partly to blame. I've heard people say they never buy CDs anymore. I do, but I can't find the ones I want. :-/

grumpyurbanslacker said...

Ahh, sorry for saying this, but i think you're partly to blame :D if you want the salesladies to be able to help you, pls. dont ask for anything beyond Christian Bautista / Nina / Beyonce / Akon... they simply don't pay attention.

just like Fully Booked, before they had this girl at the Rockwell branch who actually read books and knew who the Chinese author Ha Jin was (great stuff, btw); but now...tsk, tsk...

oh well... :D

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