It’s the most overused meme on the Internet. Too bad it’s true.
When I was growing up in Rochester, NY in the late 80s there were three stores that I must have visited at least once a week as soon as I passed my driving test:
The Village Green was the local bookstore, had one of the few in-store coffee shops, and carried a great selection of magazines, graphic novels, and had an amazing Fantasy/Science Fiction section. I would spend hours reading there. It closed when the national retailers, like Borders, moved into town.
Record Archive is still around, and if you have ever seen or read High Fidelity than you know the kind of record store I’m talking about. Except they had customers, lots of them. The big draw? They had record players, tape players, and cd players, so that you could listen to music before buying it. Or you could ask one of the “obnoxious” but highly “knowledgeable” staff to help you. It was pretty awesome at the time, you could learn about new music and meet interesting people, all in one place. Plus you felt extra cool because whatever you walked out with was guaranteed not to be carried at the mall.
Electronics Boutique was a mall store but it carried the widest selection of video games and was one of the few places you could try before you buy. It too was often populated with well informed, and quite geeky because video games weren’t cool yet, salespeople. All these places had several things in common, a wide selection of products, knowledgeable staff, and a physical location. Wow, have things changed between my time in Rochester during the late 80s and today.
In the last several weeks digital has literally bankrupted physical. The most glaring example is the bankruptcy and announcement that Borders Bookstores will liquidate. Over 400 stores and “miles” of bookshelves will disappear. I guess I should have done more buying and less reading there?
We also saw Apple release it’s new operating system OS X Lion. At launch it was only available via download from the App store. Although Apple has admitted there will be limited availability via USB sticks the predominant distribution mechanism was and will be via online delivery. I was one of the people that was concerned about the process but my own experience was pretty smooth, a 3+ GB download took approximately 35 minutes and an additional 15 minutes to install, not bad considering 1 million users decided to do the same thing on day 1. There are rumors that Apple is actively working on removing physical software sales from its retail stores.
Now speaking of Apple, everyone knows about iTunes and the success they have had distributing music digitally, but very recently a European subscription based service launched in the US. Spotify allows you to choose from three different services levels with an invite only free service. Depending on what level you sign up for you get access to a large library of music with the highest level allowing you unlimited, advertising free, music across all your devices, without an online connection. I’ve been playing with it for over a week, it’s been kind of a game, can I find a song or album that it doesn’t have, I haven’t won that game yet. (Editor’s Note: Try Metallica)
On one level this is a pretty exciting time, I can have access to virtually any piece of literature or music from the comfort of my office chair. If I want a piece of software, no problem, just download it. But it does bring up some interesting questions. Mark Taylor already discussed the current limitations of traditional search. Thinking back to my days at Record Archive I question how you get the “personalities” that often informed my purchases into a digital storefront? Taking that a bit farther, the Village Green bookstore was more than just a storefront. Often there were real connections made by complete strangers, at the very least leading to a new book discovery, sometimes even leading to friendships. Even if we can replace those physical spaces with digital spaces will we be able to recreate those physical interactions and their benefits?
I’d like to hear back from you and have a couple of questions to get the discussion started:
- Do you think the move from physical to digital is all good, all bad, or some combination?
- Can we recreate the physical experiences of bookstores or record stores online?
- Are we losing something by the loss of physical connection?
- Are we gaining something by the loss of physical connection?
- What made your favorite store special and can you capture that online?
I look forward to your thoughts.
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About Len Zheleznyak
I don’t think it’s so much the move from physical to digital that causes a lot of the problems you describe, it’s the monopolization of retail in general. The move from small locally-owned shops (or websites) to giant soulless discount outlets leads to exactly the kind of de-personalized service you describe.
Let’s face it, buying a cd at Tower Records isn’t really any different from buying it online. The cashiers there tend to be students looking for a quick buck, not hardcore audiophiles doing what they love. They can’t tell you any more about the difference between Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis than a website can.
OTOH, I do love the instantaneous thrill of living in the future. When my son wants a new videogame for his PC, he never has to leave the air conditioning. He hands me his allowance, I logon to my PC, buy the game as a gift, a notice pops up on his PC, and he downloads it instantly. He’s playing it within 20 minutes of deciding to buy it.
Change is constant, and I think only the people who remember when the Buggles premiered on MTV (or, for that matter, who remember when MTV played music) who rail against it. But I know where you’re coming from. I yell at kids to get off my lawn, too.