I’m not that familiar with Lavander Diamond. Are all of their songs produced with Microsoft Songsmith, or just this one?

If record stores are dropping like flies, it’s because they’re largely superfluous these days. That’s hard for me to say, having worked at an independent record store for half a decade, but it’s true. Brick and mortar stores had three main things to offer their customers: 1. New product, 2. Used product/exchanges, and most importantly, 3. Expertise.

With new product, anything a customer wants is available to order through online distributors like InSound, who offer a far greater inventory than a physical store can hope to match. And of course, that physical product is now competing with legal digital downloads. The only real advantage physical record stores have over the internet in terms of new product is the “get it now” factor. Which only works if your customer needs to have their record or CD that day, and you happen to have it stocked.

As for used product, record stored still have the upper hand. There’s nothing quite like the experience of digging through crates of records or CD’s to find a gem you didn’t know you needed, and at a great price to boot. Still, I think online auction sites probably drain a lot of business from record stores for a lot of planned purchases.

I think the biggest thing hurting record stores now is the shift away from record store clerks being important sources of music knowledge. When I worked at a store in the mid 90′s, customers got wind of new music through their friends, monthly publications, or their knowledgeable record store clerk. The clerks had a big advantage, spending hours of their day listening to new music, and were a tremendous resource for customers looking to be exposed to new music. It’s not as though clerks know any less now, but with all the information the internet has to offer, that knowledge is drastically less important. Fans of music in 2009 have the ability to bookmark one or two or ten blogs who share their tastes, read about every new release they’d care about, and hear full or partial previews of any song they’d be interested in. And if that fan doesn’t have the time or energy to devote to this research, their friends often do.

I worked at an indy in the 90′s when stores like Best Buy were rising, selling new CD’s as loss leaders to get people in the store to buy TV’s. We could not hope to compete on price. What kept us in business, at least for another decade or so, was our expertise. People were actually willing to pay a little more to have the knowledge and guidance of clerks who knew their music in and out. Now that knowledge and guidance is available to a music fan at home, 24 hours a day.

Music stores have been dropping like flies because their main competition, the internet, has them beat in almost every way. Even if fans still actually purchase everything they sample and enjoy.

I love my brother dearly. But if he killed himself, leaving behind a fatherless 20-month old baby, with the note: “I haven’t felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing . . . for too many years now”, then I’d be the first person to call him a selfish asshole.

Here’s how life works: When you don’t have children, you get to have all the demons and tragedy you like. When you have a baby, you become an adult, and you give up the luxury of such self-centered activity.