Pure Groove's website closing today
Sad to see Pure Groove closing down their website today after the shop closed last year. Sure their only stocking 100 items in their shop a couple of years ago was a bit crazy but they did great in-stores and Simon who I met a few times as he is originally from Glasgow always came over as a nice bloke. Just like Smallfish before it another specialist website and shop in London that had to close the huge amount of effort needed to maintain these great sites and shops were not rewarded enough by sales. To some extent people would take all the information and reviews from these sites but then try to buy cheaper elsewhere but more and more it seems now people don’t really feel the need to physically own the limited seven inch they see reviewed at all and at best legally download the tracks but most likely just listen whenever they wish through streaming or acquiring the tracks for free.
Probably the most annoying advice anybody could give me just now is that offering good customer service will see me triumph over cheap online sellers and downloading. People not only now expect their music for free but also all the associated information and advice. It is bad enough that people come in with notebooks writing down all the bands we recommend so they can go away and listen to them but we regularly spend 10 minutes or more with a customer telling them about a band or bands and when we offer to play them something they just say they will go away and listen at home. It isn’t just Scottish bands as I’ve noticed more and more I get asked about bands like Beirut and often with a band like that we do play something for the customer but still they claim to like it but will go away and “listen to some more”.
As we sell more t-shirts and posters the difference is becoming very clear. Customers who ask if we have any Foo Fighters posters invariably buy them. Customers looking for a Dead Kennedys t-shirt are happy to spend £15. Visitors who say they would like to buy a CD from a Scottish band who sound like Belle and Sebastian, Frightened Rabbit, Twilight Sad etc will always find something to buy and the Savings and Loan album seems to have a mesmerising effect that makes people buy it but 70% of the time now even when a customer comes up to ask what we are playing they don’t buy it when 5 years ago 80%+ of customers would buy.
The biggest problem is that it is the sort of customer that goes to an independent shop that behaves like this. They know they will get little help from a big store. Though we sell the Adele album funnily enough nobody has ever asked me what she sounds like. Similarly nobody would normally consider buying directly from Adele or her label to “support” her as an artist or her independent label. I doubt if even the SONY/DADC fire has changed this. It may just be that the sort of artists and labels that independent shops and websites like Pure Groove support have fans who feel their first loyalty is to the band and their label however much support the shop/site gives while others have convinced themselves that not even the bands deserve their money and download for free. The former of course is a personal choice while the latter is very hard to justify.
Today I’ll be looking for more t-shirt and poster companies.