All Good Things (Come To An End)

So said the pop chanteuse and philosopher Nelly Furtado. We still get people in the shop disappointed we don’t have a huge range of Bright Eyes merchandise as well as every CD but truth be told we lost their fans to DC (direct to customer) as the music industry calls it quite a while ago now.

I suppose we are best known for our support of Neutral Milk Hotel and to this day it remains are biggest ever selling album. We sold it in the shop and online as nobody else even bothered to list it and buying so many at a time we got a good price. However once it was available on a spreadsheet from the distributor PIAS it was uploaded to all platforms as they call Amazon, eBay etc and that “special” price only available to shops became available to everybody. I’d always said one day everybody would catch on and of course eventually they did though even I was amazed when a customer told me he had seen it on vinyl in Urban Outfitters. So strong is the association that we do still get people who come in to buy the album specifically from Avalanche. Unfortunately the vinyl has been out of stock since the PIAS/SonyDADC fire and that as they say is another story.

Neutral Milk Hotel is on Domino in the UK and there was also a time that was our biggest label though again now we sell very little. As soon as they started selling via Domino Mart and offering incentives to buy from them directly customers started to switch. As labels looked to fill the huge gaps left where their releases were not available shops that did support them then became collateral damage in their strategy. I’ve spoken to Laurence Bell the owner of Domino and I must say there are no hard feelings. We all have to move on.

And so we did as small Scottish labels and artists that we had supported since their inception such as Fence and King Creosote started to grow in popularity. Bands like Broken Records signed to prestigious label 4AD and other local labels and bands such as Song by Toad and Meursault came to the fore. Things have gone from strength to strength over the last two or three years and while bands have struggled to find labels and distribution we have managed to sell hundreds of their albums adding up to many thousand. Withered Hand has sold 450 copies in the last two years and is joined by Meursault, Kid Canaveral, Pictish Trail, Savings and Loan, There Will Be Fireworks and a host of others most recently joined by Star Wheel Press our best selling album this year.

As our end of year chart showed things have changed dramatically in the last 6 months and a combination of aggressive selling directly to fans both online and at gigs, album launches before the official release date and from a shop’s viewpoint poor format choices has led to sales plummeting. All the bigger more established bands on established labels have continued to sell. It hasn’t all been doom and gloom as the success of our Frightened Rabbit in-store on Record Store Day has led to continued support from both the band themselves and their fans. Others such as Mogwai, Biffy Clyro, Belle and Sebastian, Twilight Sad, Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton continue to sell. Though initially we lost a huge number of  sales of the FOUND album to their album launch their showing in our top 20 shows they have a following beyond their core fanbase. Unfortunately this is not true for most bands and indeed we can not afford to lose so many sales as essentially it is the fans of a band we cater for.

The new highly anticipated Withered Hand songs are available with incentives from Fence. Shops may get something subject to availability (though I’ve since seen it claimed some will be reserved) but as I watch my customers tweet they have signed up to buy directly from Fence I’m not sure who will be left to buy any. These are sales we simply can not afford to lose. 

And so we must move on again. We sold a quarter of the 500 Frightened Rabbit ten inch EP available. The Bwani Junction album launch in the shop was a huge success and so have been the sales. They hope to come back to do a Christmas show. Rachel Sermanni’s in-store with Dan of Withered Hand as part of the Born To Be Wide showcase was also a huge success with over 300 people many of whom bought her EP and there is already interest in her new EP due early next year when again she will play in-store. Of course all these artists will have online sales and other marketing but they have all driven a lot of sales to the shop too. There have been one or two other successes such as the Moth and the Mirror album sensibly available on CD but generally we can not survive by just selling to those who couldn’t make an album launch and visitors.

As the songsmith and philosopher Ryan Hannigan of Star Wheel Press said to me recently “so many have to serve their own interests first”. I understand completely but for many artists what seems best in the short term is not necessarily what is best in the medium to long term which is something that crops up in conversation with bands as they become more successful over and over again. We will as always move on.