The mall was never the place for cool kids or true heads to get their music fixes, but in 2014 they couldn’t even if they wanted to. The scant number of crates at the sprawling Alderwood complex can be thoroughly dug in a couple of hours. Something is seriously amiss in the suburban music-retail ecosphere when the best spot for purchasing music is Urban Outfitters. Not one store strictly dedicated to selling recorded music occupies real estate at this Lynnwood consumer paradise. If Alderwood is an accurate gauge of mainstream American consumption habits (and why wouldn’t it be?), digital has won. Industry pundit Bob Lefsetz may be wrong about a lot of topics, but on this issue, he seems to have nailed it. While some still mourn the death of Tower Records and hundreds of other mainstream music emporiums that have gone bust in the last 15 years, most of the population has blithely moved on, embracing cloud-based services for their sonic gratification.
As a staunch champion of vinyl and someone who still buys a few handfuls of CDs every month, I find music retail’s steady post-Napster decay depressing. Say what you will about the convenience of purchasing music on a computer or a phone, but it will never replace visiting a brick-and-mortar establishment and rifling through the goods alongside other humans…
