working at a record store

b) open your own

I worked in a few stores when I was younger and it was a good time. It is a fun job, but I really could not afford to have a job that paid starvation wages. A couple years ago I was asked to do the electronic music ordering at a local indie shop. It would have been a good opportunity, but they were offering peanuts. Again, it is a fun job, but not if you want to eat, pay rent, and maintain a car.

Mr. Blount is OTM, working at a record store = vastly overrated

I worked at Musicland when I was in high school, and for that I just walked in and applied.

I worked at Repeat The Beat for a summer after high school, and I got that by becoming good friends with the guy who managed the store.

The nameless indie store asked me because I was special ordering about 60-100$ bucks worth of minimal techno and IDM vinyl a week from them for about 4 months before I turned to S://kimo. They had no idea what I was ordering, and actually stocked their electronic section according to my purchases. After I stopped shopping there they asked me to do their ordering. The only problem was they wanted to pay virtually nothing to do it. I counter offered and they never replied back.

They tried doing it themselves and absolutely fell on their faces. There are some soul grapes over it, because I feel like they were really trying to pimp me, and I wasn't going to have it. I have no idea what is going on these days in EM, but back then I knew a thing or two. A lot of owners want a knowledgeable staff, and want to sell records according to your tastes, but they don't want to pay for your specialist knowledge. I am not going to say that I am bitter, but I am wary of selling records for anyone other than myself these days.

i'm just imagining what sort of wine you could make from soul grapes..

perhaps my second post belongs in the "We've all made mistakes" thread.

It was fun because I opened the store, and did not have to deal with the high school kids. It was pretty much me playing records and sorting cd's. I can think of a few worse ways to spend an afternoon. It was fairly quiet, there was not nearly as much traffic as the Dearborn or Royal Oak stores. It was never a citadel of cool, but it was still miles ahead of working at a corporate chain store.

I can only imagine how bad it was, Royal Oak is pretty horrible no matter how you slice it. It did have good record stores back then, it seems like Neptune is the only one left these days.

There are better jobs. I'd pursue the record store thing only if it's not your only job.

and 2) Record stores will suck your soul. Unless it's a really tiny genre-oriendted indie run by your friends, working at a record store will make you cynical about music, and the music industry, and... well, about people. People are stupid. The first time you see a long line of middle aged women waiting to buy tickets to the Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts show, you will know what I mean. It's bloody depressing.

But if juice is a girl, I say yes, run with that idea.

Oh, let me just stop myself right there.

when i was hopeful i would sit around and try and devise ways to make things better, but ultimately these things would require a lot more agression on our part, and nobody seems to want to rock the boat. our soulution to losing money on cds is to stock more dvds. thats it. as soon as everyone has broadband, more people will pirate movies, and then our store will just be sideline items (cute picture books of cats and dogs and also chocolate bars).

i used to want to work there full time and really help out, but now i have cut my hours significantly, and am basically just taking advantage of the discount (35%). also the other employees are nice.