NY Indie Record Shop Continues To Reinvent Itself Online

from the other-music-indeed dept

A little over a year ago, we wrote about the plans by the popular indie record shop in NYC, Other Music, and how it planned to adapt to the changing marketplace for music buying. The store recognized that it couldn't sit still and wait to be consumed like its former neighbor down the street, Tower Records. So it set up its own online download store, with DRM-free tracks for sale from indie acts. However, the real key to its business was in recognizing what the real benefit of a good indie record store has always been: the knowledge and recommendations from the staff (and having been to the Other Music physical store years back, I can attest to their knowledge and recommendations). Business Week has now checked in with the store's owners, who note that the new venture is still very much in its nascent stages, but that they're quite optimistic about where things are headed. "I feel like there's a lot of opportunity if you're willing to shake up your way of thinking, and approach things in different ways and experiment and take chances." Contrast this to what you heard from execs at Tower Records as it failed, or from the record label bosses who refuse to change.

Filed Under: changing market, online, recommendations, record store
Companies: other music