Vinyl, Cassettes & Retail

Indie Leader VanCleave On MP3’s, Exclusives & Imports

Don VanCleave heads the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. Just back from MIDEM he writes:

"…it seemed there was still much confusion about what is really happening on the paid digital side. eMusic is of course doing great and had a big presence. One major player told me that he expected all of the majors to cave into the mp3 reality by the end of the year. I am sure that will happen and that everyone and his brother will then rush in Cims_78
and try to have a digital store. Established brands will win that battle IF there is truly a market for paid mp3¹s by the song."

"The one thing that never changes is all of the walls everyone throws up around physical goods. This country can¹t have this. That song is exclusive to that country. Hot records will get released in the UK and never make it to America or does so 6 months later (i.e. Jarvis Cocker). Meanwhile, kids can fire up the ole computer and get it anyway killing the demand for the later US date. And stores that bother bringing in the import have to charge insane prices because of the oppressive exchange rates."

Read his entire newsletter after the jump and this week’s CIMS indie top 200 here.

Howdy friends,

Just rolled back in from Midem and some additional meetings in the UK. First of all, I am really looking forward to the smoking ban that starts in the UK on July 1 and in France next January. I am not one to lecture anyone else about smoking but that damn sure does not mean I want to breathe or smell like your bad habit.  It was impossible to escape the blue haze over there.
Hell, the French smoke in between bites of food.

As far as business goes, it seemed there was still much confusion about what is really happening on the paid digital side. eMusic is of course doing great and had a big presence. One major player told me that he expected all of the majors to cave into the mp3 reality by the end of the year. I am sure that will happen and that everyone and his brother will then rush in and try to have a digital store. Established brands will win that battle IF there is truly a market for paid mp3¹s by the song.

The one thing that never changes is all of the walls everyone throws up around physical goods. This country can¹t have this. That song is exclusive to that country. Hot records will get released in the UK and never make it to America or does so 6 months later (i.e. Jarvis Cocker). Meanwhile, kids can fire up the ole computer and get it anyway killing the demand for the later US date. And stores that bother bringing in the import have to charge insane prices because of the oppressive exchange rates.

When I got home this week and started digging thru the mountain of mail, I ran across a promo from Mike Gillespie at Concord. It is the ³Stax 50: A 50th Anniversary Celebration² boxed set coming out in March. I got to scanning the incredible track selection and came across the name William Bell.

In 1970, my parents moved us from a wide spot in the road in Western Tennessee down to Macon, Georgia. Two weeks after we moved in, the entire community went crazy because of the giant hippie invasion called the Atlanta Pop Festival. Some of my cousins and my dad went out there but at 12, I was considered too young.  Around the breakfast table, they would all debate whether Jimi Hendrix should have played the Star Spangled Banner the way he did. I remember my dad saying, ³Hell, his damn guitar was even up side down². My dad went out there every day mostly to gawk at all of the naked people walking around.

Later that year, I found out that another cousin was coming to town to see a show and wanted to take me with her. My first concert! It was Stevie Wonder, Edwin Starr and William Bell. I knew who Wonder was obviously and Starr had a huge hit on the radio with ³War². But, I had no clue who William Bell was..

My cousin Billy Jean was kind of the wild kid in the extended family. She had moved to Memphis right out of high school and got really involved in the local scene. She started dating Dan Penn from the Box Tops and occasionally hit the town with BJ Thomas. She also appeared on Johnny Carson as a model from time to time.

By the time she hit Macon in the late summer of 1970, Billy Jean had started dating African Americans. It was the talk of the family of course. Everyone was polite on the surface but really critical out of earshot. My 12-year-old head was spinning over the whole thing. It was wild stuff.

Come to find out, she was dating William Bell, a star at STAX. He was a huge name in the black community but not played on WNEX-AM, so not in my sphere.
We went to the show. She took me backstage and I got to meet Wonder, Starr and Bell. It was magic. It was my first concert and I am already hanging backstage.

The next day, in my lily-white neighborhood, this brand new Cadillac shows up in our driveway to pick up Billy Jean. William Bell was dressed in the finest clothes of the period complete with silk hat. My parents met him out in the drive and helped Billy Jean load her luggage in the trunk. Everyone was super polite but I just could feel the eyes burning into us from behind the neighbors windows.

About ten years later Billy Jean was killed in a drug deal. By then she was back in rural Tennessee and down on her luck. But, I can tell you that going to that show with her and seeing the excitement of the lifestyle thru her is the first real attraction I had to the ³business².  I started paying attention then and there.

Good to see that Concord is going to do the right thing and treat the STAX catalog with the dignity it deserves. I can¹t wait.

Don VanCleave
Coalition of Independent Music Stores
3738 4th Terrace North
Birmingham, AL  35222

205-595-1932 x201
205-595-1938 (fax)

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1 Comment

  1. Fantastic story. What a great first concert experience. More importantly, you nail the idiocy that is killing off music sales faster than an exec can fly his corporate jet to Midem.

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