The Daily Swarm

Chapel Hill News:

Independent music lovers, say goodbye to one of your most beloved music stores. Schoolkids Records on Franklin Street has closed.

The Chapel Hill store that has been around since the ‘70s—with sister stores in other independent-music-loving places like Athens, Ga., and Morgantown, W.Va.—shut its doors Saturday.

No more hearing the worn, wooden floor creak under footsteps. No more squeezing past other customers down the narrow aisles looking for CDs and vinyl records. No more watching music videos there, or listening to samples at the listening stations.

“Trends have changed to where many, many, many college students are more likely to download than to buy the actual hard goods,” said Mike Phillips, who owned this location along with the Raleigh store.

“We just saw a hard decline in foot traffic on Franklin Street for buying CDs. It’s just got to the point where it’s not worth doing for us anymore.”

AP:

There’s one other thing you need, and it’s getting harder to find: a local record store. The kind of place with poster-covered walls, tattoo-covered customers, and an indie-rock aficionado at the cash register, somebody in a retro T-shirt who helps you navigate the store’s eclectic inventory.

A few years ago on just one block of Chapel Hill’s Franklin Street, the main drag in what’s been called America’s ideal college town, four or five such places catered both to locals and University of North Carolina students.

But with the demise of Schoolkids Records, the last one is gone. Schoolkids had planned to gut it out through March, but couldn’t even make through its final week and shut down Saturday. It’s just the latest victim in an industry hit by rising college-town rents, big-box retailers, high CD prices, and — most importantly — a new generation of college students for whom music has become an entirely online, intangible hobby they often don’t have to pay for.

Chapel Hill is hardly alone. In recent years, perhaps hundreds of independent and small-chain record stores in college towns have shut down or consolidated as music downloading all but eliminated the demand for them.

Seattle P.I.:

After nearly 26 years as the homey basement hub and hangout for Seattle jazz musicians and fans, Bud’s Jazz Records is going out of business.

“I just can’t keep it going anymore,” said James Rasmussen, a Seattle trumpet player and leader of the band the Jazz Police; Rasmussen bought the store from founder Bud Young in 2001.

Bud’s Jazz Records, at 102 S. Jackson St. in Pioneer Square, will be sorely missed by the local jazz community. Known for its unstinting support of local musicians, the store consistently plugged discs by Seattle artists — often unknown — and piles of their CDs crowded the counter.