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With the harsh economic times pressing disposable income to new lows, and with downloading and bootlegging at all-time highs, many of the city's music stores have been rapidly losing customers.
The situation has become so desperate over the last few years, at least five major stores have disappeared from the landscape and the proprietors of those remaining have to be finding new ways of keeping their businesses viable.
It's all they can do to keep from going under.
"Overall, the economy is very weak," says Paul Shoucair, proprietor of Mobile Music in Liguanea. He blames the state of the economy on the American recession, the collapse of several alternative investment schemes and the high price of oil. "People selling discretionary items, such as CDs, are feeling the pinch," he says.
Sizeable chunk
Shoucair has lost a sizeable chunk of his clientele, who usually spend money on CDs. Middle-income earners hardly patronise his store anymore. Among them, kids between the ages of 14 and 18, who used to account for between 10 and 50 per cent of his CD sales. "They have all but disappeared," he reveals. "For them it was no longer a matter of what they wanted, but what they could afford."
Sales of CDs, says Shoucair, who now courts more affluent clients, have flat-lined and now account for about 60 per cent of his revenue.
It's a similar story near Half-Way Tree, one of the busiest shopping areas in Kingston.
The manager of BeeBop, a music store Premier Plaza, who declined to be identified, says she has lost about 80 per cent of her business, mainly from kids who used to buy the latest hip-hop and pop beats. "It's been a continuing decline that started about three years before when the burning of music CDs climaxed and people were downloading and sharing music," she says.
Her store has begun selling refrigerators as well as speakers, speaker boxes, and has gone more into selling other music-related accessories and local plays on DVD. "The rent has to be paid," she says.
The manager of another store, who also declined to be identified, said while CD sales are not their primary source of revenue, sales have fallen by as much as 50 per cent. Her main business is the sale of musical instruments and printed music. She blames the falling CD sales on downloading, file sharing and bootlegging.
Shoucair believes that, in his case, sluggish CD sales have more to do with hard times and, more recently, an increase in the use of the MP3 format, like IPODS, than the explosion in sales of bootleg CDs.
In fact, it was something he saw coming about five years ago and responded accordingly. He now caters to the youth market by selling console games which, he says, now accounts for about 10 per cent of his business.
Planning ahead
He has also gone more into special orders.
Understanding the market and planning ahead is the way forward, he believes.
He sees his store evolving into more of an electronics/media, digital format kind of business, selling legal downloads or selling more hardware, like video cameras and digital cameras.
He also believes that, in three to four years, CDs will become collector's items the way vinyl went with the advent of the CD not so long ago. If that is indeed the case, store owners will have to begin to find niches in the market in order to survive.
"It is becoming a highly specialised market," he said. "People are focusing more now on digital audio file sales. I think the stores before, the stores that were like your mass-marketed type of store that sold Top-40 pop music, those stores are gone. They couldn't survive in this time, mainly because the only way you can survive now is by finding a niche market," he said.
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