I was in Border and Barnes & Noble recently, both mainly known for selling books, and they do a pretty good job of it. Competitive, polite, informative, willing to help you find that weird piece of author misspelled or title one word or subject that might get you to a mainstream or obscure book you would buy and enjoy reading.
Then why does the RIAA/recording industry and stores like Tower and Virgin and Borders and B&N do such a half-ass job of selling cds ?! They don't even publish my favorite music review, "Musichound", any more,,,not even digitally. And if you go into any of these stores and ask about music,,,remember for some this is their only game, their main game,,,they can only give a personal opinion. YIKES !!
Even MTV forgot its primary mission ,,,showing music videos, and went to teen soaps,,,
No pc terminals with websites listing all of an artists published works, which hit #1 as singles and which sold how many albums. Professional critics opinions and the publics opinions. NOPE. Maybe 'they' just don't want you to know. And that is sad in this 21st Century. On the web, it is sooo hard to find music lyrics and print them so you can sing along with the song !! Dumb , dumb, dumb .
Amoeba Records in SF tries, but the software is not there,,,yet. And SillyCone Valley is just down there at the south end of the Bay. The record industry does not want you to be an informed consumer is the take away impression, basically. Maybe they want to fail. They are succeeding at failure.
From what artists have been saying and writing and singing about the record industry for decades about taking an artist's creation,his ownership of the song, in order to promote and publish his work, sell several million records/cd s in jewel boxes you can barely open with a knife,,,maybe the basic model for the music business was just too wrong-headed to have ever lasted.
Maybe a new model will emerge, where the artist is treated much better. Why does "MCA" have to have its name so much bigger than any famous artist it has ever signed ,,,on every one of the millions of cds that it sells worldwide? Talk about a major insecurity and inferiority complex!
