Further to my post at the beginning of this month forecasting the demise of brick and mortar record stores most of you have probably heard by now that Sam the Record Man will be closing up shop on June 30th. The writing certainly seemed to be on the wall when I went up to the second floor several weeks back and the entire jazz and blues section had been squeezed down into the same space as country, international etc. This was hardly a surprise given how thin their jazz collection had become over the last 12 months. Where they used to have 10-20 records for the bigger names in jazz that had dwindled to in most cases a couple of discs. Very sad given how they used to be the standard bearer for finding jazz in this city.

According to Bobby Sniderman who seemed to be on every radio station yesterday the closure is a result of downloading and big box stores. The impact of iTunes, Limewire etc is understandable but how the crappy selection of music at places like Best Buy pushed Sams out is baffling. I think these days if you plan to sell music from a storefront you have to specialize in specific genres of music and work that angle harder and with more informed personnel that give you value for your buck. Just like the good old days when record stores sold records and not DVDs, magazines etc. Who wants to guess how long before we see HMV depart or at least reappear on a much smaller scale.