Music Biz 2.0: The Local Impact of Big Box Music Shops

When I was growing up here in Indy finding a local music shop to buy instruments and accessories was a fairly hyper local affair. I grew up on the east side and my local music store was Thompson's Music at the Eastgate Mall, which later on became Indy's Music House which is now sadly defunct.

I took my first piano lessons at Thompson's Music which had a full line of instruments from amps to xylophones. I will never forget the day I heard the Korg PolySix synthesizer someone had brought in to sell on consignment. My friend Dave Thompson was the owner's son and was good friends with my older brother Tom who bought all of his guitar strings and accessories from Dave and who I believe may have been in a band together when I was a baby.

I would come to the store for weekly piano lessons after my father bought a piano from the store and they included 6 months of lessons in the purchase. This was a deal maker for my Dad who was reluctant to purchase the instrument until I assured him I would come to my weekly lessons and make him proud with my newly acquired talent for playing "Chopsticks" and "The Entertainer".

The day the PolySix I saw was on display in the store for sale changed me forever. Those beautiful bloops, bleeps, squiggles and electronic noise pushed me over into the serious student of music category. I had always liked hearing anything with a synthesizer since I could remember and Dave Thompson allowed me to play the PolySix for about ten minutes until I got bored twiddling the knobs and hearing the changes being made with my amateur fiddling with them.

The point I am trying to make here is that for many musicians working today, the experience of falling in love with music and music performance took place in a music shop like Thompson's Music, Arthur's Music, IRC Music or any of the other local businesses around Indy that sold gear. These stores are now either out of business or on their way out of business due to the impact of big box music retailers who have come to town in the last 15 years.

Perhaps I am just nostalgic for those days of yore, but there has been a noticeable impact on the young musicians I know these days who have missed out on the experiences I and other musicians my age had growing up by hanging out at the local music store with older musicians to mentor them.

There was more to the local music store than just commerce going on. The local music store was a bit like church for musicians. The store clerk (often the owner himself) was like a priest you would confess your onstage sins to and come to for repentance and repair. You could find potential bandmates just by hanging out long enough to hear people come in and noodle around on the instruments on display.

There was a sense of community in these places and the young musicians of today don't have equivalent experiences to help build their self esteem, confidence and abilities as musicians. The big box music stores like Sam Ash and Guitar Center are simply not designed for this. They are designed more like WalMart than like Thompson's Music where a huge variety of instruments and accessories can be found for the lowest prices imaginable.

Big box music stores are not all evil, mind you. Guitar Center and Sam Ash both help the local music scene out tremendously. They make charitable contributions, will loan out gear to be used onstage for charity fundraising events, contribute items to displaced musicians and are good corporate citizens. The low prices they bring to town are also welcome, since most musicians I know are relatively broke most of the time and can use a break on the latest gear being sold.

The one thing that gnaws at me about these places is that the big box music stores are by their very nature driven by a different motivation than the old school music stores of days past. Profits must be gained in these big box stores to feed the corporate bottom line for increasing shareholder value. Dave Thompson's family never cared about how much profit they made on a sale, they were true music fans who happened to make a living selling the stuff that made the music happen.

Don't get me wrong, I am not anticapitalist or against profit. In fact, I love profit, I am almost Ferengi like about the subject. My point I am trying to make with all of this is that big box music stores have a wider impact on local music that is one of the sources of problems within the local music scene. I call this the problem of the instrument owners versus musicians.

Being a musician is a special gift that for some they are born to do. The naturally gifted musician is a rare but glorious thing. It takes more than practice to develop the skill to become an Eric Clapton or Billy Joel or Kurt Cobain. For folks like these, the music is in their brains from the day they are born. For others, the skills are acquired, practiced and honed over many years time to get to the skill level displayed by celebrity musicians like I mentioned.

Yet, for some, skill level is not important to them so much as owning the instrument and being able to perform at a mediocre level is enough. Who knows what the motivations are for these people. Maybe its to look cool, maybe its to have a hobby, maybe its a sincere attempt to connect with music in that way only performing can provide. All I know is that whenever I come across a band with someone I call an instrument owner, it is a very very frustrating experience for the rest of the musicians involved in the band and for me as a music lover.

This brings me back to the central point of this blog post. Big box music stores, in their chase for profit, have a finite supply of musicians with which to deal with, and must supplement their incomes by appealing to the instrument owner class. An environment is created in these stores that appeals to these folks and has an unfortunate impact on the perceptions of the young musicians of today who absorb these influences when they are hanging out at the local big box retailer.

Certainly, I expect some people reading this to be offended by some of my assertions. I have expressed these thoughts before in public and have been called an elitist, a music snob and worse. I am guilty as charged and will not change my point of view on this subject. Musical talent is something that is a great gift from God or the higher power you believe in that is bestowed upon a happy few amongst us.

You cannot force talent to spring forth that does not exist on a deeper level, and the idea that anyone can become a musician which these big box music stores premise their existence on is something that I find deeply troubling for the future of music. Next time I will expound more on the subject of instrument owners versus musicians and its correlation to American Idol and karaoke.