DVD Review: I Need That Record - The Death (or possible survival) of the Independent Music Store

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At the age of 50, Sonic Youth’s rock guitar pioneer Thurston Moore has a dream; to one day own an independent record store… a dream that could be difficult to achieve in today’s economic climate.

In the past decade, over 3000 independent music stores have closed in America. Why? Through a series of exceedingly “honest” conversations with an assortment of rock & indie music pioneers, 22 year old film maker Brendan Toller seeks to answer that question.

I Need That Record is an insightful view into how music is bought and sold. It’s a documentary that specifically confronts an American issue – but one that’s very much a global problem; the independent merchant is being made redundant by big business and technological advancement.

Can any one business entity be blamed for this decline? Does the problem lie with “Big Box” stores like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target or the invention of Napster, FileShare.Com and other “free” download sites? Probably not; but the general consensus is that corporate America (As well as large TV and radio networks) has had a hand in the demise of the independent record store - A reality that is lamented openly and passionately discussed by all those interviewed.

Wal-Mart sells 1 in 5 CDs in America today. Add in Target, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble and Borders Books – and you collectively have 65% of retail music sales. (Although the monetary value is not actually given – this is a very large chunk of change)

Some indie music store owners actually went through a phase of buying their CDs direct from Best Buy at $9:99 a pop, simply because it was cheaper than getting music from the distributor direct. How does that work?

And then there is the issue of music downloading. Now, more so than ever, the MP3 file format has changed how music is distributed and ultimately “shared” globally. Music file sharing has steadily grown by a staggering 100% per year in the USA; a statistic that is bolstered by the fact that approximately 100 million iPod units were sold in 2007 alone. This figure continues to rise…

In 1981, the cheesy manufactured pop group The Buggles sung about how Video Killed the Radio Star – and it was the first song that MTV ever broadcasted. Shoot forward 30 years and the lyric could perhaps be modified to suit today’s technology wizardry and economic climate: innovation and capitalism has killed the music business.

Near the films end there is footage of American band The Black Keys performing in a small record store in Nashville… try seeing that at a Wal-Mart mega-market.

If you really love music, especially the CD’s or vinyl you buy or used to be able to buy at your local record store, you perhaps won’t like what has happened to the music distribution business in general, but you will probably like what this documentary has to say about the subject.

Directed and narrated by Brendan Toller

Candid Interviews with Chris Franz, (Talking Heads) Ian MacKay, (Fugazi) Mike Watt, (The Minutemen) Thurston Moore, (Sonic Youth) Pat Carney, (Black Keys) and several more

Extra’s – 2 hours of extended interviews

Available on Amazon.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE

Editor review

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